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:
“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)
“What we learn for the sake of knowing, we hold; what we learn for the sake of accomplishing some ulterior end, we forget as soon as that end has been gained. This, too, is automatic action in the constitution of the mind itself, and it is fortunate and merciful that it is so, for otherwise our minds would be soon only rubbish-rooms.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)