155mm Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP
Posted on 11/07/2016 5:47:10 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
What is the plan for the next two ships?
When you send an $800,000 round to destroy a $20 mud hut, you’ve already lost. It would be way cheaper to take the enemy out for a fancy dinner, get them drunk on champagne, then push them in front of a bus.
But, we need a six inch gun that can hit a target at 26 miles.
Really.
We need that.
155mm Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP
It's a 155 round for crying out loud!
On the bright side, it's still (slightly) cheaper than a cruise missile....
Evidently, the stupid from Obama is contagious.
Whose smart idea was this?
I don’t see the need for such a high tech gun. If you need pinpoint accuracy, maybe they could develop a cheaper smaller cruise missile.
Hat Tip to Lockheed Martin ..
Now I see why it’s worth 240 bucks a share.
Didn’t FBI dude work with them?
Oh, they'll never figure that out. /s
but they can afford $26.00 A GALLON BIOFUEL!!!
In the 1970s, the USAF was facing a similar (though much cheaper problem) with depleted uranium rounds for the GAU-8 gun on the A-10. The service was willing to pay up to $80 a round, and each jet has a max load of more than 2,000 for the 30mm, tank-busting gun.
An Air Force Colonel named Bob Dilger thought that was ridiculous. He tried a different approach (and broke most of the contracting rules in the process). Dilger approached Aerojet and Honeywell, the two firms vying for the 30mm ammo contract. Dilger told them that whoever submitted the lowest, guaranteed bid would receive the entire A-10 ammo contract for the next fiscal year.
The power of capitalism and competition. The two contractors kept slashing costs to get the contract and at one point, they were producing ammo for $8-10 a round, roughly 10% of the original Air Force estimate.
They will never get unit costs that low for the Zumwalt’s deck gun, but the current price is absurd. A little creativity is in order.
Well said
What does a 16” HE Naval Rifle Slug, and associated powder bags, cost?
Well, we’ve got a gun that won’t shoot, but at least the Navy allows dudes to wear dresses.
“According to Defense News, the LRLAP round costs $800,000...
Roughly what I’m paying for .22LR ammo at the moment... :-)”
I will be glad to furnish you some .22LR for half that price.
A couple billion, because we can’t make them any more. Have to start production from scratch. Then we have to rebuild a ship to fire them.
$30k a round for 16” shell. Three of those - close enough ought to do fine.
Well, if they’d developed it properly, it could have been hell on wheels against other ships as well as ground targets as well as possibly against many air targets. Instead, the dev program was run by morons - morons who deleted the gun’s ability to fire regular 155mm rounds.
Or they could have already gone with railguns. But the Navy canceled the (very minimal) funding for researching WB series of fusion reactors needed to power the railguns (since nuclear fission is a no-no now) so they could do diversity and integration and now this is where we’re at.
What currently ready-to-deploy asset do you propose to fire them from? We can’t make any more guns and we decommissioned the last two of our battleships in the 2000s and sold them off. The US Navy no longer has any battleships or indeed any capability to fire 16” shells. Not in active service, not in the reserves, not in the mothball fleet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.