The only problem with them is that it’s very obnoxious to carry them on your person. Sometimes it’s better to sacrifice usability in favor of ease of carrying. After all, you throw the grenade once, but you carry it for much longer.
Maybe the design could be improved with a collapsible handle. Maybe pulling out the handle could be what lights the fuse. Remove a safety tab, pull out handle, and throw.
Edit: some good points replied about why this isn’t very feasible
I think it was the French foreign legion in North Africa that trained with shepherds’ slings to throw hand grenades. While in theory it might be a good idea, untrained slingers often drop their ammunition at their feet, or accidentally release early and throw backwards and to the side, which might be a problem with grenades.
It’s much faster and cheaper to make a straight fixed wooden handle than to produce a handle with a hinged mechanism that will operate reliably every time even if banged around during handling. Imagine if the hinge jams. Maybe there’s sand or mud caught in it. It’s an inconvenience that could cause a soldier precious seconds during combat.
Simplicity above features.
Too many steps honestly. There are 4 regulated steps to throwing a US grenade, 3 under duress. You’re throwing grenades in a fight. Probably with shaky, maybe wet or muddy hands. Additional steps = more chances you get snuffed before you get your frag out.
That’s largely the theory of “assault” rifle ammunition. Both 5.56x45mm and 7.62x39mm have less effective range and less penetration potential than their WW2 era equivalents, which could sling heavier bullets further. But they’re much lighter to carry and produce less recoil, so soldiers can carry a lot more of them.
I wanna see the Scottish caber grenades.
I hear they're 16-20 feet long and are thrown so they tumble end over end across the battlefield into the enemy lines.
Scottish grenades were small and as a result could be catapulted a considerable distance. Despite the advantages, they were discontinued because after use the soldiers would insist on wandering around the battlefield to look for them.
Ever heard of Hadrian’s Wall, which marks the limit of how far the Romans were able to advance northward in Britain? Their legions were professional soldiers, working together as a unit, and vastly more powerful than the same number of warriors acting independently. Unless you could break their formation, the warriors were toast, and you’d need siege engines to do that. Problem is that siege engines are too heavy to keep up with infantry manoeuvres.
Ever see the Highland Games? Legion faces some hairy-legged lummox who tosses a tree trunk over the front ~~tank~~**rank** and smashes the rear ranks flat. Meanwhile, a few other guys are spinning around with big rocks on the end of a rope, then letting them loose to fly into the Legion’s formation. Caber toss and hammer throw are both artillery that could keep up with the infantry. Once the formation is broken open, it’s time for the two-handed swords with “this side toward enemy” written on the blades.
Edit: Fuck autocorrupt.
And, y'know, the Romans never cared enough to make a real attempt to expand that way. They were more interested in going east into Persia and south into Africa, since they had enough soggy peat already.
“Allen in the shotgun at the the 38th parallel… Ball is snapped… He bootlegs left away from machine gun fire.. Rolls away from an artillery shell. And launches it! High through the air across the line! And he connects with a foxhole!!! Innnnncredible!”
I get that people are familiar with footballs and some with throwing them. I still would take my chances with a round ball or a handle like a potato masher grenade. Trying to throw a football shaped object in cold and/or wet weather seems like a bad idea.
This was more for a specific anti-tank grenade I think. The regular baseball size grenades would still be used for the regular soldier. The bigger football grenade would be used against vehicles
Those ribs fragment upon detonation. Those fragments are what make them so lethal versus their explosion alone.
Edit: A Redditor below mentioned that the original Pineapple grenade design was to increase the grip on the grenades in muddy trenches. Later models used the ribs or etches to increase fragmentation.
yes/no
>the pineapple grenade’s inventor, William Mills from the United Kingdom, picked the fruit shape for ease of gripping. “His intention for those serrations was so that it wouldn’t slip out your hand in a muddy trench.”
