The XM25 Counter-Defilade Target Engagement System is not new. The 1970s myth of military contractors throwing rubbish out there for high costs (well, mostly myth - just like the myth that NASA put a man on the moon, when military contractors did) is just a myth. The military is exceedingly slow to approve anything these days and so XM25 "Punisher" has been looked at for 10 years. 

The US has long relied on technology superiority to offset few troops (few combat troops, anyway - like any bureaucracy the military is mostly admin people) and XM25 is part of that.  The weapon features a target acquisition system that calculates the range to a target with a push of a button and transfers the data to the electronic fuse built into the 25mm round. When fired, the projectile is designed to explode directly above targets out to 600 meters, peppering enemy fighters with shrapnel, writes Matthew Cox at

Not everyone needs that.  For shock troops, special operations or larger-scale Ranger missions, a 5-shot, 14-pound weapon system designed to shrapnel terrorists en masse is not worth losing an M4A1 carbine. But most soldiers seem to like it because bad guys are often behind walls that are a few feet thick.  Most comforting to people who still worry we buy $400 toilet seats and $400,000 rifles, it only costs $25,000.   

There's always a $6 billion destroyer to gripe about though.

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