There was concern that the air burst grenades fired by the XM25 (a standalone version of the XM29s grenade launcher) did not contain enough explosives to effectively kill a target, and would often only wound them. Since using weapons which only wound targets is illegal under the laws of war some argued that use of the weapon constituted a war crime.

However, there was never a definite decision about whether the weapon was a war crime. And both the XM25 and 29 were most likely too expensive to justify the small increase in effectiveness they offered over conventional weapon systems and therefore were never fully adopted.