EmericD said:

       stancrist said: LOL.  So the point man can fire one grenade quickly.  Golly gee wow.

Yes, that's what is happening when you compare an existing system, used and fielded for decades, and something made from unobtainium and powered by fairy dust and wishful thinking, the first one is always at a disadvantage.

No, that's what happens when I note the length of time it would take for most members of a patrol to load, aim and fire a rifle grenade, but you say I'm wrong because one member of the patrol would have a rifle grenade already loaded and can fire it quickly without aiming.

EmericD said:

It seems that you feel that current 40 x 53 mm HV grenades are not up to the task, at least they seem to be less powerful than 30x113 or 30x173 mm you are constantly referring to (which, unsurprisingly, is true).

I expressed no opinion on whether 40mm grenades are "up to the task" or not. 

What I said is that the 30mm airburst videos show fragmentation effects better than the only 40mm airburst video I found.

I told you that at least twice before, yet you still seem unable to comprehend it.

graylion said:

Actually how about 

FT1 - Fusiliers

LMG + LMG + DRM + Rifle (Squad leader)

FT2 - Grenadiers

4 x AGL

Why?

autogun said:

Just a thought for an alternative ammo type for grenade launchers: the multiple flechette round.

About 20 years ago GD-OTS  developed the M1001 40mm HV canister cartridge round, with a payload consisting of an aluminium sabot filled with 113 flechettes 50.8mm in length, 2mm in diameter and 1.1 g in weight. The flechettes are ejected after the projectile leaves the muzzle and "are intended to provide a greater than 96% probability of hitting a standard 4.3 x 4.3 m silhouette target at its maximum range 100m when firing a three-round burst.

A flechette round might be worthwhile.  Another possibility is Emeric's suggestion of canister.  https://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages?msg=8034.49

Many years ago I did some testing of 000 Buckshot, and got a hit probability at 100 meters comparable to the 40mm flechette load.  SEP-OCT1995.pdf (army.mil)

graylion said:

Still leaves me with the question about ammo

What question?

1 stick holds 10 grenades. How many can a soldier carry? And will, let's say 40, suffice?

Good questions.  Your guess is as good as mine.  I'd guess maybe four mags.

But, I'm pretty sure the magazine pictured is 6-round capacity, not 10-round.

My favored approach is 6 man fireteams

Fireteam leader has a rifle with 1-6x optic and grenade launcher and 12 medium velocity bounding HE-PFF grenades

2x SAW gunners with something akin to Mk46 or Knights Armament LAMG like critter

2x Riflemen, each with a rifle, 1-6x optic, a 12 round bandolier of 40mm MV Bounding HE-PFF and a nutsack of LMG ammo

Grenadier with M32A1 and 30 rnds MV 40mm Bounding HE-PFF

Mech infantry squad would have two fireteams per squad (13 men), light infantry squad would have three per squad (19 men) with a SL span of control like a three fireteam USMC squad.

Things like 60mm commando mortars, Carl Gustav, and MMGs at platoon level 

stancrist said:

No, that's what happens when I note the length of time it would take for most members of a patrol to load, aim and fire a rifle grenade, but you say I'm wrong because one member of the patrol would have a rifle grenade already loaded and can fire it quickly without aiming.

Sorry, but you are drawing conclusions from a few training videos you can find on youtube, where people are absolutely not trying to shoot fast.

You could find similar videos of people aiming and shooting the M32, and it took them roughly the same time to fire their first round. Loading 6 rounds in a M32 is taking time.

stancrist said:

What I said is that the 30mm airburst videos show fragmentation effects better than the only 40mm airburst video I found.

And what I said (and others too) is that you are comparing 30 mm AC that are using 275 g to 360+ g shells launched >750 m/s, with a <250 g grenade launched at ~240 m/s... so yes, the various 30 mm seem to be more powerful, because they ARE more powerful.

Unfortunately, none of this is useful to demonstrate that an individual automatic grenade launcher would be an effective weapon.

stancrist said:

I expressed no opinion on whether 40mm grenades are "up to the task" or not.

Yes, I noticed that you are making your best to avoid giving any technical details about what you think might be the weapon that could make "every rifleman a grenadier".

EmericD said:

       stancrist said: No, that's what happens when I note the length of time it would take for most members of a patrol to load, aim and fire a rifle grenade, but you say I'm wrong because one member of the patrol would have a rifle grenade already loaded and can fire it quickly without aiming.