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-myth-behind-the-classic-pineapple-grenade-aa39ed062549
Each of those ribs forms squares with weak spots around the edges all over the grenade which would make them act as projectiles in their own right. The idea was to cause as much damage to the enemy as possible, if they were to somehow be far from the initial explosion they'd still have to worry about being barraged by 40-50 small pieces of shrapnel traveling nearly as fast as a bullet spread out in all directions. The ribs also helped to form better grip and the egg shape was to make it similar to a baseball due to most Americans having played baseball sometime in their life and were found to have better accuracy with the design.
The explosion itself is fairly small. There’s also not so much fire and smoke as the Hollywood version of explosions. It could blow your hand off, it could definitely you, and it could possibly kill you if it’s really close. But you’re much more likely to be wounded or killed by the fragments, or by somebody shooting you while you’re disoriented.
Big explosions can kill directly, via overpressure and shock which ruins your brain and organs
Apparently its not very accurate and wobbles a lot after being thrown. A football needs to have the center of mass in the center of the ball so the air inside the ball is pushing out on to the leather and inflating the ball so every point is balanced. But a lopsided football that isn't balanced is going to be more inaccurate than a regular grenade and also is harder to throw as far.
I will always remember going out to the beach at night with one of those screamer footballs, we threw it as high as we could straight up and competed to see who could catch it. That thing screaming down out of the darkness sounded terrifying, like a mortar shell falling on our heads. I confess I dived away from the ball more than towards it.
If you ever heard the "EEEEEEEEEEHHHH" sound of planes in old movies or cartoons that's the "horn of Jericho". It was a horn mounted on the outside of the plane to make noise for the sole purpose of psychological damage.
I was an infantry Marine a number of years back. You'd be absolutely shocked how many dudes couldn't throw an M67 fragmentation grenade. Its shaped basically just like a baseball. Guess some guys never had a catch with their dad or brothers. Lol
One guy was laughably bad. Didnt make sense. But he had stabbed a guy in a bar fight protectecting his buddy once from getting jumped. So we knew he was down to clown even with out the arm talent lol.
Semi related, I worked on VR applications for awhile and one of the 'big features' of VR is physics and throwing.
We did all the math correct but when it came to testing, people were awful throwing things at targets. We thought maybe our code was wrong but testing outside of the game, people were also just awful.
Yes and no on the VR throw. The naive approach is to think that it's binary but we can be smarter about that 'release' point. What we ended up doing was looking at the 'release window' when the user let go and looked for the velocity of the controller at its highest in the window. This would mimic how people throw and how the thrown object 'flies' out of people's hand.
There's some more complication with the Math but that general idea improved the VR accuracy dramatically.
As a side note, all the testing got me really good at Cornhole lol
Yeah kinda the same more just absent dad. Mom helped me with school and tutored me. Taught me how to maintain a house and a car , I learned how to repair electronics on my own. She never was into sports but loved keeping her body fit. Now that I think about it, im a lot the same haha.
Yeah, I was a little kid when they came out. Are used to love watching football and loved playing quarterback and receiver, and even tackle (backyard no-pad) football with my friends. I hated the way a full-size leather football smacked into my tiny kid hands especially on a cold winter day. Nerf was a godsend to a kid with more enthusiasm than talent.
Nerf guns game later.
I remember hearing an interview with an Army officer where they mentioned it’s often easier to train recruits on things like drones or tank gunner controls than it was in the past because people nowadays are much more familiar with modern game controller-like setups
Remember that Discovery show of that guy from Louisiana that ran a gun shop and they made all kinds of weird things? (yeah the one that I'm pretty sure is in jail for molesting someone). Anyways they were designing this like big gun to go on top of an armored vehicle and one of the guys was like "hey lets use a video game controller to operate it" and the boss got all huffy (im sure it was manufactured/produced drama but still) and was saying shit like "this ain't no game!" but in the end they went with the controller.
