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Long-Range Projectiles For Navy's Newest Ship Too Expensive To Shoot (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) is the U.S. Navy's latest warship, commissioned just last month -- and it comes with the biggest guns the Navy has deployed since the twilight of the battleships. But it turns out the Zumwalt's guns won't be getting much of a workout any time soon, aside from acceptance testing. That's because the special projectiles they were intended to fire are so expensive that the Navy has canceled its order. As [Ars] described [Zumwalt's Advanced Gun System (AGS)] in a story two years ago: "The automated AGS can fire 10 rocket-assisted, precision-guided projectiles per minute at targets over 100 miles away. Those projectiles use GPS and inertial guidance to improve the gun's accuracy to a 50 meter (164 feet) circle of probable error -- meaning that half of its GPS-guided shells will fall within that distance from the target." The projectile responsible for that accuracy -- something far too complex to just be called a "shell" or "bullet" -- is the Long Range Land-Attack Projectile (LRLAP). Each projectile has precision guidance provided by internal global positioning and inertial sensors, and bursts of LRLAPs could in theory be fired over a minute following different ballistic trajectories that cause them to land all at the same time. Lockheed Martin won the competition to produce the LRLAPs, and the company described their capabilities thusly: "155mm LRLAP provides single strike lethality against a wide range of targets, with three times the lethality of traditional 5-inch naval ballistic rounds -- and because it is guided, fewer rounds can produce similar or more lethal effects at less cost. LRLAP has the capability to guide multiple rounds launched from the same gun to strike single or multiple targets simultaneously, maximizing lethal effects." The "less cost" part, however, turned out to be a pipe dream. With the reduction of the Zumwalt class to a total of three ships, the corresponding reduction in requirements for LRLAP production raised the production costs just as the price of the ships they would be deployed to soared. Defense News reports that the Navy is canceling production of the LRLAP because of an $800,000-per-shot price tag -- more than 10 times the original projected cost.
A few things, after 5 minutes of Googling, in no particular order:
1) That max range was 100 km, not 100 miles; so, 53 miles. It's only been tested to 83km/45mi. And that's just the "let's see how far it will go" test.
2) Yeah, it's 155mm, but not compatible with any other 155mm munitions.
3) The elevation is 70 degrees, so it's really a guided missile launcher, not a "gun".
4) There's so much guidance and propulsion crap onboard, there's hardly any (24 lbs) room for the High Explosive for the warhead.
5) Most of the lethality estimates involve using the Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact theory. So the plan is to have half-a-dozen rounds land on target, at the same time. Good luck with that.
6) So, $80,000 per shot was the pie-in-the-sky target cost??? From a glorified cannon?