Industry now involved and the army is looking for a rate of fire of 6-10 rds/min.
Weight and mobility issues have forced the U.S. Army to abandon a government-developed autoloader for its Extended Range Artillery (ERCA) program, and the service now needs the help of six technology companies.
Brigadier General John Rafferty, Head of the Inter-Functional Long Range Precision Shooting Team, spoke at the Sept. 29 virtual conference on fires and provided an update on his programs. A notable change is the decision of the army not to produce an automatic loader, which it was developing for a new weapon based on the BAE Systems Paladin M109A7 self-propelled howitzer.
“The integration challenge for [this] was too much of a trade-off with mobility and durability, and some of the 3000 mile run results on the combat vehicle [at Yuma's Proving Grounds] were related to the center of gravity problem we had,” one-star general. "It was easy to say that we cannot do this."
Instead, the Army is turning to a group of six companies previously selected to help find solutions to resupply artillery ammunition - Actuate, Apptronik, Carnegie Robotics, Hivemapper, Neya Systems and Pratt Miller. While Brigadier General Rafferty did not provide exhaustive information on the path ahead, he noted that a future opportunity might not be an autoloader at all.
Source US Army scraps ERCA autoloader plans, heads back to the drawing board
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