ATK’s PGK: Turning Shells into Precision Artillery

ATK’s PGK

Alliant Tech Systems’ GPS-guided Precision Guidance Kit hopes to do for artillery shells what Boeing’s JDAM tail kit has done for conventional bombs – or what ATK’s APMI kit has done for 120mm mortars.

The Western way of war has largely pushed conventional artillery off of the battlefield. A 200 – 300 meter CEP (Circular Error Probable, where 50% of rounds hit within that radius) just isn’t viable when you need to reduce the risks of friendly casualties and collateral damage. Attempts to improve that performance began in the 1980s, but ran into 2 big roadblocks: cost, and reliability.

GPS guidance and new technologies like MEMS have helped solve the reliability problem, and Raytheon’s widely-fielded M982 Excalibur rounds offer a publicly-disclosed CEP of 20m. It’s probably a bit less in practice. On the other hand, they cost over $100,000 per shell, and must be produced as a complete unit. Enter artillery fuze and propellant maker ATK’s XM1156 Precision Guidance kit, which screws into existing 155mm M549A1 and M795 shells, costs less, and offers < 50m CEP. That's good enough to make PGK an important supplement, and the US Army is pursuing it.

Rapid Fire Jan. 8, 2013: Latest Estimate on Sequester FY13 Size

• DOD Comptroller Robert Hale spoke at the Brookings think tank, where he confirmed, between a couple decent jokes, that a delay in the FY14 budget request was likely. His number for the impact of sequestration on FY13 – starting on March 1st unless it is further delayed or cancelled – is $45B, vs. earlier estimates of $62B in cuts (back when the sequester was supposed to kick in on Jan. 1st). Hale does not rule out an extension of the current Continuing Resolution. Video embedded below.

• A timely 2014 President Budget is definitely not going to happen by its legal due date (i.e. next month), as the US government first needs to sort out – again – how to deal with its debt ceiling. The Bipartisan Policy Center offers a helpful analysis.

• NAK Browne, the Chief of Staff of the Indian Air Force, is complaining that a recently-announced decrease in the defense budget will slow down modernization efforts.

• India’s Business Standard is accusing the Ministry of Defence of lowering its requirements for a forthcoming purchase of night vision devices in order to favor Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), despite the Army’s demands for equipment that works under practically no light.