Latest news with #ExtendedRangeCannonArtillery
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What's next for Army artillery modernization? More demos
The U.S. Army still wants a mobile, long-range artillery capability after canceling an effort to build its own cannon system, but it's not poised to decide a way forward for nearly two years. The Army held demonstrations for self-propelled howitzers in 2021 at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, but decided to prioritize an investment in the development of its Extended Range Cannon Artillery, or ERCA, system. The system used a 58-caliber gun tube on an M109 Paladin howitzer chassis, aiming to fire out to 70 kilometers — roughly double current cannon ranges. When it decided to cancel the ERCA program, the Army acknowledged it still had a requirement for a long-range cannon, and so it gave industry the opportunity last fall to show readily available and fielded systems abroad. A team traveled to Germany, South Korea, Sweden and Israel to see those systems in action. Now, the service is planning another Yuma-based demonstration for January 2026. The Army plans to award each industry team roughly $5 million to bring in artillery systems for a nine-month evaluation process before nailing down requirements and developing a strategy, according to a draft solicitation on the government contracts website The official solicitation for the evaluation was expected to be posted weeks ago but had yet to be released as of Monday. While some might argue the future demonstration is a repeat of the 2021 round, industry is seeing the effort as an opportunity to show more capability. It opens the aperture for systems to be demonstrated that might not have existed just a few years ago. Artillery modernization has been moving at full force as cannon warfare plays out in Ukraine. Several of the systems likely to be demonstrated at Yuma have now had a chance to prove their capabilities in the country fighting against the Russian invasion that began in 2022. This time the Army is looking not only at the range and mobility of the cannons, but emphasizing a thorough evaluation of the rate of fire and the ability to shoot, move, shoot again, and then be resupplied. Why the Army is looking abroad to close a widening artillery gun gap 'They're asking us to demonstrate rate of fire, not just on the howitzer, but the ability to reload the howitzer, so now you have ammunition-carrying vehicles with some reload capability that helps them get after, 'How fast can this thing actually do what it's supposed to do on the battlefield?'' BAE Systems' company vice president Jim Miller told Defense News. 'We always had rate of fire on the howitzer. But, you know, I was a battalion commander in the early 2000s. I was pretty comfortable that I could win the first couple fights, but I wasn't going to get a resupply of ammo fast enough to do anything in the second fight, right? And so that's the challenge they're going to pursue,' Miller added. BAE Systems is submitting its Archer system for the demonstration, which it demonstrated in 2021. Elbit Systems America, which submitted its Atmos self-propelled howitzer system in 2021, demonstrated its newer Sigma howitzer last year. New competitors are likely to be present at the demonstration, too. General Dynamics Land Systems, Rheinmetall and Hanwha all demonstrated capability in November and December for the U.S. Army and plan to submit systems for the upcoming evaluation effort. It's possible others could emerge as the Army opens up the aperture. The previous demonstration in 2021, for example, locked out Hanwha's K9 tracked system because it required the systems be wheeled. Companies with smaller vehicles and different gun systems could be considered. 'You can't maneuver without artillery,' Gen. James Rainey, commander of Army Futures Command, told reporters last week at a conference in Arlington, Virginia. 'That's the Army's main contribution to the joint force.' Army artillery needs more range, mobility and autonomy, study finds High explosive artillery 'is indisputably the number one killer on both sides. So that is not going away, so modernizing, transforming our tactical cannons … towed artillery is problematic,' Rainey said. 'There's some partners, we have some allies who have really, really good, interesting mobile cannons that we're looking to partner with.' The demonstration will also serve as a way to look again at the Army's overall plan for fires capability. According to several industry sources, a fires strategy was presented to the Army vice chief of staff in January, but he rejected it because it was limited to one solution and didn't consider things like rockets. The vice sent the strategists back to the drawing board. The Army plans to select teams for the demonstration in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. While those companies will get some government dollars to attend, there is a pay-to-play element, as the teams will still need to provide some funding to get the systems to Yuma and provide all ammunition. And many of the systems will need to be borrowed from the companies or even other governments. Artillery systems are in high demand amid the war in Ukraine. South Korea's Hanwha wants to bring both a tracked and wheeled version of its K9 howitzer, if they're available, according to company officials. The tracked version is fielded among over 10 allied countries, six of which are NATO members. The wheeled version is in development. 'Our goal and intent is to fully be ready to deliver both a tracked and a wheeled platform,' Jason Pak, Hanwha Defense USA's director of business development, told Defense News. The company is 'full steam ahead in terms of accelerating the production of a wheeled variant,' he said. US Army mobile howitzer shoot-off participants emerge Additionally, while the K9 A1 variant requires three or four people to crew the system, the K9 A2 will allow the crew to drop to two with the introduction of an autoloader said Carl Poppe, Hanwha Defense USA business development director. The Korean Army will field the first A2 unit in 2027, and it will enter production shortly, he added. BAE Systems would bring back Archer, but it could bring the system on a new MAN truck, which is what the Swedish government has ordered as part of its modernization of the system, according to Miller. The company has swapped out the system's ride, even demonstrating it on a vehicle from Oshkosh Defense. Additionally, the company continues to present the option to the Army — separately from the demonstration effort — of a PIM howitzer with a 52-caliber gun tube, Miller said. The current gun is a 39-caliber cannon tube. Elbit, which demonstrated Sigma in the fall, is expected to bring the system to Yuma. Sigma is in full-rate production in Charleston, South Carolina, and Elbit is fielding the cannon system to the Israeli Defense Forces, according to Luke Savoie, the company's president and CEO. American Rheinmetall Vehicles plans to bring what it demonstrated in Germany last fall: the RCH 155, a howitzer developed through a joint arrangement between the company and KNDS and created from an association of Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Nexter. The system is integrated onto a Boxer armored fighting vehicle. US Army scraps Extended Range Cannon Artillery prototype effort GDLS is submitting its Piranha system on a 10x10 platform using the same 52-caliber gun mounted on the KNDS-Rheinmetall RCH 155. 'It's fully automated,' Kendall Linson, the US business development manager for GLDS, said in a recent interview. 'The crew size is reduced significantly from what we currently have, of five to six people, down to two or three. The vehicle could handle two ... It's all fully automated.' The team is confident that with the ammunition it will bring, it could achieve desired ranges from the ERCA program, Linson noted. As a new team in the mix, Linson said, 'We're really happy about that opportunity to get into that adjacent market … a market that we're not in right now.'
