Yuma Proving Ground Remains On Artillery Cutting Edge

For most of its history, artillery testing has been Yuma Proving Ground’s core mission.

- Mark Schauer

As artillery technology evolved over the decades, YPG remained on the cutting edge of testing guided and semi-guided munitions capable of hitting within mere meters of a target many kilometers away.

Today, the Chief of Staff of the Army has identified long-range precision guided munitions as the service’s top priority, with aspirations of fielding systems within four years capable of accurately firing at targets 100 kilometers away.

In perspective, a currently fielded 155 mm artillery piece typically fires at targets no more than about 30 kilometers away.

One critical component of the Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) program currently being tested at the proving ground is the XM1113 projectile, which exceeded 60 kilometers in a test conducted in late May.

“This is a fairly traditional artillery round, but putting a bigger rocket on it allows us to achieve much farther ranges,” said Tyler Heagney, test officer. “Precision and long-range are the objectives.”

For the test, the projectiles were fired from an Extended Range Cannon developed under the ERCA project. Though capable of substantially longer ranges, the new projectile is remarkably similar to currently fielded 155 mm rounds.

“The prototypes of XM1113 projectiles being manufactured today use tooling that is relatively close to what we would use once the round moves into production,” said Ductri Nguyen, ERCA lead. “It would be a relatively easy transition, though there are some optimizations we could do for cost-cutting.”

The most significant difference is in the round’s much larger rocket, which pushes out more than twice as much thrust as the legacy system. Methodical test Fires of the new round are vitally important, and recovering the fired rounds for careful analysis even more so.