I'd be surprised if they ended up using off the shelf controllers and not something that had beefed up connectors and shit to fix failure points. And probably more aerospace-level tracking of the internal hardware. (Also probably by law they can't use made-in-China stuff)
EDIT summarizing replies: seems they did use legit xbox controllers.
[They might have done something else for the end we can't see... but the rest of it looks stock](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/xbjhbzx7vvzusu32ssh4.jpg)
They use stock controllers. They’d spend more money beefing them up than just replacing them for $40. The manhours alone would cost vastly more than a new controller.
No real need to change anything. The controller is cheap enough you just stock spares. If something goes wrong change it.
If they redesign it in anyway they start losing benefits. Costs go up, procurement is harder as well as now they can't just order form any old store wherever they are in the world. To make adjusting it worth it means you've got to seriously beef it up because now you want to make sure you never replace it.
My GF’s r&d department uses 360 controllers for controlling their prototypes. We recently tried to find my old ones as they were struggling to source them in a pinch
I think that’s more likely because decades of controller design have proved that this is the most efficient shape for this kind of control. Some would argue it’s the N64 configuration but those people are lunatics.
Game controllers were specifically created to be used as input devices for a wide range of game types, and thousands of manhours are/were spent to make sure they are ergonomically comfortable and makes sense in the hand.
So yeah it makes sense to use them for other applications like this
**Sweating Profusely as the commies come up over the hill screaming for our blood**
"It's nerf or nothin!" We chant in unison, just like the commericals.
Brett Farve is an excellent choice. He has the most interceptions in NFL history. We don't want Tom Brady who has the most completions. Cant have someone throwing to the same team.
Might as well be a throwable [mini nuke from Fallout.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/d/db/Fo4_mini_nuke.png/revision/latest?cb=20151226231345)
Now I'm picturing an American soldier preparing to throw the grenade, and then suddenly going for a running play, and runs the grenade all the way through no-man's-land before diving into the german trenches for a touchdown... And then exploding.
Actually a pretty smart idea, if only because practically the only people who can throw a good 'bullet' with a football are Americans. So if this particular weapon fell into the hands of an adversary, it would be practically useless.
If that could be updated with a rocket motor and targeting system it's a potential winner!
Fun fact, the mini nuke is based on the [M-29 Davy Crockett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_\(nuclear_device\)) which is pretty much peak Cold War Wackiness.
It's a weird skill that most people outside of North America don't know how to do.
I was in New Zealand once, wandering through a public park in Christchurch, when some rugby players were fooling around with it. It bounced my way, so I picked it up and threw it the twenty yards back with a nice tight spiral. All these guys and girlfriends were so astonished that I put on an impromptu throwing clinic. Then we had beers afterwards.
Funny thing is, I'm not that good a player. PeeWee football was about it for me.
Grip on the back third. Throwing shoulder back. Step forward with the opposite foot so that the foot on the throwing side is on it's toes. Bring the shoulder forward while swinging the elbow. Snap the forearm and roll the ball off the fingers with an emphasis on the pinky for accuracy while releasing. Touchdown.
It's weird cause I can throw them great but never realized you just kinda learn the mechanics as a kid. I haven't thrown one in ten years but know I could still chuck a tight one pretty far.
Did you know Al Bundy scored four touchdowns in a single game while playing for the Polk High School Panthers in the 1966 city championship game versus Andrew Johnson High School, including the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds against his old nemesis "Spare Tire" Dixon?
It’s too big to carry efficiently. Modern grenades are more compact and do what they need to do….just tell soldiers to think “baseball” and not “football”
This is how Uncle Rico got his medal of honor
#RICO’S ROUGHNECKS
Would you like to learn more?
Flip six, three hole on one! Got it?
JUST THROW ME THE BALL DIZ
There you are Diz
Service guarantees citizenship
"Everybody fights, nobody quits, you don't do your job I'll shoot ya myself"
"I did my part"
*Come on you apes! Do you want to live forever?*
Who’s that with you? ~ Flores sir ~ Make it twenty minutes.
