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We talked about the Army’s long range missile, the Pershing, in an earlier post. Let’s discuss it’s little brother, the Lance. Development of the Lance began at roughly the same time as the Pershing, but technical issues meant it would not be fielded until a full eight years after the Pershing.

The Lance, MGM-52, was a short range ballistic missile utilizing inertial navigation to deliver either a nuclear or (eventually) a conventional warhead to a range of from 45 to 75 miles.

The missile was stabilized in flight by spinning. The spin was imparted by four small solid rockets that gave off a characteristic black smoke. Main propulsion was a boost/sustain liquid propellant rocket motor that used a unique throttle technique to adjust the range. The initial boost phase was about what you’d expect, but afterwards, the inertial guidance system detected accelerations and either throttled up or down to bring the missile back to the proper ballistic path. It was in large part this complex throttle technology that accounted for the lengthy development time.

After this lengthy development, Lance was finally fielded in 1972 to replace the earlier Honest John unguided rocket, and the Sergeant short range ballistic missile.

The Lance was carried on the M752 launch vehicle, which was based on the ubiquitous M113 personnel carrier. A second vehicle based on the same chassis served as a loader and transporter for two spare missiles. A firing platoon would consist of two launchers (each with a six man crew) and two transporters.  The firing apparatus could be dismounted from the carrier, and converted to a trailer for use in airborne and air assault operations. While the system was very mobile, in either its tracked or trailer version, one drawback was that firing points had to be pre-surveyed.

Lance was initially fielded with only a nuclear warhead options, using the W70 with a yield of between 1kt to 100kt. Later, the W70-3 “Enhanced Radiation” warhead was fielded. The “Enhanced Radiaton” warhead was also widely known as the Neutron Bomb. That is, fast neutrons shed by the detonation would be the primary casualty causing mechanism. It was hoped that using this variant would mean less devastation inside West German, while still producing the desired casualty effects on any Soviet targets.

By the late 1970s, the Army started to think that maybe tossing nuclear weapons around on a European battlefield wasn’t really the best idea, but that something like the Lance was still pretty handy. Evolving doctrine at that time meant corps commanders would increasingly utilize “Deep Strike” well beyond the first echelon of Soviet forces to influence the battle. The AH-64 Apache was developed very much with this role in mind. But the corps commander could also use a conventional variant of Lance. And so, a conventional warhead, armed with about 800 submunitions, was issued. The submunitions were ideal for dealing with targets such as assembly areas, logistics and fuel depots, and air defenses. Unfortunately, as the conventional warhead weighed quite a bit more than the nuclear warhead, the range was considerably reduced, to about 45 miles.

Once the conventional warhead was available, the missile became popular with several allied nations, including Germany, Britain, Belgium, Italy and Israel.

With the unilateral US decision to forego battlefield nuclear weapons in the early 1990s, the Lance was quickly withdrawn from service. In its place, the M270 MLRS and especially the Army Tactical Missile System gave commanders a better, faster, cheaper conventional long range artillery system.

This video is fairly long, but gives an excellent overview of the Lance.

If that’s too long for you, this short video shows the British Army conducting some live firings.