"Artillery destroys target at 39.8 miles" Topic

…In a March 2020 demonstration firing of the emerging Long Range Precision Fires program at Yuma Proving Grounds, Ariz., an Army Howitzer blasted an Excalibur 155m artillery round out to ranges twice that of what existing artillery weapons are now capable of. The new weapon in development, called Extended Range Cannon Artillery, not only preserves the GPS-guided precision attack options characteristic of present-day artillery, but also extends attack ranges from roughly 30km (18.6 miles) out to nearly 70km (43.5 miles). This, senior Army weapons developers explain, gives ground artillery commanders the ability to destroy previously unreachable air and ground targets…

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My Dad was an artillery officer stationed in West Germany in the early 70's. I remember he told me that the targeting calculation they had to compute took into account the rotation of the Earth. I don't know the name of the gun he was assigned but I think it was the largest the Army had at the time.

Rotation or curvature?

I was trained that rotation needs to be considered for targets over 15km away.

Definitely rotation. During the time it takes the round to reach the target the earth will have rotated causing the target to be closer, further away, shifted to the side or a combination of them from where it was when the round was fired. The earth rotates at 1000mph. Convert that to feet and divide by 3600 seconds to get the approximate distance shifted per second.

I like it.

Yea, the coriolis effect is real.

I had a chance to talk with my Dad about his experience. He said he was on the 280m atomic gun. The barrel weighed 23 tons and there was 8 feet of recoil when you shot it. Could fire a 600 lb shell. 30km range. And yes it was Earth rotation they had to take into account. He had a pretty good memory for a guy in his 80's. I had never asked him about this before. Thanks for the question.

I was in artillery in the Marine Corps in the late 80s and early 90s.

We had to take into account; the rotation of the earth, air pressure, (depending on how high the round went there could be multiple adjustments for this), precipitation, powder temperature, air temperature, changes in elevation between shooter and target, how hot the gun's barrel was, etc. Not to mention type of round fired, (base ejecting, impact, RAP, etc).

A lot goes into shooting an artillery piece accurately.

And hitting a target at 39.8 miles is seriously impressive.

The target is for 70KM and a direct hit.