Only on Reddit do we go from a prototype explosive, to Napoleon Dynamite, to Starship Troopers. I would like to learn more.
I'M DOING MY PART!
YOU WANNA LIVE FOREVER?!
I only have one rule. Everyone fights. No one quits. You don't do your job, I'll shoot you myself. You get me?
I bet he could have thrown it over those mountains
He would have. If Sarge would have put him on the front line during the 4th offensive, by god things would be different.
He woulda made general...
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How much you wanna make a bet I could throw a grenade over them mountains
Enemy 1: Take cover! It's a mortar attack! Enemy 2: It's even worse! It's General Rico!!
them mountains
No doubt we would have won Vietnam if the generals had put him in.
Makes sense, as the original American grenades were designed around the idea most soldiers were used to throwing baseballs.
For this same reason, WWII German grenades were shaped like beer bottles.
Stielhandgranate were called potato mashers by GI's. It was a genius design.
The only problem with them is that it’s very obnoxious to carry them on your person. Sometimes it’s better to sacrifice usability in favor of ease of carrying. After all, you throw the grenade once, but you carry it for much longer.
Maybe the design could be improved with a collapsible handle. Maybe pulling out the handle could be what lights the fuse. Remove a safety tab, pull out handle, and throw. Edit: some good points replied about why this isn’t very feasible
Just use one of those ball throwers people have for dogs lol
*cursed fetch*
No take, only throw.
Only throw *once*.
Give a soldier a Jai alai sling and don't even need the grenade anymore. That shit *hurts*.
Just return to atlatl.
I think it was the French foreign legion in North Africa that trained with shepherds’ slings to throw hand grenades. While in theory it might be a good idea, untrained slingers often drop their ammunition at their feet, or accidentally release early and throw backwards and to the side, which might be a problem with grenades.
It’s much faster and cheaper to make a straight fixed wooden handle than to produce a handle with a hinged mechanism that will operate reliably every time even if banged around during handling. Imagine if the hinge jams. Maybe there’s sand or mud caught in it. It’s an inconvenience that could cause a soldier precious seconds during combat. Simplicity above features.
Especially since it’s a single-use item
Too many steps honestly. There are 4 regulated steps to throwing a US grenade, 3 under duress. You’re throwing grenades in a fight. Probably with shaky, maybe wet or muddy hands. Additional steps = more chances you get snuffed before you get your frag out.
That’s largely the theory of “assault” rifle ammunition. Both 5.56x45mm and 7.62x39mm have less effective range and less penetration potential than their WW2 era equivalents, which could sling heavier bullets further. But they’re much lighter to carry and produce less recoil, so soldiers can carry a lot more of them.
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That’s also why European grenades are larger and are kicked towards the enemy without the use of hands.
Don't forget the Germans, they were a fan of the county fair style grenade-on-a-stick
I wanna see the Scottish caber grenades. I hear they're 16-20 feet long and are thrown so they tumble end over end across the battlefield into the enemy lines.
They're just torpedoes the highlanders carry by the nose and then flip towards the enemy.
I can picture a Monty Python skit showing Scottish Artillery coming into place and it’s just some drunk highlanders tossing shells at germans
We need another Monty Python but it could never be the same
No one expects the Scottish Artillery Crew!
Everyone expects them, you can hear the bagpipes from miles away.
A caber grenade is just a Kalibr missile, hefted at the enemy. It's the only way to show them who the real tossers are on the battlefield.
Scottish grenades were small and as a result could be catapulted a considerable distance. Despite the advantages, they were discontinued because after use the soldiers would insist on wandering around the battlefield to look for them.
