Weapon Name- HMX High Explosive Grenade
Round Type- Grenade
Weight- 1 lb, 2 oz
Lethal Range- 5 meter radius
Injury Range- 20 meter radius
Velocity- 9,400 m/s
Miscellaneous/electronic information- The weapon is essentially intended as an extremely powerful high explosive utilizing a slightly more powerful explosive than RDX, and significantly more powerful than the standard C-B composition.
Basic Information
The weapon is essentially intended as an extremely powerful high explosive utilizing a slightly more powerful explosive than RDX, and significantly more powerful than the standard C-B composition. The HMX grenade is significantly more powerful than the M67 Grenade for a number of reasons, predominately due to three key reasons, including the slightly increased weight (18 ounces vs. 16 ounces), the slightly more powerful explosive (with a 9,400 m/s blast, compared to approximately 8000 m/s for C-B), and the increase of explosive relative to the shrapnel (approximately twice the explosive of the M67 Grenade). The weapon uses approximately 96% HMX, with a small amount of plasticizer, aluminum powder, and parafinn wax phlegmatize it, with to make the weapon castable and less likely to be ignited by accident. HMX produces a velocity of approximately 9,400 m/s, compared to approximately 8,000 m/s for the C-B composition, which is approximately 11% greater, and has around 25% more energy. This higher shock force or brissance allows it to more easily destroy hard targets such as concrete or steel, while simultaneously producing a more harmful over-pressure wave that is more likely to kill or injure intended targets within it's lethal blast wave. The grenade also has twice as much explosive, which produces a far more harmful concussive blast, and accelerates the fragmentation to a higher velocity.
As a high explosive grenade, it is somewhat of a combination of a concussive and fragmentation grenade, producing less fragmentation than normal and a higher shock force, possessing nearly double the explosive of an M67 grenade and half the fragmentation. A normal M67 by weight is approximately 180 grams of high explosive, or .4 pounds, while being another .475 pounds (215 grams) of fragmentation material and the detonation device (which acts in part as fragmentation and extra explosive). The HMX grenade however is approximately .8 pounds of explosive, or 360 grams, and has only about 150 grams of fragmentation and detonation material (or about .3 pounds). Due to the weight and extra material present in the detonator, in practice the HMX grenade has a little over half the fragmentation. The fragments are also propelled at a much higher velocity, both due to the higher velocity of the explosive, greater energy and volume of explosive, and the shape of the fragmentation which roughly takes the form of a standard claymore mine 1/8th inch steel ball. The explosive is roughly the same in volume to a standard concussion grenade, which gives it far more shock force than a standard hand grenade, while also possessing a small amount of fragmentation. This makes the grenade as lethal as a concussion grenade at close ranges, while still giving it some fragmentation to make it more lethal out to slightly longer ranges than a standard grenade.
In part to compensate for the reduced amount of shrapnel of the explosive, the shrapnel is designed to be more aerodynamic in flight than a normal grenade. Based on the claymore mine, the fragmentation takes the shape of a .22, after undergoing explosive deformation, making it better at piercing armor than normal grenades, and giving it a longer range of nearly 100 yards. This helps increase the lethal range of the grenade despite the reduced volume of fragmentation, and increases the individual power of each piece of fragmentation, reducing the need for more of it. The extremely high velocity of approximately 1,400 m/s per fragment, with each fragment being approximately 2.5 grams (for 40 fragments), makes the explosive more powerful than standard grenades, with each fragment hitting with approximately 2,450 joules of force. The concussive effect of the grenade is extremely lethal out to approximately 5 meters, while the lethal range of the fragmentation is approximately 100 meters, with lethal ranges of 230 meters being possible. While smaller in volume than a claymore mine, at close ranges it sufficiently peppers the target and has a tendency to more easily penetrate light body armor due to the higher velocities, pointed shape, harder steel and greater momentum. This makes it more useful against steel helmets and kevlar body armor, in addition to the powerful shockwave ignoring the body armor, which is a primary reason for it's use.
