Another $92,293,000 down the shithole.

[unhappycamper]

Marine Corps 'urgently' orders 1,000-plus Raytheon shells
Arizona Daily Star | Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 1:05 pm

The Marine Corps has urgently ordered more than 1,000 guided artillery shells made by Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems, for use in Afghanistan.

The Marine Corps issued an “urgent operational need” for 1,037 of Raytheon’s 155-millimeter Excalibur extended range, precision-guided artillery projectiles, the company said.

The Marines have significantly increased operational use of Excalibur in the last year, firing as many as 32 rounds in one week, Raytheon said.

~snip~

Using GPS satellite guidance technology, Excalibur can hit targets with an accuracy within about 20 feet.

M982 Excalibur


I posted an article about this bad boy on 8.27.2008 in the Veterans forum. The Excalibur is a precision guided, $89,000 155mm artillery round. The original posting from a USA Today article said:

The need for precise weapons was underscored by Friday’s airstrikes in Afghanistan by the U.S.-led coalition that President Hamid Karzai said killed at least 89 civilians, the paper reported. The coalition has acknowledged civilian casualties and said it would investigate.

One Excalibur shell can destroy targets that would require dozens of conventional rounds. The Excalibur uses Global Positioning System signals to home in on targets, while traditional shells are aimed in a general direction, USA Today noted.

Excalibur shells cost $89,000 per round, compared with $300 for a conventional 155 mm shell, the paper wrote.

Sadly, $92 million is just chump change. :(

[Autumn]

1. It's all good. Plenty of safety net programs they can cut

to make up that $92 million. K/R This is a disgrace.

[TBF]

2. Recommend. nt

[HopeHoops]

3. It needs racing stripes.

[Scuba]

4. But think of it this way: Raytheon investors in London and Hong Kong are far wealthier now. n/t

[xchrom]

5. ...

:mad:

[unhappycamper]

6. ... .

:hi:

[bigtree]

7. gotta keep Raytheon's profit margin up (especially with the threat of an across the board cut)

. . . gotta get these out to the field and explode them so they can justify a new round of appropriation and production.

[n2doc]

8. Why kill civilians with a $300 shell when you can use a $88,000 one?

Especially when the justification for using said shell is a bad airstrike

[pa28]

20. 80k per shell. Just let that sink in for a minute.

In Leon's world budget cuts need to come from earned benefit programs like Social Security instead of the pentagon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/us/05military.html

He does not question why we have military bases in 60 countries or spend nearly 100k on a single artillery shell or why we aren't winning a stunning victory in Afghanistan with all this incredible hardware.

:crazy:

[Strelnikov_]

30. You've insulted me. And you've insulted this site with this bastard comment of yours.

Renovation program. Spare parts for 25 years. Who cares if it works or not or what it costs?

[Abin Sur]

33. Because it lets one shell do the job of 10 or 20.

What's more, money isn't the only consideration...supply has always been an issue for artillery, and using Excalibur reduces supply needs by 90%.

[SomethingFishy]

36. How about we just stop bombing them?

Oh, what a dumb idea.. never mind.

[SammyWinstonJack]

41. Can't do that, the defense contractors will suffer financially. That just won't do. Nope!

:silly: And the military big shots wouldn't have those nifty killing toys to play with.

[Abin Sur]

44. Lennon's "Imagaine" has very little real-world applicability.

There's not going to be a brotherhood of man, nor a lack of countries, religion, or possessions. Wars will continue to be fought for the foreseeable future, and the tools with which they are fought will be ever more sophisticated as time goes by.

And the world will not live as one.

[Javaman]

9. Think of how many students could have had their loans paid off

or how many underwater homeowners 92 million could have helped.

we are disgrace.

[DCKit]

21. Even better, a lottery where random citizens receive a check for $89K.

Hell, even a fraction of that, to even more people, and we'd see some real economic stimulus.

[truedelphi]

10. Thank you for the information.

Just listening to the television reports on the "Critical Condition" of the young veteran of Iraqi tours who got a skull fracture for protesting in the streets of Oakland.

