Could This New Gun Turn China’s Soldiers into Super Killers?

By Robert Beckhusen,War Is Boring

To hear Chinese state media tell it, the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army will go into battle in the future wearing an array of high-tech gizmos. In their hands will be enormous weapons combining a rifle with a 20-millimeter grenade launcher akin to the old — and cancelled — American OICW. On top of that, they will have heads-up displays and networked positioning systems so Chinese troops can monitor each other digitally, almost like a video game.

It looks impressive, and Chinese announcements of the system have circulated in the press with varying degrees of skepticism and hyperbole. A more skeptical take recently came from the military news wire Shephard Media, which pointed out that China is claiming the 20-millimeter hybrid weapon, dubbed QTS-11, can fire airbursting grenades lethal within a radius of 7.7 meters.

Be wary of such claims. The U.S. version of this weapon from years ago, the OICW, also included a 20-millimeter grenade launcher but the U.S. military found it to be ineffective. A grenade’s lethality primarily comes from shrapnel, but the pieces of flying metal were often too light and often dispersed upwards and away from the target. Ultimately, the U.S. military lost interest, though the OICW did inspire the M320 grenade launcher and the problematic — and now cancelled — XM25.

South Korea developed its own tricked-out future rifle called the K11 and adopted it into service. But the K11 was plagued with problems from the fire-control system to the optics and the barrel — it wobbled. Another issue is that the K11 is huge and heavy at 13 pounds unloaded. So like the OICW, the result is a big, bulky rifle with an underpowered grenade launcher. And like the American version, it’s expensive.

Armies tend to like reliable, effective and affordable rifles — all factors where these hybrid weapons have been found lacking.

Chinese troops with QTS-11 rifles. Chinese state media photo

In any case, the Chinese QTS-11 is reportedly in service in limited numbers with the Sky Wolf Commandos, a special operations force in the Chinese army’s Western Theater Command. Chinese state television described the move as part of a training program to “adapt to future informatised warfare.”