Firing an Excalibur round from an M777 A2 Lightweight Howitzer tank on Camp Fallujah, Iraq, Nov. 4, 2007.
Refitted Excalibur Rounds Hit Test Targets
Raytheon on Aug. 1 test-fired its GPS-guided 155mm XM982 Excalibur artillery shell with a new inertial measurement unit (IMU), hitting all nine targets in a trial at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., company officials said.
The Excalibur rounds “had an average impact distance of less than two meters versus a threshold requirement of 10 meters,” said Michelle Lohmeier, Raytheon’s deputy program manger, land combat product line.
The new IMUs, built by Atlantic Inertial Systems, Plymouth, England, were added over the past several weeks after reliability failures with the previous Honeywell-built IMUs.
The old IMUs had a failure rate of about 5% and new Excalibur buys are on hold until the issue is resolved. The Army says no combat rounds have had the problem.
5 Responses to “Excalibur Getting New Inertial Measurment Units”
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Does ‘failure rate’ mean ‘dud’? Or just ‘miss’.
I think its a “miss”.
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2007/01/excalibur-not-performing-as-hoped.html
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20060810.aspx
Kevin,
In this case I would suspect the problem was ” round impacted outside the required target radius” rather than “UXO” (unexploded ordance).
Exactly — missed the 10m CEP.
Excalibur is the [stuff] over here. Fired one at an IED team, and it literally hit the target on the head. Couldn’t get good BDA because he’d just turned into a red mist. Wasn’t until we reviewed the video footage later that we figured out what happened.
I think I read somewhere that the shells that are in the field now do meet the accuracy requirements, but they’ve only got 70% or so of the specified range. But I can’t find a link to that anywhere….