XBradTC

So, a friend linked this post on Facebook about the US Army’s Excalibur 155mm guided artillery shell being adapted to the US Navy’s 5” (127mm) Mk54 gun.

Raytheon’s 155mm M982 Excalibur extended-range guided artillery shell is being shrunk down to fit into the Mark 45 five inch deck guns that are deployed aboard the Navy’s Cruisers and Destroyers. This miniaturized sea-going Excalibur, known as the N5, could triple the range of current five inch shells and offer pinpoint ‘danger close’ fire support like never before.

Since my friend teased the link as another nail in the A-10 coffin, that sparked a bit of debate. I of course, chimed in:

1. The Marines operate their own fleet of CAS aircraft, that is, the AV-8B and the F/A-18 Hornets.
2. PGM is here to stay. Both Army and Marines now use, or very shortly will, guided MLRS, 155mm artillery, and 120mm mortars. That precision ability means less need to call on PGM equipped CAS. Not eliminate, but reduce. And the future of CAS has been shown to be PGM anyway.
3. We can reasonably expect to see similar PGM capability extended to 81mm mortars in the next few years.
4. The relatively short range of the N45 is really only a matter of importance for the first 48 hours or so of a landing- that is, until the landing force gets its own artillery ashore.
5. The Army (and thus the Marines) are also fielding PGM 155mm artillery that simply uses a guided fuze installed on conventional 155mm common shells. We can also expect to see that applied to the 5″ gun. These shells have a shorter range than Excalibur, or N45, but they are also a good bit cheaper, and offer virtually the same accuracy within their range capability as the more expensive rounds.
6. CAS isn’t dead, nor even dying. But CAS is a mission, not a platform. Sure, I’d like to see the A-10 kept around. But the Air Force isn’t out to kill the A-10 from some historical dislike of the CAS mission. They just don’t have the money. Further, while the A-10 is reasonably safe in the face of little or no air defense, it will fare very badly in the face of anything above 1st and 2nd generation MANPADS. The simple kinematics of missile defense means that a faster jet is less vulnerable to being hit.

I recently addressed PGM artillery in this post.