Navy tests Army’s Excalibur precision artillery shell, doubling the range of its 5 inch gun

This is the sort of thing each service should be doing. Leverage developed technology or products from another service for your own. An example: the Marines created a multi-cam battle dress uniform and then the Army felt like it needed to do it too. So both services spent millions in research and development costs. After the Corps put their multicams in service, I said at the time that the Sec of Army should hold a press conference and announce that the Army is adopting it as well, without the globe and anchor thing. Instead we got the ACUs, which isn't a very effective camouflage for wooded areas.

The Navy quietly conducted a ground test of a precision-guided projectile the Army fires from cannons, manufacturer Raytheon revealed this week.

The test of the N5 naval variant of the Excalibur projectile took place in September at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, John Hobday, senior manager for advanced programs with Raytheon's Land Warfare Systems division, told Military.com on Monday.



"What we have done is leveraged and reused the components ... in a round that can be fired from the Navy 5-inch gun," Hobday said. "Part of [the test] was to establish the fact that it did work with the existing 5-inch rounds."


The N5 round was previously fired from a naval 5-inch gun in a 2015 test at Yuma. The follow-on test indicates the Navy's continued interest in the technology, although a timeframe for moving forward has not been made clear.


"What comes next is the Navy deciding where their priorities lie," Hobday said. "It's a positive indicator that they have allowed us to release this information."


The Excalibur projectile offers double the effective range of the conventional shell currently used with the MK-45 5-inch gun aboard Navy destroyers and cruisers. It can fire out to 40 kilometers, or almost 22 nautical miles, compared with the current range of just over 20 kilometers. The projectile also offers accuracy inside two meters.


And, Hobday said, it would be a smart investment for the Navy because the service will be able to "leverage other people's money" by taking advantage of an existing program. Testing, he said, shows the projectile could be used in the existing 5-inch gun without major changes being required.