US Army - Lockheed Martin Long Range Precision Fires (LRPF)

bobbymike said:
three-round burst at a rate of eight rounds per minute
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That's... Surprisingly unimpressive. Wonder if it's just for a test run and supposed to go faster or it is limited to that speed due to need of handling extra thicc charges.
 
GARGEAN said:
bobbymike said:
three-round burst at a rate of eight rounds per minute
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That's... Surprisingly unimpressive. Wonder if it's just for a test run and supposed to go faster or it is limited to that speed due to need of handling extra thicc charges.
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I wonder if that's the rate they intend for sustained fire. If so, it's not too far off PzH2000, which reportedly runs around 10 rpm sustained. That gun also has a super-fast burst mode (3 rounds in 9 seconds), but it's not clear that ERCA has a need for that level of speed.
 
They are trying to bolt on an autoloader onto an ancient design. The US should have followed through with crusader or bought PZH2000; the M109 is an antique.
 
Doesn't matter if it's an antique if you have all new cannon with all new autoloader in renewed turret on renewed hull. All things left from antuque design will be name and maaaybe dimensions constrains.
109Aanything including A7 are bad not because they are M109, but because they are half assed modernization with old cannon and extremely rudimentary automation improvements.
 
Only one aspect ( along with increased range and increased lethality) is for a higher rate of fire solution. The initial autoloader solution the Army shortlisted wasn't working from a durability and mobility perspective after initial testing. As the CFT lead has said, as recently as a few months ago, the new requirement is for a roughly 23 round capacity, and 6-10 rate of fire. They are producing multiple prototypes for the rate of fire improvement solutions and it appears that this was a test for one of those solutions. They don't have the budget to pay for a completely clean sheet platform that not only must be ready to field the first unit by 2023, but then quickly ramp up to field the required ERCA units. All the modernization efforts are balanced as per budget, time/schedule and performance. Even within ERCA its the entire hardware (that is diff/upgrade), a new RAP round, Excalibur H2K and some early S&T for next gen rounds. They are trying to balance all this within a fairly tight budget and get it out to the units starting a couple of years from now. So yes, given an unlimited budget and an unlimited schedule, I'm sure the CFT would also want to start with a clean sheet and develop something for the future. But that is not what they've been tasked with. What the Army wants is to modernize in the 2020's itself starting with 2023-2024 as first-unit-equipped for a whole host of LRPF, and even AD modernization priorities.
 

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SLRC was always a fairly ambitious project. The goal was thousand mile range for projectiles that were $500,000 in terms of cost. That was always going to be hard to achieve; witness the USNs 155mm debacle.
 
Josh_TN said:
SLRC was always a fairly ambitious project. The goal was thousand mile range for projectiles that were $500,000 in terms of cost. That was always going to be hard to achieve; witness the USNs 155mm debacle.
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Said USN 155mm Debacle is made worse considering that the Army has made projectile with similar range at lower cost and half the size. The Excal round shot from a long barrel 155mm reach out almost 44 miles, about ten miles less then the best AGS shot, back in December 2020 without the use of Rocket Assistance. With rocket assistance shells or just the AGS longer barrel you can hit 50 plus miles easily.

And there are new shells design, like the Nammo Ramjet shell, that will allow even more range.

The Army been shown to be far better about guns then the navy have been. Add in that the Army has all but basically out right said that they are not going to try this if they are limited to 155mm... I can see it being done, the physic check out.

The M65 Atomic cannon lobbed a shell up to 40000 feet in the late 50s and 60s when they shot high angle which is about 20k higher then a 155mm can reach. Adding in the Excaliber shells glide trick, you can get some pretty hefty range from gliding down at that height. Throw in Ramjet or Rocket Assistance, you can get over 200 miles easy. Design the shell right, well who knows?

As for cost, that is a big issue. But considering that the price of scale will bring this down hard like it did with the excaliber shell, which went from 120,000 dollars a shell to about 50k a pop. Which is far cry from the almost 1 million dollar a shell the fucking LRLAP was.
 
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https://breakingdefense.com/2021/03...IHeKJzylkADspPdaxMjdZslBfzXM8sNd5xzAKZmO6oBYE——————
I have long been an advocate of long range strike through the use of air power but it seems the US should [and could] massively expand its offensive missile force from short to IRBM ranged systems.

The Army should have weapons with significant payload capacity out to 5500km and numbered in the hundreds at least.
 
Firefinder said:
Josh_TN said:
SLRC was always a fairly ambitious project. The goal was thousand mile range for projectiles that were $500,000 in terms of cost. That was always going to be hard to achieve; witness the USNs 155mm debacle.
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Said USN 155mm Debacle is made worse considering that the Army has made projectile with similar range at lower cost and half the size. The Excal round shot from a long barrel 155mm reach out almost 44 miles, about ten miles less then the best AGS shot, back in December 2020 without the use of Rocket Assistance. With rocket assistance shells or just the AGS longer barrel you can hit 50 plus miles easily.


As for cost, that is a big issue. But considering that the price of scale will bring this down hard like it did with the excaliber shell, which went from 120,000 dollars a shell to about 50k a pop. Which is far cry from the almost 1 million dollar a shell the fucking LRLAP was.
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The furthest LRLAP shot was 78 nautical miles, considerably farther than Excalibur is capable of with any feasible muzzle energy, or twice the range of the recent ERCA test shots. Which makes sense, since LRLAP has a large rocket motor and pulls a similar range extension maneuver that Excal does.

LRLAP also never cost anywhere near $1 million. The FY15 budget had them planning to buy 241 rounds at $359k per unit. Which is about $400k today. For comparison, projections has the Army buying 230 M982A1 rounds in FY24, for a unit cost of $178k. So when you actually compensate for production quantity, LRLAP is about 250% the cost of Excal, not 2000%. Keep in mind that the M982A1 is the reduced cost version as well; LRLAP never went through a cost reduction program.

The lowest unit cost for Excal I can find that the Army actually paid was about $70k for the round and its container, for most of the last decade until FY18 when the Army started to reduce order quantities. Current price for rounds being bought with FY20 money is $105k.
 
totallyaverage said:
The furthest LRLAP shot was 78 nautical miles, considerably farther than Excalibur is capable of with any feasible muzzle energy, or twice the range of the recent ERCA test shots. Which makes sense, since LRLAP has a large rocket motor and pulls a similar range extension maneuver that Excal does.
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I have never actually seen any source for the 78 mile shot, only 53 miles and 43 miles at most. Which why I went with those. Either way the Army has show to be better at the whole getting guide artillery to work and into service then the Navy has...

totallyaverage said:
The lowest unit cost for Excal I can find that the Army actually paid was about $70k for the round and its container, for most of the last decade until FY18 when the Army started to reduce order quantities. Current price for rounds being bought with FY20 money is $105k.
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The reason for the price increase the Army have gotten a new fuse system, Precision Guidance Kit, which is a GPS guidence kit that drops into the nose fuse hole for a Standard round, that cost around 30k. That has taken over the Gross increase of accuracy while the Excaliber shell going for the HIGH ACCURACY. Basically the difference between the JDAM and like the JSOW.
 
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SLRC is just a tube launched missile that is intended to be cheaper. It won’t have advantage in speed or rate of fire, assuming it ever is developed.
 

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