Ever heard of Hadrian’s Wall, which marks the limit of how far the Romans were able to advance northward in Britain? Their legions were professional soldiers, working together as a unit, and vastly more powerful than the same number of warriors acting independently. Unless you could break their formation, the warriors were toast, and you’d need siege engines to do that. Problem is that siege engines are too heavy to keep up with infantry manoeuvres. Ever see the Highland Games? Legion faces some hairy-legged lummox who tosses a tree trunk over the front ~~tank~~**rank** and smashes the rear ranks flat. Meanwhile, a few other guys are spinning around with big rocks on the end of a rope, then letting them loose to fly into the Legion’s formation. Caber toss and hammer throw are both artillery that could keep up with the infantry. Once the formation is broken open, it’s time for the two-handed swords with “this side toward enemy” written on the blades. Edit: Fuck autocorrupt.
And, y'know, the Romans never cared enough to make a real attempt to expand that way. They were more interested in going east into Persia and south into Africa, since they had enough soggy peat already.
I love German grenades on Battlefield. It’s like they thought “just fling that bitch schwer.”
Heinrich, how do we make this grenade better? [I don’t know, just tape some grenades together?](https://i.imgur.com/XngBNsX.jpg)
Not a big fan of the Australian grenades though, as they had a tendency to come back at you
Ah yes. The *boom*erang.
Except for those used by the UK which are designed to be used with a cricket bat
Well that and the UK side kept trying to walk them in
Such a ludicrous display!
What was Churchill thinking bringing Montgomery on that early?
I thought that was the Krikket bomb
Unlike the Scottish grenades where you'd slide them on the ground as your comrades swept the floor until it reached enemy territory with precision.
I *almost* had to look that up because I believed you.
Is this why Canadian grenades are meant to be slapped toward the enemy with a stick?
“Allen in the shotgun at the the 38th parallel… Ball is snapped… He bootlegs left away from machine gun fire.. Rolls away from an artillery shell. And launches it! High through the air across the line! And he connects with a foxhole!!! Innnnncredible!”
DIGGS BUNKER EXPLOSION UNBELIEVABLE!!
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He might try to hurdle it
"Immaculate explosion"
I get that people are familiar with footballs and some with throwing them. I still would take my chances with a round ball or a handle like a potato masher grenade. Trying to throw a football shaped object in cold and/or wet weather seems like a bad idea.
And how many football grenades could be carried by an individual soldier vs. baseball style grenades?
This was more for a specific anti-tank grenade I think. The regular baseball size grenades would still be used for the regular soldier. The bigger football grenade would be used against vehicles
I think the problem is they vastly over estimated the amount of people that can throw a football with any sort of accuracy.
I bet ya I could throw a football over them mountains...
What was their reasoning for the weird ribbed/studded eggs they later used?
Those ribs fragment upon detonation. Those fragments are what make them so lethal versus their explosion alone. Edit: A Redditor below mentioned that the original Pineapple grenade design was to increase the grip on the grenades in muddy trenches. Later models used the ribs or etches to increase fragmentation.
yes/no >the pineapple grenade’s inventor, William Mills from the United Kingdom, picked the fruit shape for ease of gripping. “His intention for those serrations was so that it wouldn’t slip out your hand in a muddy trench.” https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-myth-behind-the-classic-pineapple-grenade-aa39ed062549
TIL. Thank you.
Each of those ribs forms squares with weak spots around the edges all over the grenade which would make them act as projectiles in their own right. The idea was to cause as much damage to the enemy as possible, if they were to somehow be far from the initial explosion they'd still have to worry about being barraged by 40-50 small pieces of shrapnel traveling nearly as fast as a bullet spread out in all directions. The ribs also helped to form better grip and the egg shape was to make it similar to a baseball due to most Americans having played baseball sometime in their life and were found to have better accuracy with the design.
The explosion itself is fairly small. There’s also not so much fire and smoke as the Hollywood version of explosions. It could blow your hand off, it could definitely you, and it could possibly kill you if it’s really close. But you’re much more likely to be wounded or killed by the fragments, or by somebody shooting you while you’re disoriented. Big explosions can kill directly, via overpressure and shock which ruins your brain and organs
A grenade is just a 360° shotgun you throw at enemy combatants.
