GPS guidance is used for accurate long range fire against static or slow moving targets.  Against naval targets that can maneuver GPS guidance is currently of only very limited value because you need to simultaneously target all possible positions to guarantee a hit.  This will change if they can develop either a terminal guidance seeker or a way to communicate updated targeting information to the shell in flight.

 

GPS guidance rounds are most useful for fire support of troops on shore.  This is not a high priority mission for the navy and not of use in the current theaters of operation (Iraq and Afghanistan), so development funding has been diverted to more immediate needs.

I think one of the reasons that the USN doesn't seem too interested in GPS-guided and other precisiuon munitions for its 5inch guns is that it could be another nail in the coffin of the DDG1000 and its 155mm AGS guns.

Apparently, the LRLAPs for the AGS would most likely be GPS guided, so it's not like GPS artillery projectiles are frowned upon.

 

Web search systems like Pelican and Volcano; these are European guided projectile programs that have far-reaching naval applications should they prove successful.

Volcano is an Italian program that is exploring both 5inch and 6inch class projectiles.

The Italians are also working on DART, being designed for use with the 76mm naval gun.

 

Apparently, the US likes sinking money into these kinds of programs, only to eventually cancel them for whatever reasons (Deadeye, ANSR, ERM, ERGM, BTERM, BTERM II are the ones I can think of offhand,

 and the LRLAP will only survive if the DDG1000 program does: at just a few ships with 2 guns each,, these rounds will be prohibitively expensive to use (won't be massed produced, so no economies-of-scale in their limited production),

and the AGS guns are no longer designed with the intention of using "dumb" unguided standard 155mm artillery shells as used in land-based systems.

 

With a decent installation, there's almost no reason that Excalibur rounds couldn't be fired from a ship-mounted 155mm gun that's compatible with land-based artillery systems' projectiles.

 

But for the USN to sink more money and effort into more 5inch guided projectile programs, just means they've finally admitted defeat on the AGS and it LRLAPs.

Funny thing is, the market for 127mm guided projectiles is still there: there are literally dozens, if not a few hundred, ships in various navies the world over that use US/NATO-pattern 127mm guns. And not everyone is hellbent on slapping 155mm guns tonto heir navy ships as fast as the USN and UK and others take to finally make it happen.

 

Also web search things like CCF (Course Correction Fuzes) and PGK (Precision Guidance Kit).

These systems are currently being designed to implement with standard-size fuze wells common to both 105 and 155mm land-based artillery ammunition families.

These aim to greatly improve upon the current dispersion (miss distance) of unguided artillery projectiles.

If they work as advertised (still a few more years out before a suitable successful design is production-ready), then it would be senseless not to adopt the technology for use in naval guns: 100mm (French, Russian, chinese, etc), 114mm (4.5inch, a principally UK caliber and their customers) and 127mm/5inch would all benefit from such systems (despite any complications it may add to the automatic ammunition handling systems of ship guns).

 

Whether GPS guided, or laser-seeking and needing forward designation, the market is already there for guided shells from naval artillery.

It's just never been exploited yet, because the days of massed naval invasions like Normandy, Guadalcanal, and Inchon are over.

Ship gunnery isn't going away anytime soon, though.

People are still struggling with what to do with the fact we can now create guidance kits for those 70mm rockets, even if nobody yet has realized the potential that a combat helo with 4 pods of 19 rounds each of old unguided rockets can now fire 76 precision-guided munitions.

Likewise, it's going to take some time yet before guided naval shells go mainstream as well.

The technology just isn't mature enough to exploit it on a mass, cost-effective scale:

(Excalibur rounds cost over $100K each. What navies can afford to equip all of their ships with a few hundred,

or even just several dozen, $50K-$100K precision rounds for each gun?).

 

 

Thanks for the info, doggtag. Yeah, in my searches I kept running into lots of old, dead programs. So its clearly something the Navy has tried to for many years. From what I read it sounded like they kept failing for technical reasons, but it sounds like you are arguing the Navy's heart wasn't really in it. Did they underresource the programs in some way?

 

I was just struck that it'd be really cool if all of our DDG-51s and cruisers had guided artillery and could sit off a coast and plink targets. Maybe I'm overestimating how useful that capability would be. Guided shells are more expensive than regular shells, but a lot cheaper than missiles, right?

 

And if we get the Precision Guidance Kits working then doesn't that bring the cost down by an order of magnitude? Then we'd have 80 some warships with cheap precision artillery.

 

I'm totally an amateur at this, so I appreciate explanations on what I'm missing.  I kind of have precision weapons on the brain lately -- I asked a similar question in the artillery forum about guided artillery in general  -- and what the next 10-20 years will bring. It seems like we'll be able to make practically everything guided and precise pretty soon. And the trend seems to be multi-mode - so it's GPS/INS/laser/etc.

 

So would having precision naval artillery not be that big of a deal? If so, why not?

 

My guesses:

 

1) Range is still not enough.

2) Still too expensive.

3) Anytime we might be shooting, there would be other, better assets around. Like airpower. Or land artillery.

 Still, it seems that you could never have enough precision firepower. But I'll admit I could just be caught up in the coolness factor. I can imagine certain scenarios - like terrorist hunting off the coast of the Philippines -- where having relatively cheap guided artillery would be a very cost-effective solution to support a team ashore. Seems like the military is often criticized for using a million dollar missile to take out a hut, and guided naval artillery could be more cost-effective.

 

Anyway, I appreciate the feedback. I'm a near-future buff and only recently started thinking much about the future of the military . I'm trying to get my head around certain ideas, but I'm sure there are many gaps in my knowledge base and understanding. Thanks again.

