To hear Chinese state media tell it, the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army will go into battle in the future wearing an array of high-tech gizmos. In their hands will be enormous weapons combining a rifle with a 20-millimeter grenade launcher akin to the old — and cancelled — American OICW. On top of that, they will have heads-up displays and networked positioning systems so Chinese troops can monitor each other digitally, almost like a video game.It looks impressive, and Chinese announcements of the system have circulated in the press with varying degrees of skepticism and hyperbole. A more skeptical take recently came from the military news wire Shephard Media, which pointed out that China is claiming the 20-millimeter hybrid weapon, dubbed QTS-11, can fire airbursting grenades lethal within a radius of 7.7 meters.
