China's Take on the Objective Individual Combat Weapon

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Our friends at The Firearm Blog have an interesting post on China's development of an OICW-type weapon with both a small arms round and built-in airburst capability.

The so-called "Type 05 Strategy Rifle" or ZH-05 is a 5.8 standard carbine with a bullpup 20mm airburst round launcher embedded in the frame.

Some commenters argue that this is a path to nowhere, like the US Army's XM-29 program. But others are saying that Chinese manufacturing could bleed out the bad parts of the XM-29 and its ilk.

Weight: Around 5 kg. This weight is not too heavy compared to the 6.1 kg K-11 and 6.8 kg XM-29

Price: Should be much cheaper than previous OICW simply on the merit it is produced in China. Doubtful it'll cost below 3,000 dollars. While cheap compared to the 14,000 dollar K-11 or 25,000 dollar XM-25 it will still be much more expensive than the type 95 or type 03.

Reliability: A core problem with OICWs is the delicate electronic sights. The type 05 looks to have less advanced but more rugged sights.


But judging from some conversations I've overheard about the lack of real capability of the SKorean K-11, I'm not sure the ZH-05 path is an economical and effective one to go down. Story Continues
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