Stackable Grenades: Hooah!

The U.S. Army is testing out a new type of hand grenade being referred to as stackable, although the actual connectivity brings to mind the methods used to connect cylindrical Legos. They’re called the Scalable Offensive Hand Grenade, and they far out-perform the standard fragmentation grenade. It’s their connectivity giving them this ability: soldiers can simply connect – or “stack” – the grenades one atop the other, creating chains up to three in length. And, of course, with each connection comes greater firepower.
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Live-fire testing was recently carried out at Fort Benning, Georgia, where a lot of the fun explosions and jumping from planes seems to take place. Testing took place during the annual Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment (AEWE) at the Maneuver Center of Excellence, and by all accounts it went well.

The grenades are canisters with threaded, circular necks capable of screwing into the matching threaded hole found at their base. There is a method to connecting them, though; there’s a specific base grenade with a 3.5-second fuse, which cannot be removed. Both the base grenade and connecting grenades contain 0.25 pounds of explosives within their bodies. When the maximum three modules are connected and detonated, they’re capable of an impressive display of power, as was demonstrated at Benning when one such grenade creation took down an adobe one-room building all by itself.

There’s actually never been a live-fire portion at the AEWE before; this was the first year such testing was carried out during the event. And although the Army hasn’t decided yet whether or not to include the new grenades as part of their arsenal, at least the explosives were given a chance to be seen in action. Including live-fire testing means weapons that might otherwise be ignored are seen by officials, so maybe they have a chance. One thing’s for sure, these are some awesome explosives, and one can only begin to imagine the potential manuals and calculations created regarding how military brass might like to see soldiers implement them. It would, after all, need to be added to grenade training. Just think of the many ways these could be deployed…