PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - £2bn Black Hole
View Single Post
Old 2nd Jun 2008, 22:18
  #9 (permalink)  
Modern Elmo
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Tullahoma TN
Posts: 482
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
MLRS - From my restricted point of view appears to be a nice to have rather than must have. Any artillery guys on PPRuNe can comment?

January 10, 2007: The U.S. Army is testing a thermobaric (fuel air explosive) warhead for its GMLRS (officially the "GMLRS Unitary rocket") rockets. In the last year, U.S. Army artillery units in Iraq have been firing about ten GPS guided 227mm MLRS rockets a month in Iraq. When the GMLRS (Guided MLRS) first went into action, the troops realized that this was a near-perfect artillery weapon. There have been no reliability problems with the GMLRS, which has a range of 70 kilometers and, because of the GPS guidance, has the same accuracy at any range. Unguided rockets become less accurate the farther they go. The GMLRS is designed to put each rocket with in a 16 foot circle (the center of which is the GPS coordinates the rocket is programmed to go for). In nearly all cases, the GMLRS rocket appears to land less than ten feet from the aiming point.

...

In order to get more GMLRS, all new MLRS production is being switched to GMLRS, and a retrofit kit, that will turn unguided MLRS rockets into GMLRS, has been introduced. The army believes that GMLRS will remain the most useful smart weapon, even with the coming introduction of the hundred pound 155mm GPS guided Excalibur artillery shell, and the U.S. Air Force's 250 pound JDAM (the SDB, or small diameter bomb). ...

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20070110.aspx?comments=Y
Modern Elmo is offline