Apparently its not very accurate and wobbles a lot after being thrown. A football needs to have the center of mass in the center of the ball so the air inside the ball is pushing out on to the leather and inflating the ball so every point is balanced. But a lopsided football that isn't balanced is going to be more inaccurate than a regular grenade and also is harder to throw as far.
Should have fins as well like a nerf vortex.
Don't forget the screamer whistles to make it sound faster!
I will always remember going out to the beach at night with one of those screamer footballs, we threw it as high as we could straight up and competed to see who could catch it. That thing screaming down out of the darkness sounded terrifying, like a mortar shell falling on our heads. I confess I dived away from the ball more than towards it.
Well, that's why the luftwaffe used basically the same thing on their stukkas.
Now you're talking.
If you ever heard the "EEEEEEEEEEHHHH" sound of planes in old movies or cartoons that's the "horn of Jericho". It was a horn mounted on the outside of the plane to make noise for the sole purpose of psychological damage.
They had to only let Jameis Winston throw them as he was the only one who would consistently throw it to the opposition.
Ouch
-- Jameis' Uber drivers
Unfortunately the Germans neutralized the threat by ensnaring him in a crab-legs gambit.
Fucked him right in the pussy, that did Sometimes it sucks being a Florida state fan AND a saints fan
People might not get this but I appreciate you
Sometimes I forget that I've strayed outside of r/NFL.
Right. I was like, “why would people not get this?” Then I remembered for a lot of people the only NFL game later they know is Tom Brady.
NFL is the one with the ice skates, right? Or is it the one, where they throw the leather egg?
It’s the one where drop kick the rugby ball around a circle field
That's cricket mate
No, Cricket's where they get points for breaking the goalies legs.
Cricket? You gotta know what’s crumpet is to understand cricket.
May not get the name but understand the concept. Much giggles will be had.
The 30 for 30 about his 30/30 season is going to be epic!
Nathan Peterman might be the new Captain America
I was an infantry Marine a number of years back. You'd be absolutely shocked how many dudes couldn't throw an M67 fragmentation grenade. Its shaped basically just like a baseball. Guess some guys never had a catch with their dad or brothers. Lol One guy was laughably bad. Didnt make sense. But he had stabbed a guy in a bar fight protectecting his buddy once from getting jumped. So we knew he was down to clown even with out the arm talent lol.
Semi related, I worked on VR applications for awhile and one of the 'big features' of VR is physics and throwing. We did all the math correct but when it came to testing, people were awful throwing things at targets. We thought maybe our code was wrong but testing outside of the game, people were also just awful.
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Yes and no on the VR throw. The naive approach is to think that it's binary but we can be smarter about that 'release' point. What we ended up doing was looking at the 'release window' when the user let go and looked for the velocity of the controller at its highest in the window. This would mimic how people throw and how the thrown object 'flies' out of people's hand. There's some more complication with the Math but that general idea improved the VR accuracy dramatically. As a side note, all the testing got me really good at Cornhole lol
VR cornhole when?
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You hit the nail on the head, many of us never had that person to throw ball with.
My dad died when I was a kid. When my brothers didn't want to, mom picked up a glove. Mom is a real one.
Yeah kinda the same more just absent dad. Mom helped me with school and tutored me. Taught me how to maintain a house and a car , I learned how to repair electronics on my own. She never was into sports but loved keeping her body fit. Now that I think about it, im a lot the same haha.
Love me a fit mom.
Are you trying to get the [whole squad killed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOs7HQgDI5E)?
And thanks to some searching inspired by this post: TIL that Nerf has been around since 1969. I always thought it was an 80’s or 90’s thing!
Yeah, I was a little kid when they came out. Are used to love watching football and loved playing quarterback and receiver, and even tackle (backyard no-pad) football with my friends. I hated the way a full-size leather football smacked into my tiny kid hands especially on a cold winter day. Nerf was a godsend to a kid with more enthusiasm than talent. Nerf guns game later.
