The U.S. Army has unveiled the M111, its first new lethal hand grenade since the Vietnam era. This one ditches the classic Hollywood image of shrapnel tearing through everything in sight and replaces it with something that sounds somehow more horrifying: a shockwave designed to crush the human body from the inside.
A traditional grenade, like the M67, scatters metal fragments in all directions. This works great in open spaces but is less ideal indoors, where it can potentially create shrapnel that can bounce back at the person who tossed it. The M111 eliminates the problem of shrapnel by instead vaporizing its plastic shell upon detonation, leaving a blast overpressure wave that doesn’t care what’s in its way.
In the world of killing, that’s a selling point.
The US Army Developed a Deadlier Grenade Meant for Use Indoors
This means that in urban combat, which can take place in tight hallways and cramped apartments, the M111 doesn’t need line of sight. The pressure wave moves through openings, around obstacles, and into bodies, violently compressing organs. Eardrums rupture. Lungs collapse. Internal damage racks up quickly with no visible wounds. Ducking behind cover suddenly isn’t as effective a strategy as it used to be.
According to CNN, the Army says the M111’s development learned a lot of lessons from the Iraq war, where the risk of accidentally injuring friendly forces with fragmentation grenades was quite high. The new grenade isn’t any less lethal; it’s just a more controlled lethality.
The old M67 isn’t going to be officially retired anytime soon, as it still has its place in open terrain where 360 degrees of shrapnel spread is the point.
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