Automatic
Automatic launchers include the Mk 19, AGS-17, and the HK GMG, which all fire at a higher velocity than related shoulder-fired grenades. They generally function as large-caliber machine guns with a relatively low rate of fire, used from an emplaced position in a similar way to a heavy machine gun. The heavy equivalent of the XM29 is the XM307 ACSW automatic grenade launcher that is easily convertible between the 25 mm grenade ammunition and standard .50 BMG cartridges. Both are intended to fire programmable "smart" grenades capable of being set to explode at a certain distance from launch or at a certain height above the ground. This gives the ability to hit targets inside rooms or behind hard cover that would normally not be reachable by small arms fire.
Read more about this topic: Grenade Launcher
Famous quotes containing the word automatic:
“The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self- service populace, and all our specious comforts—the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria—are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)
“She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”
—Richard Dawkins (b. 1941)