Sorry, but you are drawing conclusions from a few training videos you can find on youtube, where people are absolutely not trying to shoot fast.

That's true, they are not trying to shoot fast.  They are trying to shoot accurately, so that the rifle grenade explodes close enough to the target.

Can you provide any evidence which shows how much time it takes for the average rifleman to perform the following tasks as fast as he can?

- How long does it take to extract a rifle grenade from the issue grenade pouch, load the grenade onto the muzzle, and remove the safety clip?

- How long does it take to aim and fire with sufficient precision so the grenade explodes close enough to the target at 100 m?  200 m?  300 m?

EmericD said:

       stancrist said: What I said is that the 30mm airburst videos show fragmentation effects better than the only 40mm airburst video I found.

And what I said (and others too) is that you are comparing 30 mm AC that are using 275 g to 360+ g shells launched >750 m/s, with a <250 g grenade launched at ~240 m/s... so yes, the various 30 mm seem to be more powerful, because they ARE more powerful.

First, "others" did not say that.  ONE other said it.  And he made the same mistake that you did.

Second, I never said that the 30mm cannon rounds "seem to be more powerful" than the 40mm grenades.  To repeat myself for the umpteenth time, what I said is that the 30mm fragmentation effects are more visible.  

EmericD said:

Unfortunately, none of this is useful to demonstrate that an individual automatic grenade launcher would be an effective weapon.

I never said those videos demonstrate that an airburst grenade launcher would be an effective weapon.

I said they give me cause me to think that an airburst grenade launcher might be an effective weapon.

EmericD said:

       stancrist said: I expressed no opinion on whether 40mm grenades are "up to the task" or not.

Yes, I noticed that you are making your best to avoid giving any technical details about what you think might be the weapon that could make "every rifleman a grenadier".

I don't have enough information to give technical details.  The only info I have is that 25mm HEAB had too small casualty radius.

What caliber would be necessary for the airburst concept to work?  30mm?  40mm?  50mm?  Bigger than 50mm?  I have no idea.

And even if I were able to give specifics, after this discussion I doubt I'd bother.  Every time I write A+B=C, you read it as X-Y=Z.

With modern digital thermals there's three things that are going to dictate performance heavily.

1. Imaging sensor pixel size, pixel count, and REFRESH RATE (measured in hertz or number of times per second a thermal image is captured). If your optic is made in the US or using us components it can not legally run at more than 9 hertz without falling afoul of ITAR. The human eye can very much notice anything under 60 hertz being jumpy and not quite right especially if both you and your object under observation is moving.

2. Digital display pixel size, refresh rate, and pixel count. This usually far outstrips the performance numbers of your actual digital bolometer ccd. Through digital signal processing fuckery this can somewhat compensate for low pixel count low refresh rate CCD, how much it compensates and how well both depend heavily on the onboard processing power performance and quality of coding etc as well as your chosen frames per second setting. The obvious consequence here is that your battery life goes down as your frame per second setting is increased because you're using more processing power to do digital signal processing up to the limits and QUALITY of your onboard processing limits.

Speaking frankly, this is actually where you run into extremely hard performance limitations with the cheaper side of the market.

3. Your illuminator, the closeness with which it matches your CCD sensor's wavelength limitations, and just the actual performance throw distance and quality of your illuminator is capable of.

On the cheaper end of the spectrum you're generally lacking in all 3 of these which drastically limits everything about your devices performance.

The difference between a $500 and $5000 and $10,000 thermal is multiple orders of magnitude. 

Also country of design, manufacture, and, specific parts sourcing as well as the country you're in or trying to get it into can also heavily dictate your performance and there's multiple cases where if you buy wrong you can spend a whole lot of money for a very gimped thermal.

As an example I'm personally looking at getting a Jerry C Clip on once I get a pvs14 which due to multiple factors from the above list is almost freakishly cheap for it's raw performance (if you can consider $4000 cheap)

The most frustrating thing about the civilian thermal market is how easy it is to spend lots of money on something that's got the performance of a shitty toy if you don't frankly autistically dive into the details behind what makes a thermal good and have the base technical knowledge to understand what you're researching.

I know this isn't very squad support weapon related but it's something that's going to be important going forward.

Jerry C product link below

https://www.infiray.com/products/jerry-c-thermal-monocular-helmet-mount.html