What's next for Army artillery modernization? More demos

Yahoo

24-03-2025

The U.S. Army still wants a mobile, long-range artillery capability after canceling an effort to build its own cannon system, but it's not poised to decide a way forward for nearly two years.
The Army held demonstrations for self-propelled howitzers in 2021 at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, but decided to prioritize an investment in the development of its Extended Range Cannon Artillery, or ERCA, system. The system used a 58-caliber gun tube on an M109 Paladin howitzer chassis, aiming to fire out to 70 kilometers — roughly double current cannon ranges.
When it decided to cancel the ERCA program, the Army acknowledged it still had a requirement for a long-range cannon, and so it gave industry the opportunity last fall to show readily available and fielded systems abroad. A team traveled to Germany, South Korea, Sweden and Israel to see those systems in action.
Now, the service is planning another Yuma-based demonstration for January 2026. The Army plans to award each industry team roughly $5 million to bring in artillery systems for a nine-month evaluation process before nailing down requirements and developing a strategy, according to a draft solicitation on the government contracts website Sam.gov.
The official solicitation for the evaluation was expected to be posted weeks ago but had yet to be released as of Monday.
While some might argue the future demonstration is a repeat of the 2021 round, industry is seeing the effort as an opportunity to show more capability. It opens the aperture for systems to be demonstrated that might not have existed just a few years ago.
Artillery modernization has been moving at full force as cannon warfare plays out in Ukraine. Several of the systems likely to be demonstrated at Yuma have now had a chance to prove their capabilities in the country fighting against the Russian invasion that began in 2022.
This time the Army is looking not only at the range and mobility of the cannons, but emphasizing a thorough evaluation of the rate of fire and the ability to shoot, move, shoot again, and then be resupplied.
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'They're asking us to demonstrate rate of fire, not just on the howitzer, but the ability to reload the howitzer, so now you have ammunition-carrying vehicles with some reload capability that helps them get after, 'How fast can this thing actually do what it's supposed to do on the battlefield?'' BAE Systems' company vice president Jim Miller told Defense News.
'We always had rate of fire on the howitzer. But, you know, I was a battalion commander in the early 2000s. I was pretty comfortable that I could win the first couple fights, but I wasn't going to get a resupply of ammo fast enough to do anything in the second fight, right? And so that's the challenge they're going to pursue,' Miller added.
BAE Systems is submitting its Archer system for the demonstration, which it demonstrated in 2021.
Elbit Systems America, which submitted its Atmos self-propelled howitzer system in 2021, demonstrated its newer Sigma howitzer last year.
New competitors are likely to be present at the demonstration, too. General Dynamics Land Systems, Rheinmetall and Hanwha all demonstrated capability in November and December for the U.S. Army and plan to submit systems for the upcoming evaluation effort.
It's possible others could emerge as the Army opens up the aperture. The previous demonstration in 2021, for example, locked out Hanwha's K9 tracked system because it required the systems be wheeled. Companies with smaller vehicles and different gun systems could be considered.
'You can't maneuver without artillery,' Gen. James Rainey, commander of Army Futures Command, told reporters last week at a conference in Arlington, Virginia. 'That's the Army's main contribution to the joint force.'
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High explosive artillery 'is indisputably the number one killer on both sides. So that is not going away, so modernizing, transforming our tactical cannons … towed artillery is problematic,' Rainey said. 'There's some partners, we have some allies who have really, really good, interesting mobile cannons that we're looking to partner with.'
The demonstration will also serve as a way to look again at the Army's overall plan for fires capability. According to several industry sources, a fires strategy was presented to the Army vice chief of staff in January, but he rejected it because it was limited to one solution and didn't consider things like rockets. The vice sent the strategists back to the drawing board.
The Army plans to select teams for the demonstration in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. While those companies will get some government dollars to attend, there is a pay-to-play element, as the teams will still need to provide some funding to get the systems to Yuma and provide all ammunition.
And many of the systems will need to be borrowed from the companies or even other governments. Artillery systems are in high demand amid the war in Ukraine.
South Korea's Hanwha wants to bring both a tracked and wheeled version of its K9 howitzer, if they're available, according to company officials.
The tracked version is fielded among over 10 allied countries, six of which are NATO members. The wheeled version is in development.
'Our goal and intent is to fully be ready to deliver both a tracked and a wheeled platform,' Jason Pak, Hanwha Defense USA's director of business development, told Defense News. The company is 'full steam ahead in terms of accelerating the production of a wheeled variant,' he said.
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Additionally, while the K9 A1 variant requires three or four people to crew the system, the K9 A2 will allow the crew to drop to two with the introduction of an autoloader said Carl Poppe, Hanwha Defense USA business development director. The Korean Army will field the first A2 unit in 2027, and it will enter production shortly, he added.
BAE Systems would bring back Archer, but it could bring the system on a new MAN truck, which is what the Swedish government has ordered as part of its modernization of the system, according to Miller. The company has swapped out the system's ride, even demonstrating it on a vehicle from Oshkosh Defense.
Additionally, the company continues to present the option to the Army — separately from the demonstration effort — of a PIM howitzer with a 52-caliber gun tube, Miller said. The current gun is a 39-caliber cannon tube.
Elbit, which demonstrated Sigma in the fall, is expected to bring the system to Yuma. Sigma is in full-rate production in Charleston, South Carolina, and Elbit is fielding the cannon system to the Israeli Defense Forces, according to Luke Savoie, the company's president and CEO.
American Rheinmetall Vehicles plans to bring what it demonstrated in Germany last fall: the RCH 155, a howitzer developed through a joint arrangement between the company and KNDS and created from an association of Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Nexter. The system is integrated onto a Boxer armored fighting vehicle.
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GDLS is submitting its Piranha system on a 10x10 platform using the same 52-caliber gun mounted on the KNDS-Rheinmetall RCH 155.
'It's fully automated,' Kendall Linson, the US business development manager for GLDS, said in a recent interview. 'The crew size is reduced significantly from what we currently have, of five to six people, down to two or three. The vehicle could handle two ... It's all fully automated.'
The team is confident that with the ammunition it will bring, it could achieve desired ranges from the ERCA program, Linson noted.
As a new team in the mix, Linson said, 'We're really happy about that opportunity to get into that adjacent market … a market that we're not in right now.'