Way back in the idyllic 1990s, the Army had a big bloated program to build a big bloated howitzer to replace its 1960s-era M-109s. The XM-2001 Crusader, while hugely lethal, weighed more than 40 tons — almost as much as an M-1 tank and way to much for rapid deployments to emerging hotspots. And that name … can you imagine such an offensive moniker clearing the Pentagon these days?
Crusader was dramatically offed in 2002, in those heady months following then-SecDef Donald Rumsfeld’s arrival at the Pentagon.
The M-109s aren’t getting any younger, although most have gotten a semi-digital overhaul to M-109A6 Paladin standard. We need a replacement, stat, if the Army is serious about preserving organic fires for mechanized forces.
Enter BAE Systems’ Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon, or NLOS-C, a snazzy model of which was on display at the Association of the U.S. Army trade show in Florida this week. According to program manager Mark Signorelli, NLOS-C mines all the best parts of Crusader: digital fire controls, superior comms and an autoloader that reduces the crew to just two from the M-109′s five. But it weighs half as much. “It’s got Crusader DNA,” Signorelli says of the new gun, contradicting previous generations of artillery officials who have tried to distance NLOS-C from its ill-fated predecessor.
NLOS-C is part of the Future Combat Systems family of vehicles, meaning it shares the same basic electric-hybrid chassis and the troubled netcentric Joint Tactical Radio System. But owing to the desperate need to replace the M-109, NLOS-C funding has, by Congressional decree, been “fenced off” from the rest of the FCS budget, which has been plundered in recent years to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Four of FCS’ original 18 vehicles have been deferred indefinitely and others might fall too, but that will probably never happen to NLOS-C. By now it has momentum.
Thanks to this preferred status, the new howitzer is moving smoothly through development, even if the comms network it’s supposed to plug into is late and over-budget. A protoype NLOS-C gun is at Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona firing off thousands of test rounds; the first full vehicle will arrive at Yuma for further tests next year. Having one major piece FCS that’s advancing faster than the rest is prudent, Signorelli says. “We’re blazing a trail.”
Related posts:
BAE is mention. Is the NLOS-C part of the British FRES program?
The FCS vehicles are concept vehicles that may or may not have been effective in combat. The American FCS program has with the indefinite deferments and the delays, morphed after much experience in Iraq and Afghanistan into a program that is spinning off advance equipment for existing vehicles. The money saved can be used to replace the Humvee with the MRAP family of vehicles. Not really a bad outcome.
The British on the other hand have derived little from FRES and still ride around in the
Snatch Land Rover and their latest vehicle chosen in 2003 the completely useless Panther
Compared to the British the US has handled competing needs in a fairly rational fashion.
[...] Magazine NBM Publishing Popular Science The Washington Times Univ. of South Carolina Press Robot Economist on New Cannon Monday March 12th 2007, 2:48 am Filed under: Axe Blogs Fellow blogger Robot Economist wrote into add some insider perspective on the Army’s next-generation howitzer, which I profiled last week. More important that the howitzer is the shells it fires, RE contends. And the Army has plans to introduce the XM982 Excalibur GPS-guided shell (think a ground-fired version of the Air Force’s Joint Direct Attack Munition) that might let the service squeeze another couple decades out of its old M-109-series guns: If guided munitions like the JDAM and Excalibur can close the capability gap between old platforms (B-52s and M-109s) and new platforms (B-2s and the NLOS-C), how can you know that a new platform is needed? When the Air Force complains about the age of their bombers, they have a good reason. The last B-52 Stratofortress was built in 1962 and they plan to keep them in service for almost 90 years. The Army received the last M109A6 in 2001 and the average age of the entire fleet is only about 10 years old. They even plan to keep the Paladin in service alongside the NLOS-C all the way through 2020! Frankly, I would be more impressed if the Army diverted funding away from the NLOS-C towards a truly revolutionary approach to indirect fire, such as the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System. Or better yet, RE says, the service should invest that cash in an IED-resistant, next-generation HMMWV. In fact, the military has several programs to buy just such a thing. Frankly, you could make the argument that incremental improvements to old vehicles plus new munitions are all the Army needs to stay ahead … and are all it can afford in this budget environment. Hell, you could say the same of all the services. No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> [...]
[...] If FCS goes the way of the dodo, we’ll probably see technology developed for the program go spinning out in all kinds of directions, like what happened when the Army earlier cancelled its over-budget, under-performing RAH-66 Comanche chopper and XM-2001 Crusader howitzer: communications and sensors from Comanche wound up in new AH-64D Apache Block IIIs; systems from the Crusader were the starting point for FCS’ Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon, which is being funded separately from the rest of Future Combat Systems and could survive the budget axe, if it ever falls. [...]
Lets see. Cole separated money out of the Defense Budget into a separate line item for the Elgin assembly plant in the Economic Development Act. Oklahoma Comanche County voters approved industrial sales tax money for the Elgin assembly plant. The City of Elgin threw its citizens into millions of dollars in infrastructure debt to develop infrastructure at the Lawton Fort Sill Industrial Park. The City of Elgin paid for a $150,000 fire truck and illegally set up the office of paid Fire Chief paid from PWA bond money. The CCIDA paid $826,000.00 for the second engineering report for the IP. The first one was to Landmark Engineering for $70,000.00.
Boeing is opening an office next to Elgin City Hall and renting the buildng from The city of Elgin. (Had to before they signed – mayor said).