In Battlefield 2042’s sprawling and high-tech arsenal, players have plenty of destructive tools to choose from, yet not every piece of gear is living up to its promise. One attachment, the underbarrel SPH Explosive Launcher, has become something of a running joke among parts of the community. Many who’ve unlocked it—sometimes after investing hours of grind or even using services like Battlefield 6 Boosting—end up feeling they’ve wasted their time on something that barely makes a dent in combat.
The main gripe is pretty straightforward: it just doesn’t hit hard enough. Players keep pointing out how tiny the blast radius feels, with splash damage so low that you might as well be throwing pebbles. In older Battlefield games, grenade launchers were feared for their ability to clear out entrenched enemies without requiring pinpoint accuracy. Here, unless you land a direct shot—which is tricky in the chaos of a firefight—you’re unlikely to down an opponent. It flips the whole idea of a grenade launcher on its head, making it more of a precision tool than an area denial weapon, which is… odd.
This isn’t just about numbers on a stat sheet; it changes how people build their loadouts. The SPH launcher takes up the same underbarrel slot you could use for a grip to tame recoil or a bipod for long-range stability. Giving up those benefits for something that rarely pays off feels like a bad trade. Its supposed role—breaking defensive setups, flushing enemies out of cover—just isn’t happening in practice. I’ve seen players on Discord say they swapped it out after a single match, which says a lot about how quickly it loses appeal.
Scroll through Reddit or Twitter and you’ll find plenty of clips showing its shortcomings: grenades exploding right next to enemies with no visible effect, or needing two or three perfect hits to finish someone who’s at full health. It’s not just bad luck—there’s a shared sense that the weapon is fundamentally flawed. That kind of consensus doesn’t form overnight; it builds from repeated, frustrating encounters where the launcher fails to deliver in situations where it should shine.
Some players think DICE might have overcorrected here. There’s a fear in the dev community of creating another “noob tube” era, where explosive spam dominates matches and frustrates everyone. That’s probably why the SPH’s damage and radius feel so restrained. But in trying to avoid one problem, they’ve created another: a piece of gear that’s so underwhelming it’s been effectively deleted from the game’s meta. It’s a reminder that balance isn’t just about preventing something from being overpowered—it’s also about making sure it has a reason to exist at all.
Right now, the SPH Explosive Launcher feels like a missed opportunity. It’s supposed to be a tactical tool, but instead it’s more of a curiosity you test once and shelve. Many in the community are calling for a meaningful buff—more splash damage, a wider effective radius—so it can actually fill its intended niche. Until then, it’s likely to remain a forgotten attachment, with some players even turning to Battlefield 6 Boosting for sale just to skip the grind for it and focus on gear that actually changes the fight.