U.S. Marines prepare an M777 A2 lightweight howitzer to fire an Excalibur round in Iraq. In the next few years, the U.S. Army intends to deploy a new tank round that can take out tanks, unleash high explosives against a building or tear into enemies (U.S. Marine Corps)
The new round means a lighter burden in combat and faster switching between weapons - key abilities on a shifting battlefield. That's a common theme for the Army, which is adjusting its arsenal - built to destroy tanks, armies and buildings - to handle the irregular, guerrilla-style warfare that prevails in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Army is firing more tank rounds, artillery shells and even Hellfire missiles engineered to destroy small vehicles and insurgents while reducing the risk to nearby civilians and buildings. Also, the Army is using its Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided (TOW) missile's Improved Target Acquisition System (ITAS) to perform surveillance, even when no missile firing is planned.
Alongside reducing the logistical burden of transporting three kinds of rounds, the new Advanced Multi-Purpose round will allow tankers to switch ammunition quickly. For instance, an attack on a building or armored vehicle might require a high-explosive round, whereas killing three insurgents on the run might need a round loaded with pellets.
"There is no tank-on-tank combat any more," said U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Tim Hartmann, a tanker just back from war in Iraq.
Since 2005, Army tanks in Iraq have increasingly been using 120mm Anti-Personnel Canister Cartridges loaded with 1,200 tungsten-steel pellets.
"Canister rounds provide the commander with more options when the target is a group of enemy troops, or light-skinned vehicles. Also, they limit collateral damage in the sense that it is a large shotgun shell. You do not have that secondary explosion," said Swisher.
U.S. Army Tank Automotive Armament Command at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., bought 3,600 canister rounds from General Dynamics for $5.8 million in 2005. In July, ATK won the next Army contract for M1028 120mm canister cartridges in a $30 million deal to begin delivering rounds in the next few months.
Artillery
The Army has been trying to improve the accuracy and lethality of artillery in urban areas.
Officials are test-firing a South African 105mm artillery shell built to kill with tungsten balls. Called Pre-Formed Fragment (PFF) technology, the round is meant for lighter units and infantry brigade combat teams, said U.S. Army Col. Ole Knudson, project manager for combat ammunition systems, artillery, mortar and ammunition at Picatinny.
The Army has not yet decided whether to buy the PFF round.
"This would provide lethality. We've been working on qualifying this design. We are now faced with some cost-benefit analysis," Knudson said.
In the past year, the Army has improved the accuracy of 155mm shells with Modular Artillery Charge Systems (MACS), a propellant made by ATK and General Dynamics Canada. MACS reduces the variation in muzzle velocity from round to round, usually the biggest cause of inaccuracy, Knudson said.
For instance, if the muzzle velocity of artillery rounds leaving the cannon or howitzer varies by as much as five meters per second between rounds, it can diminish accuracy, he said.
At the same time, the advent of GPS-guided precision artillery has allowed the Army to fire 155mm shells in urban, counterinsurgency-type missions previously impossible with conventional artillery.
Excalibur, a $100,000-plus per-round GPS-guided artillery shell that can fly 30 kilometers and land within five meters of its target, debuted in Iraq and Afghanis-tan last year.
"Excalibur has a small warhead, so it can be used in even tighter situations, such as between buildings," Knudson said.
The round's success has led the Army to seek an Excalibur 1B round designed to cost less, fly 25 percent farther and be more precise. ATK, BAE-Lockheed and Raytheon have entered the competition.
"Excalibur 1A will be a golden round, meaning they will have to be careful about using them. The primary focus is to make a highly affordable Excalibur that has more if not all of the things of the first Excalibur," said Mike McCann, vice president of ATK's advanced weapon division.
The Army and ATK are also test firing the GPS-guided Precision Guidance Kit (PGK), which can turn a standard 155mm round into a precision weapon.
"The program is tracking an aggressive schedule. We have completed tactical design and started bench testing," McCann said. "It has GPS guidance such that you are able to take a round that would have a 300-meter CEP [circular error probable] and bring it down to a baseline requirement of 50 to 30 meters."
At roughly $5,000 per round, PGK is cheaper but less precise than Excalibur.
The PGK rounds are designed with a command safe-and-arm device to prevent the round from exploding if it is not near the intended target.
"The PGK round will decide that it is going to land within the 150-meter circle within its planned impact area," McCann said. "Then, it will consciously arm the fuze and fire an electrical charge into a small amount of explosive. That little charge spins a rotor which aligns the explosive chain. Only when that last one spins into place will the explosion take place. If for some reason there is high wind and the system is not able to counteract it, the round becomes a slug of metal."
The safe-and-arm device helps reduce collateral damage in urban or populated areas, McCann said.
Also, PGK can be set to explode at a certain "height of burst" or proximity to the target.
"Ultimately, PGK will have a point-detonate function and a delay function. If you want to penetrate a building, you would put it on a delay mode," McCann said.
The Army plans to purchase 3,000 PGK rounds by April 2009 and roughly 10,000 a year after that.
ATK is starting to develop a PGK variant for the 105mm weapons used by faster-moving infantry brigade combat teams. ATK successfully test-fired a precision-guided 105mm PGK round at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., on Aug. 11. The round is 99 percent common with the 155mm PGK, according to an ATK press release.
"Simulation and analysis that has been done in some early lab testing shows the PGK round is highly adaptable to the 105mm," said Jack Cronin, president of ATK Mission Systems.
"The 105mm has a shorter fuze so it will require tighter packing," he said.
Surveillance
The 130-pound ITAS system, used with the TOW missile, is built to identify targets such as armor, buildings and caves. These days, the system is being used purely for surveillance.
"The ITAS was initially intended to be an anti-tank, anti-armor type weapon used in conjunction with the TOW missile. Over time, what we found was that ITAS had forward-looking infrared and night vision abilities which could see very long distances, so the anti-armor approach became secondary," said Mike Campisi, Raytheon's senior director for combat systems.
Developed in the mid-1990s, the ITAS uses GPS, computer software and laser technology to zoom in on targets from two to five kilometers away. The Army has been using them for surveillance on Humvees and even on top of buildings.
"Think about this in an urban environment or built-up area - an ability to identify people from two kilometers away is not the norm," said George Rhynedance, a Raytheon spokesman.
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