I Sing The Praises Of: The PAW-20 Neopup

Remember that weapon at the end of District 9 that the mercenary commander uses to take down the Prawn power suit? Nice shiny piece of shooty, eh?

That's officially a PAW-20 Neopup, marketed by a company in South Africa called Denel, and originated by one Tony Neophytou, badass weapon designer extraordinaire.

It's one of the many things I see down the road replacing (or at least heavily supplementing) the conventional rifle or carbine. Look how compact the thing is...


And yet it packs so much whallop, it makes me quiver with joy. Cover turns into mere concealment with this thing. You armor up a man, put this in his hand, and he's the equivalent of a walking armored car. You put a Marine Corps rifle squad on the street with 13 of these in their hands, and you've got some major devastation waiting to happen.

Here's a Youtube video of the thing in action against various bits of cover that an enemy combatant would hide behind. The demonstration against a small truck shows that this thing would turn an vehicle-borne IED into swiss cheese long before it got to you...

I've patterned a number of my near future weapons after the Neopup, or at least the concept. The second weapon down has a drum magazine full of mini-grenades that function like the Neopup's 20x42mm cartridge. The XM-25s, the bottom two weapons, are similar in function, but I'm not a real fan of the techno-round they fire, and being a dumb ex-grunt, prefer to overwhelm the target with a hail of "dumb" fire suppression. Quantity beats quality in a firefight, sometimes. And XM-25 with a "shoot-hit-explode" round, without needing to lase and calculate a timed detonation, would be alright in my book.

The 20mm cartridge is full of high explosive (among other things), and has a much faster and flatter projectile trajectory than the traditional 40mm grenade launcher. Meaning your rounds don't arc in like mortar shells (easier aiming) and get there quicker (bad guy's dead faster).

A mini-grenade grenade launcher like this would be ideal against infantry in rifle-bullet-reistant armor, or light armored vehicles, or even power armor, if you develop tiny little shaped-charge warheads. It would be an anti-power armor icepick!

Switch over to a solid projectile, like a spitzer or expanding hollowpoint, or even buckshot, and you've got an effective anti-personnel weapon, with no explosive component. Perfect for home defense against grouped-up zeds, rampaging low-yield superhumans, or Garn or Scourge. You could also use it for hunting dangerous game, like velociraptors, woolly mammoths, and cave trolls.

Honestly, I'd like to see what it could do to some "Big Five" African dangerous game, or Kodiak Grizzly, or tasty, tasty elk and moose. Put one out in stainless steel, and this thing will sell by the pallet-load in places like Alaska. And at least one sale in Pahrump, NV. heh.

Hell, you could switch out for less-lethal projectiles like hardened rubber or chemical irritant shells, and just dial down the powder charge. If you were to shoot me with one of these less-lethal rounds, I'd reconsider my course of action, no doubt.

A large cartridge like this gives you a lot of flexibility.

My thanks to thefirearmblog.com for the video and pics. That site is one of my daily stops. I highly recommend it.

Also, I think the "I Sing The Praises Of" label is a nice hook, like the "The Art Of" and "Tools Of The Trade" themes I also run. Expect more blogging on all three of those themes.

It will be a nice outlet, a sort of digital "show and tell," of the things I think are just too cool not to share, or give me inspiration for projects. Stay tuned.

Best,
JBR