Here’s a cool heads up that the Army has fired its first Excalibur artillery round in Afghanistan.
It was just a test, but it’s an important one since artillery actually plays a pretty big role in fire support during combat ops in Afghanistan. And with the recent rash of friendly fire incidents resulting from off-target CAS, it’s always a good thing to add one more precision-guided munition to the tool kit, I think.
Here’s part of the story we’re running on Military.com:
KUNAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan — Soldiers fired the first 155mm GPS-guided Excalibur artillery round in Afghanistan Feb. 25.
The GPS-guided Excalibur round was given the proper grid coordinate to seek out and destroy a target using the Enhanced Portable Inductive Artillery Fuse Setter by placing the system on the tip of the round and sending a digital message containing the coordinate for the round to find.
“The Excalibur round travels farther and is designed to hit targets that conventional ammo does not always hit,” said Army Staff Sgt. Darius Scott of C Battery, 3rd Battalion, 321st Field Artillery Regiment.
The Excalibur was fired using the M-777A2 155mm howitzer. The M-777 is designed to be a digitally programmed weapon and is about 9,800 pounds lighter than the more commonly used M-198 Howitzer and is reportedly more accurate.
Read the rest of the story here, and check out my earlier entry on the first use of Excalibur rounds in Iraq back in July.
– Christian
This is cool stuff and it’s good that the US military is getting it.
But we really need to think about when, five or ten years down the road, precision munitions (I like to worry about mortar rounds) become wide– spread. The technology is impressive but not magic, and I’d bet several countries and companies around the world are working on their own versions of it as we speak.
What are we going to do when the bad guys can put the first and subsequent rounds within ten meters of their target?
So long as they’re using GPS guidance the US can remain a step ahead, since the DoD owns the coarse and fine signals. In that scenario I can see the fine signal being available only to those with the right keyfill, as was the case back in the day.
You’re right Allen…but what I’m more worried about is what will happen when bad guys get NVGs and body armor. Owning the night and having some ballistic protection have been a big advantage to US forces in recent conflicts. What happens when the enemy can see our IR reflectors and can endure a couple hits from a 5.56? Ain’t gonna be pretty, that’s for sure.
Why is it news that a weapon that works in U.S. based tests also works in tests in Afghanistan? Are the laws of physics different there? Is Afghan air GPS proof?
I agree that a first use in anger in Afghanistan would be newsworthy, but this story is not.
ohwilleke, did it ever occur to you that there are other people in the world who quite simply do not share your opinion?
Precision-guided ammunitions aren’t terminally guided ammunitions. The latter ones are better, they’re the future, because they’re the only ones that allow you to hit mobile targets, even very fast moving targets. Precision-guided Artillery ammunition ( NOT : Mortar ammunition!) can easily be avoided if you walk always on the lee side of a steep mountain or hill, scatter, never stop walking (it takes ~ 40 seconds for an Artillery round to fly to its maximum range, and before that you’re already outside its warhead’s destruction radius again…) and zig-zag every 30 seconds (once programmed and flying, “Excalibur” rounds can’t choose different impact points, unlike for example air-to-air-missiles with mid-flight guidance), this way you can approach that U.S. howitzer even inside its direct fire range!
As I expected, nobody tells you any of that in any U.S. American articles about this 39.000-dollars-a-piece “Excalibur” round, good only for shooting at houses. It’s just another “F-22 Raptor” to me…
2 outa 10 for that trolling effort freefallingbomb, must ty harder.
Are you saying it’s not true Jimbo Jones?
Freefallingbomb, you bring up points that, if true, astound and anger me (just like the @%@#%@ F22 program).
Can you link your sources? If the internet taught me anything, it’s never take anything said at face value. Always look a bit deeper.
And 39,000 for a SINGLE ROUND OF 155 is outright stupidity. Sounds like you could get a guided GPS bomb for the same price.
“For Raytheon
Deus Ex,
with an aircraft bomb you have to factor in fuel costs etc. The plane can drop the bomb, but it still has to get there. Dragging around an artillery piece is a lot cheaper. Still, phew, I could buy *two* new motorbikes for a single shell. DAMN!
I’d like a Triumph Street Triple and a Honda CBR1100XX, please.
@ Pharsalus: I’ll trade you two rounds for a Desmosedici, three if you take it away from Tom Cruise.
Regarding Cost: As with any technology prices will drop as more efficient methods are found to produce these shells. A year from now I may have to come up with four shells to trade Pharsalus.
Regarding Accuracy: This is the first generation of precision (GPS) artillery. There’s nothing to say the Army’s not working on a laser guided round or that the round can’t make position adjustments anytime in flight.
Why does it seems people on this blog are so resistant to new military tech?
@ Chris
Concerning the Desmosedici: you’ve got yourself a deal, mister.
Ahem, laser guidance? That’d be handy for indirect fire ^_^
Maybe, oh wait, we could fix a laser on a small UAV and keep it on station to guide the round? No, that wouldn’t work. Maybe a soldier hiding in the bushes with a great big laser designator? We could, if all else fails, equip lemmings with a little transmitter and train them to invade soon-to-be-levelled buildings. The shells could then home in on the poor critter and go *poof*.
Large, extended wars are won with cheap, low-tech weapons. German soldiers used to make jokes about “those funny American tanks with their little guns” but, being equipped with the Mighty Panther Tank, they still lost.
Small “wars” (or rather policing actions) are won with feet on the ground, hearts and minds campaigns and restrictions on using force.
Both ways, large or small, cost lives. Many lives, some might say too many. But THAT’s the cost of war, not what you pay for a gun.
Advanced weapons require a lot of maintenance, cost a lot of money and aren’t always battlefield-proof, just ask “Grossdeutschland“‘s PzAbt 51 about their PzKpfw V Panthers at Kursk. They will NEVER win against a flood of cheap, throw-away weaponry.
Addendum: …They will NEVER win against a flood of cheap, throw-away weaponry *and the (somewhat Stalinesque) will to send most of your troops to their deaths*.
@ Brian
“The Germans lost for a lot of reasons, not just because their equipment was expensive.“
» Very true.
“WWII is a thing of the past.“
» Whooo. Very iffy prediction. This planet has four-and-a-half million years of life left in it. Chances are we’ll se another Big War in that time.
Reminds me of when they started to put GPS onto the MK82s back when. Then came the bright spark of attaching a laser designator/seeker package with control fins to “fly” the bomb onto or off target.
Next version of Excalibur round with deployable fins, laser/real time GPS signal package?
I remember something on here about such a round if I recall?
Interesting Article but.…
You are wrong about this being the first firing of Excalbur in Afghanistan. The Canadian Artillery fired one in July 07.