Posted on 07/25/2019 3:14:30 PM PDT by PROCON
U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground conducts developmental testing of multiple facets of the Extended Range Cannon Artillery project, from artillery shells to the longer cannon tube and larger firing chamber the improved howitzer will need to accommodate them on November 18, 2018 (U.S. Army photo)
The future of Army long-range precision officially has a name.
The Army confirmed on Monday that it plan on designating the Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) program's brand new 155mm self-propelled howitzer as the M1299, Army Recognition reports.
Developed in response to increasing concerns of near-peer adversaries like Russia and China, the ERCA gun nailed targets with pinpoint accuracy at a range of 62 kilometers during testing at the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona in March, far outstripping the range of both the M109A7 Paladin (30km) and M777 (40km with the M982 Excalibur guided artillery shell) howitzers.
Compared to those systems, the M1299 will receive two "leading-edge technologies," as Army Recognition reports: the experimental new XM1113 rocket-assisted artillery shell, and a longer 58 caliber tube designed to boost the conventional howitzer range from 38km to 70km and, eventually, an eye-popping 100 km "within the forthcoming four years."
Extended Range Cannon Artillery, or ERCA, will be an improvement to the latest version of the Paladin self-propelled howitzer that provides indirect fires for the brigade combat team and division-level fight (U.S. Army photo)
"We know we need the range in order to maintain overmatch," Col. John Rafferty, head of the long-range precision fire cross-functional team, told Defense News. "We need 70 to 80 kilometers because that's the start, and then we will be able to get farther. Right now we are on a path to 70 kilometers with ERCA."
Extended range is only one element of the Army's never-ending pursuit of lethality. The M1299 will incorporate a fully automated ammo loading system to boost the howitzer's rate of fire from 3 rpm to 10rpm, although Defense News reported in March that the Army doesn't plan on fully incorporating the system "beyond the first iteration" until 2024.
Soldier may not need to wait that long to get their hands on the ERCA program's new tech, though: the official M1299 designation comes just weeks after the Army awarded a $45 million contract to BAE Systems to integrate various elements of the ERCA system into the service's existing and future Paladin howitzers.
Anyway, congrats to the M1299 on its induction into the world of alpha-numeric military designations. We hope your upcoming baptism is a baptism by fire.
Now all we have to do is get enough capable people to man them.
Pingy
Don’t feel bad. No one can be #1 forever! :)
70km and eventually 100km within 4 years.
That’s just an insane “reach out and touch someone.”
I wonder what accuracy is at that range with so many variables on that length/arc of a flight path. Some serious number crunching in there.
Wonder if there will a civilian model. .
When I was a 2171 we just had 105s and 155s.
BWAHAHAHA
Having been on fire bases with all the above I have no desire go go near any of them. Give me a Rome Plow and a jungle and turn me loose.
“Some serious number crunching in there.”
The computer does it, or it doesn’t get done. To include weather drones/balloons to measure wind along the way.
Nowadays with GPS I imagine much better accuracy.
Of course with nuke rounds, (which we never did fire during the Cold War, thankfully), impacting in one grid square was close enough.
Now THAT would keep the kids off your lawn!
Field Artillery ping. I began as a 13E for M-109s and M-109A1s; then the Army made me a 13F when that MOS was created just for forward observers, aka FIST personnel.
Any suggestions on a name for this new gun?
Didn’t the Germans have an 80 mile gun over a hundred years ago?
That’s some serious range! How do you convert between caliber and mm?
“an eye-popping 100 km “within the forthcoming four years.””
Blown away.
Without so much as a flash visible on the horizon.
Not 40 years ago.
We had the FADAC, (field artillery digital automatic computer), which a good FDCer could beat in deriving firing data, and we often fired off of manually derived firing data.
“Didn’t the Germans have an 80 mile gun over a hundred years ago?”
WWII, 47km, but it really didn’t get much use. The money they dumped into it could have been used better. And then they destroyed it so the soviets wouldn’t capture it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav
I read somewhere that FA is teaching manual fire control again so that the batteries can operate even if an electronic attack takes out the computers.
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