A young guy, named Kendall Beaver, was chosen by reporters to offer up a counter viewpoint to that of Occupy Oakland - "If the protesters want to change things, they can move their money from banks into credit unions..."

What money? Who has money - other than the bankers and the MIC contractors?!?

This nation always has money for wars, but never for sensible programs.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Are we safe yet? Or, are we bankrupted yet?

[defendandprotect]

12. And, we need a long list of enemies to use them on -- !!

[Enthusiast]

22. This nation is good at

generating new enemies. We never seem to run out of them. But we must remember, "They hate us for our freedoms."

[defendandprotect]

23. Keep on tellin' it -- !!! :)

[rasputin1952]

13. 20 feet doesn't make much difference w/an artillery round...

especially when you on are on the receiving end of a barrage.

Nothing works like numbers...


High explosive 155mm round. Explosive Composition B material packed into a thick,internally-scored shell which causes a large blast and sends razor-sharp fragments at extreme velocities (5,000–6,000 meters per second). The kill zone is approximately a radius of 50 meters and casualty radius is 100 meters.

20 feet is approximately 6 meters, making the round slightly more accurate, but...

considering one can fire 296 155mm HE rounds, for the price of a single Excalibur, and a kill range of 50 meters/casualty range of 100 meters...and some 296 of HE rounds landing in an an area, (most likely considerably less than said 296), will kill just about everything in some 159,248 sq feet or 14,800 sq meters, (double area for casualty radius).

A single Excalibur will have the same kill/casualty radius, but at enormous cost, compared to the usual battery of 155's that will smash a target to bits with about 10 HE rounds, (cost $3000).

So...just what is the purpose of this thing...except to waste a huge pile of cash to get essentially the same results somewhat cheaply using a conventional method.

Then again....spending the cash on food, medicine, books, etc, beats the shit out of killing people anyway.

[jmowreader]

26. The purpose is to make Democratic Underground members happy

In days of old when knights were bold, tyrannical despots lived in huge castles on top of hills so no one could come up and kill 'em.

These days, tyrannical despots live in the most congested part of town so you can't blow their shit away without killing a bunch of innocent bystanders and galvanizing the entire world against you. "You killed three thousand people in an artillery barrage designed to take out one guy? How could you!" (The fact that he was practicing jus prima noctae followed by female genital mutilation might have had something to do with it...) Excalibur gives you the opportunity to blow these guys' shit away with minimal collateral damage.

This is not a weapon you'd use all the time. For most artillery barrages, the good old-fashioned 155mm rounds that cost $300 apiece, or the even cheaper 105mm rounds, are just fine--conventional artillery is not a pinpoint weapon by any stretch of the imagination. (You generally level a 300 meter x 200 meter area with artillery--in an urban area, 300 x 200 is going to kill a hell of a lot of people.) When you've got to get your point across with one round, you use Excalibur.

[rasputin1952]

31. Actually, if you want to take out a single target, you use a sniper...

and a $3 .50 cal round...but that's beside the point.

[jmowreader]

35. Assuming you can get a sniper within range, yeah you do

You also have to get him back out...and some of these people haven't seen daylight in the last ten years. Snipers don't do so well when your target's in the basement and won't come out.

[bertman]

14. The Excalibur uses Global Positioning System signals to home in on targets, while traditional shells

are aimed in a general direction, USA Today noted."

That statement is a TOTAL CROCK OF SHIT. Any artilleryman who aimed his rounds in a "general direction" would be courts-martialed. This is the kind of lying propaganda b.s. our media routinely gets away with. Supposedly, with today's high-tech weaponry artillery can be placed on target with extreme accuracy--even "conventional" rounds.

REC this thread.

[jmowreader]

27. Artillery isn't as precise as you think

Our cannoneers have very high-precision tools for laying and aiming cannons, but all that accuracy goes out the window the instant the projectile reaches the muzzle brake on the gun tube. The reality is, with a standard fuze the current projectile has a "circular error radius" of 150 meters, because artillery rounds are affected by weather all along their paths of travel. In other words, if you fire one round out of your howitzer it's gonna land somewhere in a circle a thousand feet across, centered on the thing you're trying to hit. This is why they fire registration rounds--they load the battery's number-one gun with the same projectile, charge and fuze they're going to use on the mission, send the round downrange and measure how far away from the target it landed.

