Talk:List of 40 mm grenades

Very centred on the US
I know the 40mm grenade was first issued by the US, but most nato countries seem to issue an underslung grenade launcher of some sort now. Are 40mm grenades widely standard nato issued, as part of a STANAG? I know H&K make the UK and German GL's. A bit more on other countries would be good. 81.98.159.158 08:58, 3 August 2007 (UTC)plr
 * Yes it is, which is why I created Survey of modern US 40 mm grenades. This page should be expanded to talk more about the development and history, and leave the other page for the laundry list of grenade types (the other page has much more in depth descriptions as well). -- Thatguy96 17:46, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Expansion of this article with military designation and specific details of the various grenade types would be much appreciated here.
-moved from article by Dan100 09:52, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)


 * It would be consistent with other articles if the title were changed to '40 mm grenade'. Bobblewik (talk) 10:12, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No objections from me. -- Un focused  18:13, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Why not include cannons?
There are cannons/guns,such as the Bofors 40 mm gun,that use of course 40 mm projectiles. Dudtz 10/5/06 7:53 PM EST

They use actual shells(large bullets) not grenades.(198.82.19.34 17:40, 14 March 2007 (UTC))

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From the Wikipedia article Shell (projectile; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_%28projectile%29

"A shell is a payload-carrying projectile, which, as opposed to a bullet, contains an explosive or other filling, though modern usage includes large solid projectiles previously termed shot"

So by this definition the 40 mm grenade in this article is just as much an shell as the Bofors 40mm, both could probably be called grenades wheras niether of them is a bullet. For the sake of constistency within Wikipedia either the name of the article should be changed to somthing less general or all types of 40 mm explosive shells shoud be covered. (This would also justify a name change to 40mm shells)

This is further supported by that wikipedia's Projectiles Category doesn't mention grenades other than the 40mm and hand thrown ones.

Anders Kristoffersson 130.243.153.103 16:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

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For one thing, every manufacturer and user of this munition refers to it as a "grenade" (common usage). Aside from that, it's not a cannon round, because it's not fired from a direct-fire weapon (pointed directly at its target). A grenade is generally a small shell of some sort which is lobbed at the target over a short distance. The 40mm grenade is not a hand grenade (not meant to be thrown), but it is still a grenade for this reason. Rifle grenades fall into this category as well, as do the caseless grenades fired by the Russian GP-25/GP-30.

The 40mm bofors is a completely different weapon system and the fact that it fires a shell of the same diameter as the 40mm grenade is pretty much a coincidence. It's rather like comparing the (7.62mm)AK-47 to the (7.62mm) Minigun and saying that they should share a page because they both have the same cartridge diameter.

Also, while the 40mm grenade might technically be a "shell" the term itself is too broad. Generally usage of the term "shell" when describing ordnance implies more explosive power, or at least a much higher velocity at launch, than "grenade" and would probably be more suited to an explosive round fired by the Bofors gun mentioned above. Darkentity7 03:04, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

--- Also cannon is a piece of crew-served ordnance - grenade launchers tend to be heavy weapons at most and personal weapon accessories at least. They're completely different beasts. 62.196.17.197 (talk) 12:17, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

effective != kill
I removed the parenthesis that defined "effective radius" as "kill radius", because it is wrong! Effective radius has a formal definition based on fragment numbers and energy, and is supposed to estimate the distance at which there is a fairly high probability of being too severely wounded to continue combat. So far as I am aware there is no standardised procedure for estimating distance at which death is likely, and obviously no practical or ethical way to actually measure it. But for the few grenades for which there is claimed a particular "lethal radius", it is typically from 2/3 to as little as 1/3 of the effective radius. -- Securiger (talk) 09:38, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Differences between the various rounds
Nice article. If one of y'all could add the following info, that would be nice 1) There's a few newer HE round that the M203 supports that the M79 won't. Why? 2) What's the armor penetration capability of the HEDP round?

Thanks. Shmelyova (talk) 16:12, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

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Separate articles for each cartridge type.
Currently this article focuses too little on the general idea of 40 mm grenades and acts more like a hub for each 40 mm grenade cartridge which could otherwise have their own article. I think each cartridge type should get its own article, after which we rework this page into an disambiguation page for all the cartridge types.--Blockhaj (talk) 13:47, 9 December 2020 (UTC)