Wednesday, October 16, 2019

The U.S. Army Wants A 'Strategic Canon' With A Range Of 1,000 Miles

US Army troopers assigned to the Field Artillery Squadron, 3rd Cavalry Regiment, fire their M777 Howitzer. The Army is looking for a gun with a bit more range—over 1,000 nautical miles.

Defense News: Strategic, long-range cannon preps to jump its first tech hurdle

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is wading into a major science and technology development area to build a strategic, long-range cannon — one that can shoot a projectile 1,000 nautical miles — and plans to put the program through its first test soon, according to Col. John Rafferty, who is in charge of executing modernization efforts for the service’s top priority, long-range precision fires.

The Army is working with the Research and Analysis Center at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, as well as the Center for Army Analysis to confirm the service can accomplish what is expected from such a system, Rafferty told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

The Army wants to demonstrate a prototype of the long-range cannon in 2023, after which it will make a decision on whether to begin a program of record.

Read more ....

Update: Bringing in the big gun: Army paves way for “strategic cannon” (Ars Technica)

Previous Post: The U.S. Army Want's A New Supergun With A 1,000-Mile Range (January 24, 2019)

WNU Editor: To have a range of 1,000 miles, you are going to need a very big gun. A little bit of history. A Canadian engineer (Gerald Bull) worked on a supergun for Saddam Hussein code-name Project Babylon. Gerald Bull was assassinated in Brussels in 1990.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

WHAT THE FUCK!
Cannon? thats a mortar by any scope of the imaginations, thats like throwing objects into space, slingshoting them around the moon and sending them back.

Unknown said...

The artillery forward observers will need really really big binos

Mike Feldhake said...

This does not make sense now with modern day UAV's, smart bombs and mini-ordnances. Hmmm, I think might be waste of money but OK doing some research on the subject.

Roger Smith said...


I'm sure each round will cost a mint. Recall the projected cost for the gun's ammo on those littoral ships? This idea was ashcanned. That was a 155MM round and the cost was hundreds of thousands of dollars a round.