There is a new GPS-guided course-correcting fuse that "significantly improves" the accuracy of the M795 projectile--it reduces the circular error radius to 50 meters. That's a hell of a lot better, but now instead of the possibility of blowing away the wrong fucking guy in a thousand-foot circle, you have the possibility of blowing away the wrong fucking guy in a 330-foot circle.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur, the Army has found this round will land within four meters of the target 92 percent of the time. A 26-foot circle of error is a HELL of a lot better than either a 1000-foot circle or a 330-foot circle.

The other advantage is, Excalibur is rocket-assisted. You can blow someone's shit away from 40 to 50 kilometers out; the M795 projectile will go a little over 20 kilometers. IIRC there's only one system in the former Soviet inventory that had that kind of range--this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2S7_Pion) is it, and insurgents don't want them. If the bad guys have counterbattery radars and counter-counterbattery equipment, Excalibur allows you to destroy the radars from outside the enemy's artillery fan, You use one Excalibur to take out each radar, send in our guys with M109 self-propelled howitzers and just blow the shit out of their artillery with all the $300 rounds you need.

[bertman]

32. Wow. Things have certainly degraded since Vietnam. You're right about the registration round

but even the first round down range in my experience with 105's was never even close to 500 feet off--that's a football field and a half. We weren't even using GPS systems, just an FO with a map calling in coordinates to a fire base. Usually one, maybe two rounds tops, were needed to get on target or close enough to do the job.

I'm sure there were some FO's who screwed up and caused a major adjustment before firing for effect, but that is not the same thing as a round or an artillery piece that is so messed up or a crew that is so bad that they can't get within 100 or 150 feet on the first round--if they get accurate coordinates.

I see that your reference to the Excalibur is from wikipedia. I'd love to know where you found the info about the accuracy of our current artillery pieces--which I am assuming you are referring to.

[jmowreader]

34. 105s are more precise than 155s...

because the projectile isn't as large, and it's not going as far. I've seen 105mm sections in the 101st who could put a round in a coffee can from five klicks out.

This is the information I used about the NEW and IMPROVED M795 155mm projectile...

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/m795.htm

If you go upthread you'd think they were planning to fire the Battle of Stalingrad with $80,000 rounds, and that ain't happening.

[bertman]

39. Thanks for the link. If I'm reading this correctly they already have the CCF

round that costs approx $5500 each and has vastly improved accuracy over the old 155 rounds. So now we are going to use $80,000 rounds instead. Whether it's the Battle of Stalingrad or just bombing a hut in Kandahar Province, the end result is the same: we still get 'collateral damage', maybe kill the targeted individual, and the U.S. taxpayer pays through the nose.

I'm thinking that pretty soon the DOD will be able to develop a 155 round that can be fired from 50 miles away, navigate through doorways, climb stairways, and penetrate the anal orifice of the intended targeted individual and at the cost of only $1,000,000 per round. Somehow that doesn't seem like anything except an obscene waste of money by a government that is already spending FAR TOO MUCH money on armaments.

But, of course, I realize that money is no object when it is being used to develop better ways to kill people.

[jmowreader]

42. They're developing SOMETHING like that...

Last week there was a thread about a backpackable hunter/killer UAV, but IIRC the little airplane didn't cost a million dollars a copy.

[russspeakeasy]

15. But the fucking liar john mccain bought a few votes for some more

of his pork programs....remember this is the same lying asshole who tried to tell us that he and "sarah the idiot" were capable of running this country....he single handedly set politics back 25 years..

[ChadwickHenryWard]

16. That thing chills me to my core.

The constant advance of killing technology is downright scary. This is just like the nukes during the Cold War. So much money and innovation is poured into making these awful tools of destruction. A GPS in a ballistic missile? That's obscene. That anyone could ever be so twisted and depraved to conceive of such a thing, let alone make it, is deeply saddening.

