The weapon is sometimes seen with its stock and / or barrel sawed down to make it handier, though this limits its accuracy.
As a result, over time it was largely replaced by the underbarrel M203 in service, though it is still used today in niche roles due to its superior accuracy and range. While the M79 is relatively light, weighing just six and a half pounds loaded, it is 29 inches long, meaning that it had to be issued as a primary weapon to dedicated grenadiers. It was well-liked in Vietnam where it was regarded as "the platoon leader's artillery" and its distinctive thoomp report led to nicknames like "blooper" and "thumper." This was later continued by the SPIW program's M203, the OICW program's XM25, and the OICW Increment 1 ( XM8) program's M320. With the further addition of a new sight, the weapon was adopted as the M79 in December 1960, thus beginning the curious tendency of American advanced rifle projects to produce grenade launchers instead of rifles. Its competitor, the three-shot magazine-fed T148 (not related to the XM148 grenade launcher) proved too complex and too unreliable, and the Army chose a refined version of the S-3, the S-5, as their new weapon, the XM79. SPIW was intended to produce a combination of a flechette-firing rifle and a multi-shot grenade launcher, but while technical problems dogged the main project, one of Springfield's grenade launcher prototypes, a single-shot break-open launcher called S-3 that resembled a giant shotgun, showed promise. The result would be a grenade round with greater range, accuracy and convenience than a rifle grenade, while remaining more portable than a light mortar. This round used the high-low recoil mitigation system developed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, allowing a large projectile to be fired with manageable recoil. It uses a low-recoil 40mm grenade round developed as part of project NIBLICK, a sub-project of the SALVO (which does not stand for anything) and SPIW (Special Purpose Individual Weapon) advanced weapon trials run by the US military.
The M79 grenade launcher is a shoulder-fired standalone breech-loading 40mm launcher developed during the Vietnam War.
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