Murphy's Laws of Combat -- If the enemy is in range so are you. is the guiding rule. 

 

For most of naval history ships have been able to mount larger guns that had longer ranges than mobile shore batteries and avoided getting range of the larger fixed fortress batteries unless absolutely necessary.  Then aircraft arrived and the primary mission for naval guns shifted to defensive AAA, for which 5" was felt to be the largest practical size allowing a high enough rate of fire.  So now the mobile artillery units on shore can have guns that have equal or longer ranges than the ship;s guns, such as the Russian 130mm gun (which was originally a naval 5.1" naval gun design that was installed on a towed carriage).  Since the (lightly armored) ship supporting the naval gun is a larger and generally more vulnerable target than a dispersed battery of towed or self-propelled artillery pieces, getting into a dual with a shore battery is still a bad idea.

 

One alternative that seems to have a fair amount of favor is to mount NETFIRES modules on warships.  This has the added advantage that these would be able to be directed using the existing Army and Marine ground observers instead of requiring a naval support fires officer.

Sounds like a good general concensus.
But something to take into effect there: what makes fixed, non-moving land-based artillery firing unguided shells at a moving, maneuvering naval vessel any more accurate than a moving, maneuvering naval target firing unguided shells at fixed, non-moving land-based artillery?

I still believe the real reason that navies like the USN prefer to stay away from the shoreline is that land-based anti-ship missile batteries are the bigger threat, not tube artillery like cannons, guns, and even mortars.

 

Yes, there are land-based artillery that can outrange any guns on any ship in any navy: those newer 52-caliber 155mm systems, with the right ammo, have been tested to something close to 70km.

Still, without some means of terminal guidance, these long range shells would only be useful against anchored or moored vessels that are stupid enough to sit still for that long.

 

The advantage actually does favor the ship in these cases: the ship can be moving and turning.

Unless the land-based artillery is self-propelled, towed guns that aren't moving from position to position like SP guns can do are going to be very vulnerable, even if they possess an actual range advantage over the ship-based guns.

 

But still, the threat of hidden coastal ASM launchers, or even the occasional low-flying helo or fixed wing aircraft, armed with ASMs and masking its flight along ground clutter, are too big a risk for ships, moreso than any cannon artillery firing unguided sh

I don't claim to know much about USN programs, but are you sure the ERGM is cancelled?  I think it may still be in development, with an IOC of hopefully within a couple years.

Well, I tried to find out more.

Using public-released info found on the Web,

I've come up with these so far:

 

The entry at Designation-Systems.Net, I didn't even want to use: as of 30June2009, it says "last updated 22 October 2003" at the bottom.

Nothing up to date there (I seriously wish those people would update more often; they were a credible source quite often, but this outdated stuff doesn't help!)

 

The Raytheon pdf on the munition doesn't give any dates of anything (testing milestones, IOC, etc), other than the 2006-2007 copyright at the bottom lip of the document.

 

There's an article here from the Dept of the (US) Navy, Reasearch, Development & Acquisition, which most it seems to do is mention an IOC of FY 2011, which implies anywhere from October 2010 onwards.

Unfortunately, I don't see any dates on that site as to when it was created, last updated, or even anything copyright.

It could from 5 weeks ago, or 5 years ago. Only those folks who put it up know that one.

 

Then we have Deagel.Com's entry, at least it's dated as last being updated April 4th, 2009.

But if that's the case, you'd at least think they'd have factored in this tidbit from NavyTimes: Navy Ends ERGM Funding

 

For the life of me, I can't even recall if we ever discussed the death of ERGM here on SP previously (last year?).

 

Even the Wiki entry's updaters caught that one, taken from that Navy Times article, stating that as of "March 2008 - Navy ends funding to Raytheon effectively killing the program."

 

Certainly there may be in-house projects still in the works at various defense contractors thru company funding, but as it sits now, the Italians and their OTO Melara Volcano seem to be the only 127mm guided naval munition still in the running.

I'm still digging to see if I can find anything along the lines of it being delayed or terminated also.

As far as any solid dates, the only thing I get from the OTO Melara site and pdf is a more recent 2009 copyright, so that isn't really any indication whether it's still in development or not.

 

But so far, the Italians don't seem to be hampered by such a pissed-up politically-motivated procurement cycle...

Notice they also have progressed further with their subcaliber DART (Strales system), to be fired from the 76/62 naval gun.

 

Funny how a country the size (and defense budget) of Italy can actually pull these projects off,

yet the US stumbles.

Repeatedly.

 

Maybe that's a shame on the USN, for not having the right people in its ranks pushing the importance of these capabilities on our political procurement people.

Strange though that they did manage to string the DDG1000 porogram along on similar promises of long range gun-fired precision munitions.

Maybe current ships just aren't appealing enough because all those marketting geniuses kept hitting on the "but DDX can fit a railgun in the future!" argument?

(If you think the US PGMs were getting expensive at over $150K a

I found this DefenseNews article on the sea trials of the Destroyer Wayne E. Meye.

 

"But the shoot scheduled for the ship's sin­gle 5-inch gun didn't go as well. Engineers pored over the mount after a single, simulat­ed extended-range guided munition (ERGM) round was fired. One engineer reported there were concerns over the gun breech not clos­ing properly. After some adjustments and a delay of several hours, another ERGM round was loosed, then three standard rounds. "

 

So something called ERGM (well a simulated ERGM) was test fired in June 2009. So it sounds like the Navy is determined to eventually get some sort of ERGM working. I hope so.