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The XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement weapon system is now in development. But by this time next year, the system may have moved into low-rate initial production and if so, will lose the experimental “X” prefix.

Lt. Col. Shawn Lucas, the PEO Soldier program manager for individual weapons at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., said the XM25 is currently in the “engineering and manufacturing development phase,” not yet ready for fielding.

“That’s where we are developing the subsystems, which would be the weapon, the fire control, and the programmable ammunition,” he said. “[We are] integrating it all to work together at the system level so we can meet the requirements the user has asked for. If we do that, we would look to go into production.”

It’ll be about August of next year, he said, when the Army would ask decision makers to move to a “milestone C” decision with the system. That will allow them to start low-rate initial production, or LRIP, and manufacture a little more than 1,100 of the weapons, along with the needed ammunition. The LRIP decision will help prove out manufacturing processes for the weapon, the fire control and the ammunition. Additionally, those systems would then be used to do operational and live-fire testing.