Thursday - September 18, 2008

Excalibur Works Just Fine, Thanks

I guess all the development costs were worth it. 6 months ago I posted about the relatively new Excalibur guided artillery shell. Here is some feedback from the field. Wow!

Excalibur Deemed ‘Amazingly Accurate’

September 15, 2008
Army News Service|by Audra Calloway

From taking out top al-Qaida operatives to safely firing within 50 meters of dismounted infantrymen, the Picatinny Excalibur projectile is already paying dividends a year after its initial fielding to Soldiers.

When Excalibur first debuted in Iraq in May 2007, it became the Army’s first all-weather, precision-guided artillery round. While the Excalibur Program Office at Picatinny estimates approximately 70 of the ground-breaking Excalibur rounds have been fired in Iraq, Capt. Victor Scharstein of Alpha Battery, 2nd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, commanded one of the original units to field the round. Scharstein used Excalibur multiple times in the Diyala province of Iraq. Operation Arrowhead Ripper, the deliberate clearance of Baquba, was one mission he recalls using the precision round.

“It was an urban setting, it was extremely bad weather and there were no aircraft able to fly that day,” he said.

Because of Excalibur, his unit was able to fire an artillery round at a target within 50 meters of infantryman on the ground, who were clearing the area.

“Had we not had Excalibur, we wouldn’t have been able to do that,” he said. “We wouldn’t have been able to engage that target.”

While the unit could have engaged the target with conventional artillery, that would have risked significant collateral damage and put civilians and U.S. Soldiers at risk, Scharstein said. Overall, Scharstein said the round was “amazingly accurate” with his fires producing a 92 percent success rate, meaning that the fired round hit or had an effect on the intended target 92 percent of the time.

The rest of the Army also began seeing the powerful effects of Excalibur almost immediately after its debut. In July 2007 it was used to take down a top target for al-Qaida south of Baghdad, Iraq, according to a July 16, 2007 news release by Multi-National Division-Central Public Affairs. This al-Qaida in Iraq cell leader was responsible for improvised explosive devices, vehicle-borne IEDs and indirect fire attacks on coalition forces in Arab Jabour. The operative was in a meeting house when the 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery Regiment fired two Excalibur rounds and destroyed the house, the release said.

Such precision can be attributed to Excalibur’s global-positioning system technology. When the projectile leaves the gun, it does a self-test, acquires its signal and uses the signal to find its target, Scharstein said. This precision accuracy has “brought artillery back into the close urban fight,” Scharstein said. “Excalibur gives you the confidence that you can support Soldiers in the close fight.”

Excalibur, which debuted in Afghanistan in February 2008, currently has an accuracy of less than 10 meters at ranges out to 14 miles, said Lt. Col. Joseph Minus, Excalibur program manager at Picatinny Arsenal. However, the next phase of Excalibur, called Ib, will have an accuracy requirement of less than 10 meters out to 24 miles, he said.
...
Excalibur also has a multi-functional fuze, which allows the round to be programmed to explode in the air, once it hits a hard surface or after it penetrates inside a target.

Conventional weapons have this same capability, but a fuze needs to be changed depending on which option is required, said Scharstein. With Excalibur’s multi-functional fuze, instead of changing fuzes, you program the setting you want.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/18/2008 at 08:08 AM   
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