It’s a weapon that can take out a bad guy behind a wall, beyond a hill or below a trench, and do it more accurately and with less collateral damage than anything on the battlefield today, officials say. It’s called the XM25 Individual Air Burst Weapon, and by next month the service will have three prototypes of the precision-guided 25mm rifle ready for testing.

If the XM25 does what its developers hope, it will be able to fire an air-bursting round at a target from 16 meters away out to 600 meters with a highly accurate, 360-degree explosive radius.

The XM25 is about as long as a collapsed M4, weighs about as much as an M16 with an M203 grenade launcher attached and has about as much kick as a 12-gauge shotgun, said Barb Muldowney, Army deputy program manager for infantry combat weapons.

The semi-auto XM25 comes with a four-round magazine, though testers are looking at whether to increase the capacity to as much as 10 rounds.

Brains are what really makes this Buck Rogers gun work — it has them. The weapon combines a thermal optic, day-sight, laser range finder, compass and IR illuminator with a fire-control system that wirelessly transmits the exact range of the target into the 25mm round’s fuse before firing. (LOL WTF!)

A Soldier can aim the XM25 at a wall concealing a sniper, for example, but “dial in” or adjust the distance by an additional meter above the target. When fired, the Alliant Teksystems-built round will explode above the enemy’s position, essentially going around the obstruction, Muldowney said.

The weapon costs about $25,000 each, but experts were quick to point out that a fully-loaded M4 for optics and pointers costs pretty close to $30,000. Each ATK-made 25mm round costs about $25.

[from DefenseTech]

There’s no need for military aggressions anymore. Humans will die like ants with such technologies.