Nice Shooting, Marines
The Marine Corps Times has an article concerning a recent USMC single round precision artillery kill at 36 kilometers. Impressive.
Precision guided munitions from artillery aren’t that new. But this one shows that artillery is now close to being able to engage point targets. Some would say this proves it’s already there.
Per the article, the round used – the M982 Excalibur – was declared the Army invention of the year 5 years ago while still in development. Looks like that might have been a good call.
It can be used safely less than 500′ from friendly forces. I can definitely see how being able to drop a single precision round on a dug-in enemy 150m away could come in handy.
The materiel development community gets a lot of heat, much of it deserved. But it looks like they came through here.
Category: Politics
You should see the new 120mm MTR PGM, it is awesome and allows precision down to the BN level control. I was so glad we were able to get this fielded before we started the deployment.
I work with a bunch of Redlegs and they have a collective woody over this stuff. And it is pretty impressive, especially the Advanced Precision Mortar Initiative (APMI) Daniel mentioned.
Well anything that improves the five requirements for accurate predicted fire would excite any true redleg. That and a good explosion.
One shot, MANY kills.
Redacted1775: for many years, artillery has been about one round, many kills. Landing nearly 42lbs (105mm) or 100lbs (155mm) of HE and steel in the right place kinda guarantees that. The problem has always been getting the round precisely where you wanted it. (smile)
THAT is some serious sniping. 😉
This sort of thing makes infantry really happy.
Well, hopefully it will work 90% of the time at that effectiveness….
Oh I know, it was a modification of the motto “one shot, one kill”. Had an arty battery right by our motor pool in Fallujah in 2004. Whenever that balloon went up, hell followed with it. An Arty officer told me excalibur rounds are about a million bucks apiece, and used to take a half hour-45 minutes to get approval for usage. I think that time frame has been cut down dramatically as of late.
FO to FDC what’s the delay?
FDC to FO its on the gun.
#8 from my experience clearence for fires varies dramatically for several reasons. Nanny brigades and divisions, location (harder to clear near and airport) and the gun bunny fdc fo team.
A stellar fister is shit out of luck if the gun bunnies are dicking around ànd fdc is napping. Otherwise there is no reason if all parts of arty work well to get that precision or better from conventional munitions. I always had better accuracy from my battalions mtr plt. Which was due to quickness in execution…familiarity between fo fdc and gun….and training. The less people required to sign off for clearence didn’t hurt either.
I think it had something to do with the cost of the GPS guidance system on the excalibur…I’ll have to check with him again.
Sorry to say, but the better communication technologies get, the “slower and faster” it takes to communicate.
As I understand, Excalibur rounds are about 15 grand each, but I could be wrong. That’s just what I heard recently in Afghanistan.
The old copperhead was crazy expensive because of the expensive R&D and the very limited number of rounds that were produced due to the scale of the project being continually trimmed. Same problem as the F-22.
Excalibur isn’t pushing state of the art nearly as much and we are actually producing them in rational numbers.
Can you guys clarify something for me?
The artillery rounds cost $15,000 each so you have to get permission to fire them off. Am I understanding this correctly?
Is this the reason troops are told not to engage the enemy in Afghanistan? The ammo costs too much?
I’m just asking for clarification, nothing else.
Hey Eric, Excalibur rounds cost somewhere in the six digits and for everyone else they are accurate within a meter. Once the round gets close to the target it’ll explode a meter off of the dirt. Crazy badass shit.
@#13, Currently they’re actually around $230,000 each, this coming from an Artillery Officer that’s actually used them. To clarify, total cost of actually firing one, in early stages of fielding, was about 1 million dollars. Since he’s a subject matter expert, I have no reason to doubt him.