Army - Kicking Tires On Jltv

Soldier Armed
Army Gets Precision Fires Upgrades
By Scott R. Gourley, Contributing Writer
In parallel with ongoing procurement
involving guided cannon munitions
and precision guidance kits for artillery
projectiles, other recent activity across
Army rocket, missile and launcher platforms
promises to reopen dormant production
lines and further expand the
Army’s precision fires capabilities over
the next few years.
One evolving slice of the launcher and
munitions systems was outlined during
the recent Association of the U.S. Army
Annual Meeting and Exposition by Ken
Musculus, Lockheed Martin vice president
for tactical missiles, and Col. James
“Chris” Mills, U.S. Army program manager for precision fires.
“If you look at history going back to the M270 and M26 unguided
rocket, there has been a constant evolution of both the
launchers and the missiles,” Musculus said, adding that the
M270A1 tracked Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS)
launcher is being modernized “to bring the electronics essentially
into the 21st century. We’re putting new hardware in it;
redesigning the electronics in it; putting a new processor in it;
getting rid of obsolescence.”
Along with the electronics upgrades, Lockheed Martin has
also developed a new armored cab for the M270A1. It is more
spacious inside and has improved levels of protection.
“We increased the crew protection levels by redesigning the
armor,” Musculus said. “It’s really an entirely new cab: You
take the old cab off; you put the new cab on. You also put a lot
of the existing electronics back in it. But one of the things it
now does is put the commander in the center seat position,
making it common” with how the M142 high-mobility artillery
rocket system, or HIMARS, operates.
“We’ve done extensive testing on the new cab design,” he
said. “We have fired many, many rockets off this system at the
test range. It works perfectly. We’ve also proven out its ballistic
capabilities, and they have fired munitions at it.”
Three Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems on display
Cab No Longer Cramped
Pointing to a side-by-side picture of the old and new cab designs,
he showed where the new design picked up “about a foot”
of space. “It doesn’t look like much, but that difference of about
a foot makes a big difference inside the cab,” he said. “Plus, you
can see that it’s a little bit higher. So from a crew standpoint, the
old M270 is kind of cramped, but the new one feels spacious.”
Six prototypes of the new armored cab have been built for
testing, with some of those dedicated to blast trials. Production
plans for the new cabs currently project a rate of approximately
30 cabs per year beginning in fiscal year 2019.
Musculus said some company effort is also being directed
toward the M142 HIMARS wheeled launcher, focused on
possible exploration of a “next-generation launcher.” While
Musculus predicted it would be in the budget for FY 2017 or
’18, Mills was more cautious about the timeframe for a possible
HIMARS launcher replacement.
“The funding is a little bit further out for the next-gen
launcher,” he said. “But they are looking at that.”
When the Army was asked for clarification, Dan O’Boyle,
spokesman for the Army’s precision fires program management
office, said, “The Army understands the long-term potential
need for a new launcher platform,” so the next-generation
launcher development “is expected to begin in the near future.
The Army is currently studying future technologies that may
be leveraged to meet the future capability requirements.”
In parallel with the platform enhancements, other precision
fires activities are being directed toward both the guided multiple
launch rocket system rocket and Army tactical missile system
missile. Much of the effort focuses on replacing the cluster
munition designs in those systems. For the guided multiple
launch rocket system, that involves the dual-purpose improved
conventional munitions; for the tactical missile system, it involves
the anti-personnel and anti-materiel submunitions.
According to Mills, a 2008 DoD policy directs the Army to
meet the intent of the 2018 cluster munitions ban, which
means that by January 2019, “we have to meet less than a 1
percent dud rate on any weapon.”
With dual-purpose improved conventional munitions,
“there were a bunch of bomblets, with each one having its own
fuze,” Musculus said. “The issue is, depending on how the
bomblets hit, they don’t always detonate. So now you have un-
Scott R. Gourley
February 2016 ■ ARMY 61