It’s hard to redesign something as simple and straight-forward as a grenade launcher, but if you took a bunch of engineers and had them build a grenade launcher add-on from scratch, then you’d probably end up with something pretty similar to the Madritsch ML40AUS 40mm grenade launcher. This powerful weapon has a few clever solutions to old problems, and Rogue Adventurer got its hands on one for long enough to check out all the cool upgrades.Â
First off, the modern design carries most of its weight near the back of the device. This keeps as much of the weight as possible near the gun’s center mass, rather than out near the barrel where the extra weight can tire your arms and muck up your aim.
The second major advantage of the ML40AUS 40mm is that it was specifically designed with rifles in mind. It connects seamlessly with the Thales Australia EF88 Assault Rifle. The trigger of the grenade launcher actually rests within the EF88’s trigger guard, so the operator can fire the add-on without moving his hands from the normal firing default position. Overall, this makes the ML40AUS 40mm less of an attachment and more of a natural extension of the EF88.
And to top it all off, the ML40AUS has a customized quadrant to make sure that every grenade hits its target. That’s kind of overkill at that point, though. When you’re shooting grenades like the M433 that will destroy everything within 15 feet of the point of detonation, just how accurate do you need to be?
You can check out the ML40AUS 40mm in action in these high-speed demonstrations. This first clip features an M433 40mm Cartridge High-explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP). This devastating grenade will punch through two inches of steel and has an effective kill radius of 5 meters.Â
This second video shows off the ML40AUS with a M583A1 White Star Illumination cartridge. As the name suggests, these cartridges will illuminate the night sky for about 30 to 40 seconds.
That doesn’t look too shabby, though we’d like to see a soldier take one of these bad boys to the range so that we can see just how effective the ML40AUS truly is. These videos leave the audience wanting more. Why on Earth would you film slow-motion footage of a grenade launcher, but not include slow-motion footage of the ensuing explosion? That’s just criminal.
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