[SomethingFishy]

37. And they sell it like it's a good thing...

Kills less people, only the ones we want to kill. And people eat it up.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

38. It is of course a lie that smart bombs don't result in civilian casualties.

Ask anyone in Iraq or Afghanistan if that's the case, and I think you'll find that the answer is "no." Perhaps compared to say, cluster bombs, there is a reduction in the rate such casualties, but these things still miss and hit the adjacent building all the time.

I read the other day that the United States has utilized military force in seven countries so far this year. That's a pretty impressive show of destructive force.

[saras]

17. Second amendment! Second amendment! THIS'll keep the deer out of my garden! I WANT ONE!

[defendandprotect]

24. +1 --

[OnyxCollie]

18. Preparing for the next "humanitarian effort." nt

[Major Hogwash]

19. It won't matter in the end.

Because we'll just put it all on a credit card!!

[soryang]

25. Start a war, make a $killing$

It's those old poppy fields, out yonder. Dope in, money deposited on Wall Street, bombs out. Triangle of death. A veritable perpetual motion machine.

[Ignis]

28. Hey, cut 'em some slack, they're working their way through the catalog.

From Bill Hicks' routine on our advanced military technology in use during Gulf War I:

"Tommy, what's G12 do?"
"Says here it destroys everything but the fillings in their teeth."
"Well, hell, pull that one up."
(Distant explosion heard.)
"Cool! ...What's G13 do?"

[Abin Sur]

29. Excalibur has revolutionized artillery. I'm not suprised in the slightest

that the Marines want more of them.

From Strategypage.com:

http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/2008913232825.asp

Cannot Get Enough Excalibur

September 13, 2008

The U.S. Army has ordered another thousand Excalibur, 155mm, GPS guided artillery shells, at a cost of about $85,000 each. Australia ordered 250 of the shells earlier this year. American and Canadian troops have begun using the Excalibur shell in Afghanistan earlier this year. A year ago, American troops began using Excalibur in Iraq.

This was timely, because Islamic warriors tend to use civilians as human shields, and that means you have to be precise when you go after the bad guys. The Excalibur shell enabled the artillery to take care of these chores. A typical situation has enemy gunmen holding out in one building of a walled compound or village. In nearby buildings, there are women and children. While killing the enemy is good, killing the civilians can be a very bad thing. Smart bombs should be able to fix this, except that sometimes one of the smaller smart bombs, the 500 pounder, has too much bang (280 pounds of explosives).

A 155mm artillery shell should do the trick (only 20 pounds of explosives each), but at long range (20 kilometers or more), some of these shells will hit the civilians. That's because at that range, an unguided 155mm shell can land up to 100-200 meters from where you aimed it. This is where Excalibur comes in handy. The GPS guided Excalibur shell falls within a ten meter circle (the middle of that circle being the "aim point") no matter what the range.

After a year of use in Iraq, the troops find Excalibur invaluable for hitting just what you want to hit, and with a minimal amount of bang. Excalibur, being an artillery (which is controlled by the army) weapon, is easier to call in than a smart bomb (air force) attack. U.S. Army attack helicopters also have their Hellfire missiles, which provide a bit less bang than the Excalibur shell (and cost about the same). But while weather (especially sand storms) can interfere with helicopter operations, Excalibur is always ready to fire.

For most nations, the big drawback with Excalibur is cost. A "dumb" 155mm shell costs $300 or less, but when you take into account the civilian lives saved (and good will retained), it's a different story. Moreover, friendly troops can be closer to the target when Excalibur is used, meaning your infantry can get into the shelled target quicker, before any surviving enemy can get ready to shoot back.

The Excalibur shell is worth it in other ways. Ten 155mm shells (of any type, with their propellant and packaging) weigh about a ton. Ammo supply has always been a major problem with artillery, and Excalibur is the solution. With Excalibur, fewer 155mm shells have to be shipped thousands of miles, and looked after until they are used. One Excalibur shell can take out a target that would require 10-20 unguided shells.

(more at link)

GPS guided shells are the biggest upgrade in artillery since the French 75mm field gun.

[lonestarnot]

40. Old sick and children: Give up your medication that keeps you alive! We need shells!

:grr:

[Shagbark Hickory]

43. I wonder what the return policy is.