The US Army is creating artillery rounds guided by AI

[Peter1469]

The US Army is creating artillery rounds guided by AI

The Cannon Delivered Area Effects munition (C-DAEM) will replace the dual purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM). Why does this matter.

The DPICM fires artillery rounds that applies the concept of cluster bombs to artillery rounds. So they may or may not destroy their intended target(s) and they leave unexploded ordinance all over.

The C-DAEM will have AI that will direct the cluster munition to targets even where the artillerymen (now + artillerywomen) cannot see the targets and even if the targets are moving.

Cool stuff.

The U.S. Army is working on a new artillery shell capable of locating enemy targets, including moving tanks and armored vehicles. The shell, called Cannon-Delivered Area Effects Munition (C-DAEM), is designed to replace older weapons that leave behind unexploded cluster bomblets on the battlefield that might pose a threat to civilians. The shell is designed to hit targets even in situations where GPS is jammed and friendly forces are not entirely sure where the enemy is.

In the 1980s, the U.S. Army fielded dual purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) artillery rounds. DPICM was basically the concept of cluster bombs applied to artillery, with a single shell packing dozens of tennis ball-sized grenades or bomblets. DPICM shells were designed to eject the bomblets over the battlefield, dispersing them over a wide area. The bomblets were useful unprotected infantry troops and could knock out a tank or armored vehicle’s treads, weapons, or sensors, disabling it.

DPICM made artillery more lethal than ever, but there was a cost nobody foresaw: unexploded dud bomblets often littered battlefields, becoming a danger to civilians long after the war was over. An international movement to ban cluster bombs and artillery came about, and though the U.S. isn’t a signatory it has pledged not to use munitions with a dud rate greater than one percent. Dud rates for such weapons often reach five percent or more.


Hitting tanks and armored vehicles with artillery from long range is hard, but DPICM made it easy. Now that DPICM is gone the Army wants something new to replace it, something that trades showering an area with bomblets with an artillery round that intelligently seeks out enemy targets on its own. That new weapon is C-DAEM.

Read the rest at the link.