China and Russia already have weapons that can fire with reliability over hundreds of miles, leaving the United States to play catch-up in a new missile technology arms race.
From course-correcting fuses for improved accuracy to honing 29-foot barrels to sustain the high temperatures and pressures of repeated fires, the Army has prioritized the development of long-range precision fire weapons.
But the commander overseeing the Army Futures Command effort at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, warns there is no room for error to reach the goal by 2023.
Until then, America’s adversaries retain an advantage.
“There isn’t a moment to lose,” Army Brig. Gen. John Rafferty told the Washington Examiner in a Heritage Foundation virtual discussion on improving the Army’s precision fires capability.
“Those are going to be pretty expensive projectiles going after high-value targets at extended ranges. Those things have got to be hit to kill, and that can’t be two hits for a kill,” said the director of the Long Range Precision Fires Cross-Functional Team.
“The No. 1 priority carries a lot of weight,” he said, noting that his effort receives priority attention across Army test facilities and for analysis.
The Army intends to invest $10 billion over the next five years on its entire modernization effort.
Chief among its priorities is a complement of long-range precision fires, including hypersonic weapons that travel at over 15 times the speed of sound.
In fiscal year 2021, the Army has requested $1.7 billion to further develop long-range precision fires, with $800 million set aside for hypersonic weapons.
The effort can’t come soon enough.
China already has shown off its hypersonic missiles at military parades, and Russia has tested several hypersonic weapons that can be launched from ships, submarines, ballistic missiles, and by air.
Still, Rafferty believes the U.S. is on track to maintain a combined advantage over peer adversaries.
“The rigor that’s put into our systems in terms of the technical requirements, the safety and reliability, and just the world-class S&T backbone,” he said. “[It will] make sure that what we have out there provides that overmatch.”
The three main systems in development include a strategic long-range cannon, precision strike missile that can fire beyond 500 km, and an Extended Range Cannon Artillery with a 58 caliber gun tube accurate at 70 km with a goal of reaching distances of 130 km.
“It’s a long gun tube. It’s 29-30 feet, and that’s one of the ways that you get range: bigger chamber, more propellant, longer gun tube,” Rafferty said.
A successful June test at the Army’s Redstone Test Center in Alabama will be followed by a firing at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico this fall.
With such a long gun tube, the Army ran tests loading and unloading the munition from a C-17 and rail cars at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County, Maryland.
Rafferty assessed that given his knowledge of America’s near-peer competitors, the 2023 deadline is apt. Meanwhile, adversaries will have an edge in the reliability of the weapons they are fielding and their consistent funding stream.
“We’re never gonna have more cannon systems, we’re never going to have more rockets and missiles. But what we do better than any armory in the world is fight as a combined arms team,” he added. “The hypersonic delivery of the prototype capability in ’23 is as fast as we can get there.”
By 2023, the weapons will be integrated into what the Army is calling a Strategic Fires Battalion.
A special multimode seeker on the front of the missile will soon give the Army the ability to attack maritime targets in the Pacific and integrated air defense systems in Europe.
“That is really the capability that the commanders want, and we have the opportunity to do that,” Rafferty said.
