The Pentagon's new toy.

Say goodbye to the M-16 rifle and the M-203 grenade launcher. The U.S. Army just unveiled its new, all-purpose firearm: the Objective Individual Combat Weapon, or OICW. The Pentagon says it will "revolutionize" infantry warfare by allowing soldiers to fire bullets and grenades at the same time.

In April, the Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center of the Army chose a design for this futuristic mega-gun. The winning design was submitted by Alliant Techsystems of Hopkins, Minnesota. (Alliant, by the way, was until recently one of the leading manufacturers of anti-personnel land mines.) The company will start churning out its dual-caliber guns in the year 2000, and U.S. forces could start carrying them in 2005. The U.S. military expects to spend $500 million on the guns once production begins. Foreign sales could garner many millions more for Alliant and its partners (which include Dynamit Nobel of Germany, a successor to the company established by Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel prizes).

The new combat weapon differs from previous infantry arms because it incorporates two firing systems in a single lightweight unit: an assault rifle that shoots ordinary bullets, and a grenade launcher that fires twenty-millimeter explosive shells.

The Objective Individual Combat Weapon has another unique feature: It can be used to incapacitate enemies who duck behind walls or barricades.

To kill hidden targets with the gun, all a soldier has to do is aim it at a point immediately above or to the side of the intended target and the gun does the rest--automatically calibrating the distance to the chosen spot and presetting a tiny electronic fuze on the grenade so that it detonates at exactly that distance, spraying deadly shrapnel on the victim.

The Pentagon seeks this combination of firepower and automation to compensate for the uncertain aim of U.S. soldiers. When marksmen fire the M-16 under ideal conditions, it is accurate out to 500 meters--the length of five football fields. But in the stress of combat, ordinary soldiers rarely achieve that degree of accuracy.

With the Objective Individual Combat Weapon, soldiers don't have to worry about careful, steady aim. They just look through the viewfinder and pull the trigger, unleashing a fusillade of bullets and grenades.

"We're going to take the human factors out of it as much as we can," explains Army Major James Baldwin.

The new weapon "will revolutionize warfare much as the introduction of the machine gun did early in this century," says Don Sticinski of Alliant Techsystems. "Its unique capabilities will enable U.S. combat troops to virtually shoot around corners to defeat targets behind barriers."

These capabilities will no doubt be highly prized when (and if) U.S. forces storm enemy strongholds or land on enemy beaches. But there is a serious flaw in the Pentagon's arms-design philosophy: If America's future military engagements prove to be anything like those of the past half-dozen years, U.S. forces will not be storming enemy beaches, but patrolling crowded neighborhoods in ethnically divided societies, where enemy combatants are likely to be interspersed with the civilian population (as in Bosnia, Haiti, and Somalia). In such a setting, the new, terminator-style grenade gun would tear apart occupied dwellings and produce huge numbers of civilian casualties.

Nor is that the only worry. What happens when the OICW is sold to militaries around the world, who may use the weapon against their own people?

And what happens when it gets into the hands of terrorists or criminals? Think of the Hebron incident of February 1994, when an Israeli settler fired into a crowded mosque with a Galil assault gun, killing dozens. With the OICW, the death toll would have been in the hundreds.

The Pentagon will, of course, downplay this risk but the record of past arms innovations does not inspire confidence. Take the M-16 rifle--the weapon the OICW is intended to replace. In 1997, after thirty-five years of unstinting U.S. arms aid and military sales, the M-16 was in active use with the military forces of fifty-one countries, including Cambodia, Guatemala, Haiti, Indonesia, Lebanon, Liberia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Zaire. At various times in the past, the M-16 has also been produced in Singapore, South Korea, and the Philippines. It is no surprise that large numbers of M-16s have, over time, become the weapon of choice for guerrillas, gangsters, and drug traffickers.

Once U.S. forces start to carry the new weapon, the pressure to give or sell the weapon to such longtime allies as Britain, France, Israel, Turkey, and South Korea will become irresistible. And once these countries are satiated, U.S. companies will want to sell versions to other likely customers around the world.

To prevent an arms race among countries vying for this nightmarish weapon, the Pentagon should eschew its manufacture in the first place. However appealing the Objective Individual Combat Weapon may be to U.S. forces, it is foolish and irresponsible to introduce this latest destructive device into an unstable and divided world.

Michael Klare is the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies, Hampshire College, based in Amherst, Massachusetts.