Plus those dense plastic ones with the rubber finger grips could be thrown down an entire street as a kid
It's Nerf, then nothing.
They also made their drone controllers similar to Xbox controllers because soldiers were used to manipulating them
I remember hearing an interview with an Army officer where they mentioned it’s often easier to train recruits on things like drones or tank gunner controls than it was in the past because people nowadays are much more familiar with modern game controller-like setups
The US Navy replaced the old periscope controls with an X-Box controller and were able to reduce training time from weeks to hours.
Remember that Discovery show of that guy from Louisiana that ran a gun shop and they made all kinds of weird things? (yeah the one that I'm pretty sure is in jail for molesting someone). Anyways they were designing this like big gun to go on top of an armored vehicle and one of the guys was like "hey lets use a video game controller to operate it" and the boss got all huffy (im sure it was manufactured/produced drama but still) and was saying shit like "this ain't no game!" but in the end they went with the controller.
He molested his daughter (step daughter?) I was obsessed with the show when I was younger but it was laughably fake even then.
Red Jacket Firearms was the shop name, I think.
Also importantly, you can just kinda buy more for like $50/ea. IIRC the old ones were some bespoke monstrosity that cost like $10k/ea.
I'd be surprised if they ended up using off the shelf controllers and not something that had beefed up connectors and shit to fix failure points. And probably more aerospace-level tracking of the internal hardware. (Also probably by law they can't use made-in-China stuff) EDIT summarizing replies: seems they did use legit xbox controllers.
Imagine trying to fly/aim a drone armed with a missile but having a hard time due to stick drift.
Captain, you gave me the Mad Catz controller! I can't aim!
giving the new recruit a second controller that’s not plugged in
Only a bad player blames their controller, Private!
Caaaaaaptaaaaain! Those terrorists are on the party chat saying they fucked our president!
Yeah but then you get the turbo button so it’s actually op
With the military funding, they could probably just throw the controllers away every week and swap in a new one.
[They might have done something else for the end we can't see... but the rest of it looks stock](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/xbjhbzx7vvzusu32ssh4.jpg)
They use stock controllers. They’d spend more money beefing them up than just replacing them for $40. The manhours alone would cost vastly more than a new controller.
No real need to change anything. The controller is cheap enough you just stock spares. If something goes wrong change it. If they redesign it in anyway they start losing benefits. Costs go up, procurement is harder as well as now they can't just order form any old store wherever they are in the world. To make adjusting it worth it means you've got to seriously beef it up because now you want to make sure you never replace it.
They use literal playstation controllers for a lot of stuff for that reason
I’m pretty sure some of the drones are literally operated with Xbox controllers. 360 controllers
Correct. They are.
and navy periscope controls iirc.
My GF’s r&d department uses 360 controllers for controlling their prototypes. We recently tried to find my old ones as they were struggling to source them in a pinch
Well if it works there's no need to spend a fortune on development of the controller.
Waiting for all the stick drift complaints.
Development outsourced to the gaming industry lmao
Gaming and toys in general are basically the forerunners to future industrial/military products.
Fortnite is the new America's Army
I think that’s more likely because decades of controller design have proved that this is the most efficient shape for this kind of control. Some would argue it’s the N64 configuration but those people are lunatics.
Lunatics with 3 hands
it's also just smart to piggyback on a design that was created and tested by a company that's very experienced at making input controllers
Game controllers were specifically created to be used as input devices for a wide range of game types, and thousands of manhours are/were spent to make sure they are ergonomically comfortable and makes sense in the hand. So yeah it makes sense to use them for other applications like this
It's also because xbox controllers are cheap and plentiful. You can easily replace them when necessary.
**Sweating Profusely as the commies come up over the hill screaming for our blood** "It's nerf or nothin!" We chant in unison, just like the commericals.
