Later On

The article in the New Yorker on new weapons for warfare is fascinating. I highly recommend the article. What Jerry Baber has done is to create a lightweight fully automatic 12-gauge recoilless weapon, the AA-12. It fires 5 rounds/second and the 12-gauge shells can be loaded as need requires: solid slug, pellets (each around .20 caliber), mini-grenades, or non-lethal loads. The only thing missing that I can see is a suppressor. You can see it in action here.

Because the weapon is a) lightweight, b) recoilless, and c) is incredibly powerful, he came up with the idea of mounting it on small (about the size of a Radio Flyer wagon) unmanned robots and helicopters along with controls and a camera. In fact, the little robot carries dual AA-12s. With a remote control that includes a viewscreen, the robot (ground or helicopter) can provide surveillance and firepower without exposing a soldier to the enemy. The article talks about a larger ground robot, armed and carrying six of the smaller models. The larger robot could breach the enemy’s defenses (e.g., break through a wall), and then the smaller robots roll off into action and suddenly there are six highly armed and controlled robots wreaking havoc behind lines. The helicopter could be enlarged so that it, too, could transport round robots behind enemy lines and let them loose, under the control of soldiers safely behind their own lines.

The AA-12 is made of stainless steel and requires little cleaning or maintenance. If the gun gets blocked with mud, for example, you just rinse it off with water, including sloshing water down the barrel to clean it out.

One immediately thinks how this could change warfare and what would drive it. First, it would be fantastic in urban warfare, allowing our Marines and soldiers to check out—and clear out—buildings without exposing them. The machines are not terribly costly (though the Army is likely to change that), so that if one is destroyed, it is not like losing a soldier. Moreover, the arms industry would love to keep selling replacements as units are destroyed in battle. So, first: more ways to transfer money to arms firms.

In addition, with lower casualties among our troops, it’s possible that our military actions would find more support among the public, though that depends on re-establishing some trust in the government’s decisions and actions.

However, the Army is not enthusiastic. First, the Army really doesn’t know how to handle tactically innovative weapons—that takes time and must overcome resistance. The greater resistance will be because the Army did not invent it. The AR-15 is a great example: a fine weapon for the war we were fighting (Vietnam), but the Army hated it because it was not invented there, and the Army made changes to make it an unreliable and ineffective weapon, whereupon the Army said, “I told you so.” (The most serious change was changing the powder in the cartridge, which led to the weapon jamming in action. Lots of deaths can be laid at the feet of Army Ordnance developers who insisted on the changes. James Fallows tells about this sordid story in National Defense, as I recall.)

So the Army’s first reaction will be denial: test the weapon, point out all flaws, and do nothing. If forced to adopt the weapon, the Army will then insist on modifications (to try to make it “invented here”), which (if history is a guide) will reduce the weapon’s reliability and effectiveness. It’s likely that the Marine Corps will do a better job (the Marine Corps is a better learning organization, as described by Tom Ricks in his exceptionally fine book Making the Corps).

If the State Department would allow it, foreign governments have already shown considerable interest and seem ready to buy and deploy—Israel is one. But the lethality of the weapon means it probably won’t be approved for export, so the Army will probably continue to fight it.

Extremely interesting article, well worth buying the magazine for.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that running one of those little robots would, from the controller’s viewpoint, be more or less the same as a video shootemup game. Indeed, if the Army does field such a unit, one would expect videogame simulations to appear on the market within months if not weeks. The result, of course, is a tremendous pool of already-trained potential operators who have honed their skills in simulations and networked combats. Thus, when the units start to appear on the black market, as they inevitably will, anyone will be able to operate them. Hmm.

UPDATE 2: I highly recommend that you read National Defense, by James Fallows. It’s old, but fascinating, and every American should know the grim story of how the Army ruined the AR-15 and sacrificed the lives of hundreds if not thousands of American soldiers just to protect some internal turf. At the link, you can find copies for $1.

UPDATE 3: I wonder what a Gatling shotgun would be like.