The Pentagon's new toy.

• Author: Klare, Michael
• Position: Objective Individual Combat Weapon - OICW - Cover Story

Say goodbye to the M-16 rifle and the M-203 grenade launcher. The U.S. Army just unveiled its new, all-purpose firearm: the Objective Individual Combat Weapon, or OICW. The Pentagon says it will "revolutionize" infantry warfare by allowing soldiers to fire bullets and grenades at the same time.

In April, the Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center of the Army chose a design for this futuristic mega-gun. The winning design was submitted by Alliant Techsystems of Hopkins, Minnesota. (Alliant, by the way, was until recently one of the leading manufacturers of anti-personnel land mines.) The company will start churning out its dual-caliber guns in the year 2000, and U.S. forces could start carrying them in 2005. The U.S. military expects to spend $500 million on the guns once production begins. Foreign sales could garner many millions more for Alliant and its partners (which include Dynamit Nobel of Germany, a successor to the company established by Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel prizes).

The new combat weapon differs from previous infantry arms because it incorporates two firing systems in a single lightweight unit: an assault rifle that shoots ordinary bullets, and a grenade launcher that fires twenty-millimeter explosive shells.

The Objective Individual Combat Weapon has another unique feature: It can be used to incapacitate enemies who duck behind walls or barricades.

To kill hidden targets with the gun, all a soldier has to do is aim it at a point immediately above or to the side of the intended target and the gun does the rest--automatically calibrating the distance to the chosen spot and presetting a tiny electronic fuze on the grenade so that it detonates at exactly that distance, spraying deadly shrapnel on the victim.

The Pentagon seeks this combination of firepower and automation to compensate for the uncertain aim of U.S. soldiers. When marksmen fire the M-16 under ideal conditions, it is accurate out to 500 meters--the length of five football fields. But in the stress of combat, ordinary soldiers rarely achieve that degree of accuracy.

With the Objective Individual Combat Weapon, soldiers don't have to worry about careful, steady aim. They just look through the viewfinder and pull the trigger, unleashing a fusillade of bullets and grenades.

"We're going to take the human factors out of it as much as we can," explains Army Major James Baldwin.

The new weapon "will revolutionize warfare much as the introduction of...