This is pretty neat. No more artillery barrages and firing for effect. Just fire one round, or two for overkill...
GPS-Guided Shell Deploys
The Excalibur, a first-of-its-kind Global Positioning System- (GPS-) guided artillery shell, is on its way to Kuwait for deployment in Iraq, according to U.S. Army officials with the Picatinny Arsenal, N.J. Under development for eight years by Raytheon and three years by Raytheon and BAE Systems, Excalibur will be deployed after official results from recent final-stage testing.
In a late November U.S. Army test at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., 13 of 14 Excalibur rounds fired up to 24 kilometers away hit within 10 meters of their targets — an unprecedented circular error probable (CEP) for cannon artillery, Raytheon program official Everett Tackett said here at the Association of the United States Army’s Institute of Land Warfare Winter Symposium. Conventional artillery has a CEP of about 70 to 100 meters at 10 kilometers, 200 to 300 meters at 30 kilometers.
Tackett said the shells were fired from gun barrels pointed as much as 15 degrees away from the target, testing their ability to steer themselves in flight. “The rounds totally changed course, adjusting their ballistic trajectory toward the target,” he said.
The Army will fire Excalibur Block 1a-1 rounds from its 155mm howitzer and the new XM 777 lightweight 155mm howitzer, which was first fielded in October with the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 11th Field Artillery at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.
“I don’t know of any land-based system that has comparable capability,” said retired Army Gen. William Nash, who commanded troops in Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo, and is now a Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow.
----------------------------------------
And coming next -
Guided Bullets - piezoelectric actuators built into the round, the bullet goes where the guidance tells it, even around corners...