PARIS — Israel Weapon Industries showed off its new 40mm grenade launcher here at Eurosatory 12. The GL 40 opens with a thumb latch that’s similar to the old M203 grenade launcher. But once the barrel is pushed forward, the breech swings out to the left side to accommodate longer 40mm rounds.
As with most of IWI’s products, the GL 40 was developed with the Israel Defense Forces feedback. The single-shot launcher weighs about 3 pounds and is made of a reenforced polymer. IWI officials had the GL 40 mounted onto versions of the Tavor assault rifle, but it can be mounted on most weapons that are equipped with a rail system. It can also be fired in the stand-alone mode.
“Our new grenade launchers are the result of conclusions drawn from existing launchers – and the needs that arose from the field for a launcher that was easy to use and disassemble by the individual soldier,”according to IWI CEO Uri Amit. “It’s lightweight and high performance – ensuring highly accurate firing.”
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Leave it to IWI to smack H&K in the face, you’ve really got to love the Isrealis. Granted, more has to be seen and there are still many unanswered questions, but this thing doesn’t look like one of H&K’s god awful monstrocities. Is that a Spartan 1 I see in in the photo or a different vest or are my eyes just screwing with me?
the M320 is actually a very very nice grenade launcher.
it was actually designed around what the Army wanted which is good, it was certainly an upgrade from the M203.
What version of the Tavor is that? I’ve never seen it before
thats the new Tavor, the original one didnt do so well and they had to go back and redesign it.
The original Tavor is just fine.
This version is called the “X-95″ or “Mini-Tavor”. The Israeli’s chose this with a 13″ barrel since they looked at their own statistics and saw that nearly all of their engagements occur under 300m-500m which the 13″ barrel does fine at.
The regular Tavor will still be in service with certain IDF units (Caracal, etc).
Joe,
Excuse my ignorance. Are you talking about the Tavor or the grenade launcher? I get these feeds from the blog and am not always sure what people are referring to
The Tavor.
Thats what we need for our guns.
we have the M320 which is a very nice GL designed by the army pretty much.
that GL does not allow for the newer longer 40mm rounds, thats why the M320 opens to the side
“But once the barrel is pushed forward, the breech swings out to the left side to accommodate longer 40mm rounds.”
You were saying?
well then…that is what i get for just looking at the pics.
either way still doesnt do anything special our M320′s do. so I stand by my statement that we do not need this for our rifles. the M320 is a great launcher
From what I’ve read about this GL 40, I would much rather take it over the M320. It’s approx 4 pounds lighter than the M320, and can do the same job as the 320. To have a weapon system based on an existing design and improved upon immensley, I think IWI takes it on this one.
@libyman.
You do realise the M320 only weighs 3.3lbs right? Kind of hard to weight 4lbs less than 3.3lbs.
The M203 weighs 3lbs
According to IWI their GL40 weighs 1.35 kilos or 2.9lbs so you honestly are not saving much weight.
The 320 is a cheap euro clone, they may as well had called it an M302 and call it a day.
Didn’t they make a stand alone version of the M203? if so then why the rush to replace it? Plus it’s more simple to just push up, drop the spent shell then reload and pull it down again. Same as looking at a watch, it’s quicker then wasting time whiping out a phone to check the time. With the M320 you got to press stuff and do other things that takes more time from actually reloading, and why do we need stand alone vesions again? isn’t that why we caned the M79 because it was so ******** to have another guy lugging grenades and a launcher around when he could just screw the thing to his gun and leave it alone?
The FN40GL (MK 13) grenade launcher in use by SOCOM already is; breech forward, swing out.
Does the fact that the M203 and the M320 share the same numbers in their model designations have any significance?
Couple of things. John asked about the similarity in model designators. Without getting too windy, that came out of the type classification process and it was more concidence than anything else that we ended up with with M320 alongside M203. It’s not a huge problem, but it has caused some confusion! Fortunately, they are completely different weapons, so there’s little chance of one being mistaken for the other. On the plus side, there was a little tussle on what the actual name of the M320 would be. The original nomencalture was Area Suppression Lethality Module (say that real fast three times), but cooler heads prevailed and the Army was convinced to follow the lead of the M203 family and just call it a Grenade Launcher.
Greg mentioned a stand alone version of the M203. Yes, there are ways to do it, but the Army never adopted any of them. It might have had something to do with the fact that both the leaf and quadrant sights of the M203 mount on the host weapon, not on the M203. Apparently, no one saw the need to pursue a design solution back then to develop a stand alone mode. Of course, when the M203 came along back during Nam, a lot of people were shaking their heads and asking “What’s wrong with the M79?” One little historical tidbit on the M203: It was intended to be fired about 1200 times, then thrown away. Of course, there’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way. Sometime in the distant past the Army decided to rebuild M203s, and they’ve been rebuidling them ever since.
On the M320 swing out barrel, the direct ancestor of the M203 (XM-142 or XM-148, don’t remember which) actually had a swing out barrel. You’d have to ask someone older than me why the Army chose to go with the slide open approach. At any rate, someday the Army might actually field the longer (and longer range) ammo the M320 was intended to shoot. Haven’t heard if that has happened; probably hear about it here.
Just wanted to ask “the truth”, do you have some background with the M320/M320A1? I mean as a user? Maybe from the test community, or the logistics community? The only reason I ask is that TM 9-1010-232-23&P lists the weight of the M320/M320A1 (without buttstock) as 5 lbs (2.3kg) and with buttstock (AKA stand alone mode) as 7 lbs (3.2kg).
Just want to add that, other than being a lot heavier than the M203, the M320 is not a bad grenade launcher, and it gives you stand alone capability (even if while in stand alone mode it weighs about as much as an M4).
I do not, i was going by H&K’s brochure for it.
H&K states 3.3lbs and 4.8lbs with stock.
Okay, got it. Might have been something lost in the translation when H&K published the brochure. The reason the TM lists those weights is because that was what we at TACOM(the folks who wrote TM 9-1010-232-23&P) measured it at, on a NIST traceable scale. I can tell you from personal experience that the M320 butt stock weighs damn near as much as the original M203. Makes a **** of a club if the M320 goes down for some reason:)
Got it. 13″, or something up to 14.5″ (current length of the M4/M4A1 barrels) has been amply demonstrated as pretty much ideal for those ranges. I think the Tavor started with a 20″ barrel (same as the M16A2/M16A4). It looked shorter due to the bullpup design. What’s the rifling twist on the short Tavor, if you happen to know? And what grain bullets are the Israeli’s using?
Rifling is 1:7” twist on all the Tavors, including the X-95.
The original Tavor ordered by the IDF was the CTAR-21 and GTAR-21 (grenade) versions with the difference being that the CTAR had a 15″ barrel and the GTAR had an 18″ barrel to accommodate the M-203 launcher.
As for bullet grains, I would rather not disclose that information; but you can probably guess roughly by the barrel twist.
Yeah, anything from 55GR (or 51GR if they have access to the M995 or equivalent) up to 77GR. Thanks!