AUSA 2024: Textron's XM204 top-attack mine headed to Europe, XM250 in development

The XM204 anti-tank mine, with bare submunition, shown at Eurosatory in June 2024. (Janes/Amael Kotlarski)

US Army Europe (USAREUR) is expected to receive its first Textron Systems XM204 top-attack munitions in the January to March 2025 timeframe, John Pirog, director of Global Military Sales and Strategy at Textron, told Janes.

The XM204 was designed to meet a USAREUR Operational Needs Statement (ONS), 18-22702, which called for an interim top-attack solution – part of the army's wide close terrain shaping obstacles (CTSO) programme that seeks a new family of top- and bottom-attack mines. Textron was awarded a USD354 million contract in July 2022 for XM204's low-rate initial production.

The XM204 is a manually emplaced, top-attack anti-tank mine, designed to engage combat vehicles. Each XM204 mine consists of a dispenser launch module (DLM) housing four sensor-fused munitions (SFMs), also known as common anti-vehicle munitions (CAVMs).

The DLM hosts a radar mounted on a telescopic mast, a seismic sensor, and an acoustic sensor, which are intended to help detect and classify threats as vehicles – rather than people. The DLM weighs 38 kg. It has a built-in self-destruct function that can be set to four hours, 48 hours, or 15 days.

Separately, a programme of record is now in the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase to field the follow-on XM250 top-attack munition, as an overall upgrade to the XM204, Pirog told Janes on 14 October at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) conference in Washington, DC. A ‘first unit equipped' is expected sometime in the end of the 2020s.