{"id":108587,"date":"2020-12-22T07:00:09","date_gmt":"2020-12-22T12:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=108587"},"modified":"2020-12-21T21:21:53","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T02:21:53","slug":"armys-new-boomstick-has-got-some-legs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=108587","title":{"rendered":"Army’s new boomstick has got some legs!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I really hate to post this, because the perennial FIRST in the Weekend Open Thread KoB is going to be so excited he might get a priapism.<\/p>\n

The Army\u2019s Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) system under development hit a target 43 miles away \u2014 or 70 kilometers \u2014 on the nose at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, Dec. 19, using an Excalibur extended-range guided artillery shell, according to Brig. Gen. John Rafferty, who is in charge of the service\u2019s Long-Range Precision Fires modernization.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think our adversaries have the ability to hit a target on the nose at 43 miles,\u201d Rafferty told a small group of reporters in a teleconference immediately following the test shot.<\/p>\n

The Army has been in a race to extend artillery ranges on the battlefield in order to take away stand-off advantages of high-end adversaries like Russia. The ERCA cannon, when fielded, should be able to fire and take out targets from a position out of the range of enemy systems.<\/p>\n

The ERCA cannon takes an M109A7 Paladin Integrated Management (PIM) howitzer chassis and replaces the 39-caliber gun tube with a 58-caliber, 30-foot one. Combined with Raytheon-made Excalibur munitions and an XM1113 using supercharged propellant, the Army has been able to dramatically boost artillery ranges.<\/p>\n

In March this year, the Army inched closer to the ultimate goal of 70 kilometers when it took two shots, both reaching 65 kilometers in range.<\/p>\n

In this test event, the Army took three shots. The first shot came up a bit short due to very high head winds at a high altitude and the second shot had a hardware failure, but the third shot proved that the service is getting closer to dialing in on the right balance between propellant, projectile design and other factors that play into achieving greater distances, according to Rafferty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis demonstration is not a destination,\u201d Col. Tony Gibbs, the Army\u2019s program manager for combat artillery system, told reporters. \u201cThis is really just a waypoint in our ongoing campaign of learning as we work to really realign U.S. supremacy in cannon artillery. It\u2019s definitely a big knowledge point for us today.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More details at the source. They expect to have the new system fielded by 2023. Thanks to Jeff LPH 3 for sending us this one.<\/p>\n

Defense News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really hate to post this, because the perennial FIRST in the Weekend Open Thread KoB … Army’s new boomstick has got some legs!<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359,232,406,156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army","category-army-news","category-guest-link","category-guns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108589,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108587\/revisions\/108589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}