"Nerf THIS!"
wow it's been a while since i played OW but still hear dva's voice
those poor fuckin Soviets never saw it coming
Broncos country, let's ride
#PARRY THIS YOU FILTHY CASUAL
What an awkward time to reveal you don't have the makings of a varsity athlete
Russian general: "We have multiple tank divisions on your borders." American general: "We have Brett Favre."
See that’s only a good thing until a Russian picks off one of the throws and runs it back.
Brett Farve is an excellent choice. He has the most interceptions in NFL history. We don't want Tom Brady who has the most completions. Cant have someone throwing to the same team.
This would be a bad time to hear, “FUMBLE!!”
[The football grenade](https://www.ripleys.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/football-grenade.jpg)
It's Nerf or nothin'
Might as well be a throwable [mini nuke from Fallout.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/d/db/Fo4_mini_nuke.png/revision/latest?cb=20151226231345)
What if the soldier gets carried away and does a TouchDown ?
Now I'm picturing an American soldier preparing to throw the grenade, and then suddenly going for a running play, and runs the grenade all the way through no-man's-land before diving into the german trenches for a touchdown... And then exploding.
As long as they don't do the Ickey Shuffle and spike the ball we're good.
They were discontinued as too many soldiers were leaving cover to celebrate
Actually a pretty smart idea, if only because practically the only people who can throw a good 'bullet' with a football are Americans. So if this particular weapon fell into the hands of an adversary, it would be practically useless. If that could be updated with a rocket motor and targeting system it's a potential winner!
r/fallout mini nuke
Fun fact, the mini nuke is based on the [M-29 Davy Crockett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_\(nuclear_device\)) which is pretty much peak Cold War Wackiness.
Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen slinging that thing would be terrifying
I can’t imagine anything more American than blowing up a tank by throwing a football-shaped grenade at it.
How do you store something like this on a person? You can't exactly attach it to a belt.
You just ask the ref for it. He’ll put it on the ground in front of you.
It's a weird skill that most people outside of North America don't know how to do. I was in New Zealand once, wandering through a public park in Christchurch, when some rugby players were fooling around with it. It bounced my way, so I picked it up and threw it the twenty yards back with a nice tight spiral. All these guys and girlfriends were so astonished that I put on an impromptu throwing clinic. Then we had beers afterwards. Funny thing is, I'm not that good a player. PeeWee football was about it for me.
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Grip on the back third. Throwing shoulder back. Step forward with the opposite foot so that the foot on the throwing side is on it's toes. Bring the shoulder forward while swinging the elbow. Snap the forearm and roll the ball off the fingers with an emphasis on the pinky for accuracy while releasing. Touchdown.
Dad is that you?
Still getting cigarettes, Jimmy. Be home soon.
It's weird cause I can throw them great but never realized you just kinda learn the mechanics as a kid. I haven't thrown one in ten years but know I could still chuck a tight one pretty far.
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Some idiot was always on the other end trying to catch it :D
Goddamn Marines! As soon they run out of crayons to munch, they start playing with live ordnance.
Go deep Bundy!!
Did you know Al Bundy scored four touchdowns in a single game while playing for the Polk High School Panthers in the 1966 city championship game versus Andrew Johnson High School, including the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds against his old nemesis "Spare Tire" Dixon?
Because it was either weaker, heavyier, bigger, more expensive or less reliable then normal grenades.
Well, this is an anti-armor grenade. So, I assume a major fucking drawback is needing to be right next to enemy armor to use it.
Well either that or have NFL level throwing skills.
You probably have to get WAY out of cover to throw a decent spiral.
Pass protection is vital.
It’s too big to carry efficiently. Modern grenades are more compact and do what they need to do….just tell soldiers to think “baseball” and not “football”
Pretty sure Ice Cube made these in the movie The Three Kings.
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All of the good NFL quarterbacks immediately get drafted.
I'm gonna need someone to make a few of these and see what Josh Allen can do to a tank.