Automatic grenade launchers are an institution on today’s battlefield, their sheer firepower combined with adaptability and instantaneous-response capabilities few systems are able to match. Two of the absolute best within them are the Mk 19 and its latter-day counterpart, the Mk 47 Striker, and they are prototypes in how military needs drive the design of weapons over time.
The Mk 19 has its genesis in the latter-day Vietnam War. The U.S. military required a weapon to provide sustained explosive firepower to river patrol and mounted units as well. Saco Defense Industries produced the Mk 19, entering service in 1968 and quickly developing a reputation as a harsh, belt-fed, blowback-operated, air-cooled workhorse.
Its open bolt design and ruggedness permitted it to ride on patrol craft to Humvees and Strykers and even shipboard mounts. Its troops appreciated how it could be fired in single-shot or full-auto, but still pack the punch of a 40 mm grenade.
Even to this very day, decades after initially coming into service, the Mk 19 remains a workhorse. With 77.6 pounds, it is usually vehicle-mounted. It fires 40×53 mm high-velocity grenades at a cyclic rate of 325-375 rounds per minute and a realistic sustained rate of 40-60 rounds per minute. Its range is excellent: point targets to 1,500 meters, area suppression to 2,212 meters.
Its M430 dual-purpose high-explosive round fires will destroy a five-meter circle and penetrate 50 mm of rolled homogeneous armor, and is deadly to light vehicles and hardened positions.
The ammunition is carried in 32- or 48-round disintegrating link belts of 42- to 60-pound weight and has low recoil to be mounted on diverse platforms. The system produced over 35,000 units used in Vietnam to Afghanistan, and Iraq, and has been imitated in copycat systems such as the Heckler & Koch GMG and the AGS-17.
The training is enhanced by the inert rounds, such as the XM922, used to simulate the live grenades in handling and in malfunction training to avoid detonation.
As the 2000s rolled in, it was clear the Mk 19 wasn’t current anymore. A new war needed a lighter and more accurate weapon to be outfitted with high-end scopes and programmable rounds. The Mk 47 Striker did. Bought in 2006 from General Dynamics and built in Saco, Maine, but fitted with a Raytheon fire control system, the Mk 47 brought an entire other level of versatility and accuracy.
The Striker is light at just 39.6 pounds base launcher and is less than half the weight of the Mk 19. With a tripod and mount, it comes in at about 90 pounds. Closed-bolt platform is used to fire programmable grenades with pre-programmed time fuses, and the Raytheon AN/PVG-1 Lightweight Video Sight brings operators a ballistic computer, laser range finder, and 9x magnification to be effective well downrange.
Its highest degree of effectiveness is the firing of programmable prefragmenting high-explosive rounds with an airburst detonation. Grenades will no longer explode in front of, above, or to the rear of cover, and thus, harder points will be less covered. With an effective range of 1,700 meters and a firing rate of 60 rounds per minute or so, the Mk 47 brings to the battlefield anything from training rounds, such as the M385 and the M918, to combat rounds such as the Mk 285.
First employed by the United States Special Operations Command, the Mk 47 has been employed in Afghanistan and in Iraq and has been highly sought after by allied nations wishing to arm with an advanced weapon. Precision is an essential design factor in the weapon, and so too is versatility and ruggedness. The weapon is The Future of Automatic Grenade Launchers.
The progression from the Mk 19 to the Mk 47 is less a tale of two guns than it is a snapshot of the way in which military technology develops in order to counter ever-dynamic foes. As precision and lethality increase lockstep, however, the automatic grenade launchers are a long-lasting, versatile fixture of the modern warfight by their very nature, boding that the pairing of firepower and brilliance is in no way finalized.