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The US Army knows it has artillery problems. Now, it just needs to find a fix.
The US Army has long known that it has artillery shortcomings that need to be addressed. As it readies for possible future large-scale combat operations, the Army is looking to plug these gaps. A general told BI the Army wants new cannons that will increase the range of fire. Satellite images of eastern Ukraine show pockmarked battlefields left scarred by relentless artillery fire. The craters are a constant reminder that these deadly cannons still play a crucial role in modern warfare. The US Army is watching this conflict closely as it prepares for potential large-scale combat operations overseas. The importance of artillery isn't new to it, though. The military knows the value of being able to lob a shell or rocket down range, but it also knows it needs to step up its game. Russia and China are both stepping up theirs. A general looking into this matter said that there are three areas where Army artillery faces serious capability gaps. He added that the hunt for artillery solutions to bridge these shortcomings is already underway. "We saw some capability gaps against adversaries in two different theaters as we projected forward into 2030 - 2035," Brig. Gen. Rory Crooks, director of the Army Futures Command long-range precision fires cross-functional team, told Business Insider in a recent interview. The first deficit is range. Army artillery doesn't have the necessary reach compared to US adversaries. "You provide enemy sanctuary, in some cases, when the enemy has a range overmatch," Crooks explained. Then there is capacity. The US doesn't have enough artillery systems to match the enemy. Simply put, he said, "we're out-gunned." And lastly, there are survivability concerns. Although some US rivals are divesting of their towed artillery systems, the US Army isn't. Typically, when soldiers fire their artillery cannons at enemy positions, they want to disperse immediately before the anticipated counter-battery fire — a tactic known as shoot-and-scoot. Towed artillery pieces like the M777 are slower and more difficult to relocate quickly compared to the self-propelled systems, which are mounted on tracked vehicles. That diminishes survivability. "Those three problems — range, capacity, and survivability based on mobility — are really hard to overcome individually," Crooks said, adding that "collectively, they're very hard to overcome and put us at risk for mission success moving forward." In recent years, the Army has sought to extend the reach of its guns. One such effort, the Strategic Long Range Cannon, was intended to fire projectiles some 1,000 nautical miles away, but Congress halted funding for the research in 2022. Another Army initiative, the 58-caliber Extended Range Cannon Artillery, or ERCA, began in 2018 with the aim of extending the range of artillery fire from 18 to 43 miles. The weapon — a 30-foot gun tube mounted on the chassis of an M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer — concluded the prototyping stage but did not end up moving into production due to problems observed during live-fire testing. The Army canceled the ERCA program last year, shifting focus to the new Self-Propelled Howitzer Modernization effort. A Congressional Research Service report published in early February said a study of new conventional fires concluded last year found the Army should focus its efforts on "more autonomous artillery systems with greater range and improved mobility." It also said that even though the Army ultimately canceled the ERCA program, starting again on its hunt for artillery solutions, "a recently conducted tactical fires study validated the capability gap that the ERCA sought to fill. Observations from Ukraine reinforce the critical role of mobile cannon artillery." Moving forward, Crooks said that the Army is going to take the success it had with the ammunition work for ERCA and partner that with guns available on the market. He said the service is already looking into allied and partner capabilities. The Army is specifically eyeing self-propelled howitzers with 52-caliber gun tubes. It is a middle ground between the larger 58-caliber ERCA and the smaller 39-caliber M777 towed howitzer. "The work that we're doing with introducing, potentially, modernized platforms that are 52-caliber in length, along with the ammunition work that we did that started with ERCA, we think we'll be able to address the requirement that we needed from the ERCA platform and prototyping effort," Crooks said. Last fall, the Army announced that it had awarded contracts to five vendors for the Self-Propelled Howitzer Modernization effort. The $4 million contracts went to American Rheinmetall Vehicles, BAE BOFORS, Hanwha Defense USA, General Dynamics Land Systems, and Elbit Systems USA. The next step is getting prototype artillery systems out to Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, where the systems will be put through a series of firing tests. The service could make a decision on its new cannon as early as next year. But finding a suitable and available 52-caliber gun is just one piece of the puzzle as the Army looks to overcome its range, capacity, and survivability deficits, Crooks said. The Army also needs to continue the ammunition innovation that was started under the ERCA program, such as the XM1155 sub-caliber projectile developed for the ERCA's 155 mm XM907E2 58-caliber cannon, and scale up its one-way attack drones so these explosive-packed weapons can be used in lieu of traditional artillery rounds. Artillery is just one element of combined-arms warfare, but as Army leaders continue to closely watch Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it is clear that strong cannons will be needed to achieve success in future large-scale combat operations. "I think what we're seeing is when you don't have adequate artillery to achieve local fire superiority, then that battle devolves quickly to attritional warfare — static warfare," Crooks said. And that's not the kind of war the US military was built to fight. Read the original article on Business Insider
