A lot has changed since 1968. The Army’s offensive grenade has not.
The M67 has been a workhorse for the Army for decades, but it could use some upgrades, according to the lethality branch chief at Fort Benning’s Maneuver Center of Excellence.
“Over Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn, we collected soldier feedback,” Maj. Jason Bohannon told Army Times in July. “And that feedback told us that the M67 hand grenade had limitations — which we’ve known of — in restricted terrain.”
It’s also not as safe as it could be, he added.
“A lot’s changed since 1968 in terms of what the Army deems a safe munition,” he said.
So for the past few years, the Army has been working on new grenades from several angles, to create a new frag grenade that is less sensitive to unwitting explosions but that can fragment farther in dense vegetation like tall grass and wooded areas.
“If you have a hand grenade in your kit, you don’t want it to go off because it’s been exposed to something in the environment,” Bohannon said.
“This isn’t me accidentally pulling the pin. Imagine a case of hand grenades sitting in a storage case, and there’s a fire. We don’t want the entire warehouse to explode.”
There are also plans in the works for a new blast grenade, and, eventually, one grenade that can switch between blast and fragmentation, he added.
One grenade is better than two
First up, the Army wants to bring back the power of a blast grenade. The service used to have the MK3A2 concussion model, which takes out targets with a single blast rather than by shooting out fragments, but it was pulled from use in 1975 because it was full of asbestos.
Its replacement is coming in 2020, Bohannon said, dubbed the XM111.
Meanwhile, MCoE and the Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center have been working on a more long-term project: A multipurpose grenade that can be both a fragmentation and a concussion grenade.
“Right now it’s in critical design and testing,” he said. “We’re really early in the engineering process, which is why we consider this late mid-term to far-term. Probably not a technology that we see until the late 2020s, early 2030s.”
But in the meantime, there’s still a need for that safer, more lethal frag grenade.
The technology to make one exists, Bohannon said, but there isn’t a specifically funded program to develop it.
“The intent would be in the interim to produce an improved M67,” he said. “The only caveat to that is, the tech is there, it’s just a matter of resourcing it.”
“With the right funding and time, we could probably do it within a few years,” he added.
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.
