Strategic Capabilities Office - Hypervelocity Gun Weapon - Missile Defense

TomS said:
The French 100mm is a single-piece fixed round (~23kg), while 127mm is a two-piece semi-fixed round (total ~50kg). That complicates the loading process.
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Depends entirely on where you mate the shell and the casing. If you mate the two in the ready ammo rack instead of the breech, you can get a very high rate of fire till the ready ammo is expended.



TomS said:
I think I'd want to focus on being able to fire a fast burst of 3-6 rounds, rather than on sustained high RoF.
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Longer burst, but yes. Give me a good 18-24 rounds at some 60rpm and we're good.
 
Firefinder said:
The guns on the Sherman Class DDs and their sister classes did have a 48 rpm gun in the Mark 42.

But the Hydraulics at the time couldn't take it so they ended up being derate to 28ish after Vietnam. Later they did get rerated for 38 for short bursts in basically PANIC AT INCOMING mode.

With the Current MK45 mount 20 rpm being a result of that experience. The navy wanted a gun thats goes blam the first time every time til its mags empty, reload and go again. THE 45 does that well.

So any replacement for that is going to need similar reliability.
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I'm not here to impugn the reputation of the Mk45, but today's Mod4 is is still the mount designed for ERGM (whoops) and the top-line Otobreda 127/64 pips it comfortably. A Mod5 capable of increasing RoF should be very do-able as a bare minimum step. A rapid-firing 155mm using STANAG ammo (not LRAP silliness) should at least be looked at.
 
Moose said:
A rapid-firing 155mm using STANAG ammo (not LRAP silliness) should at least be looked at.
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Challenge with that is 155mm Army is separate-loading ammunition: shell, bagged charge, and primer. (primer may be part of the charges, but it's still at least two things to load)

So you'd need to design a 155mm casing big enough to hold artillery Super Charge. Or go to an 8" bore with saboted 155mm and go back to the US 8"/55 Mk16/Mk71
 
Scott Kenny said:
Challenge with that is 155mm Army is separate-loading ammunition: shell, bagged charge, and primer. (primer may be part of the charges, but it's still at least two things to load)

So you'd need to design a 155mm casing big enough to hold artillery Super Charge. Or go to an 8" bore with saboted 155mm and go back to the US 8"/55 Mk16/Mk71
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A naval gun could adopt the same charge being developed for the Army Multi-Domain Artillery Cannon, which will probably be rather similar to the one-piece cased supercharge developed for ERCA. That was too big to manhandle, but both MDAC and naval guns should eliminate that step in loading.
 

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That and well.

You just got to make sure the shells work in the gun.

You can just put the MCAS powder in a brass case and call it a day.

Hell as is the Super charge is bout 10 pounds more then the old 6/47 used in ww2, with zone 6 charges being less at 30 pounds to the 6/47 33 pounds.

The biggest difference between a case and bag guns is the shape of the breech and chamber. You can put a Bag gun shell in a Case gun just fine so long as the bore the same.

The Des Moines 8 inch guns were prime example of this, they used the same Shells as the older cruisers but used brass cases compare to Baltimore class Bags.

As for the shells themselves?

The Army switch over to a new insensitive explosives back in 2015, the IMX-104. Which has a higher safety factor then the Navy's PBXN-9. With the PGK fuse having similar hero safety standards.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Though if we're using ERCA Super, going to need polymer driving bands on the shells.
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The good news is neither MDAC nor our theoretical 155mm RF would likely be slinging conventional shells with a supercharge. They would be shooting HVP in its sabot with supercharge to engage missiles/UAVs/etc. If they needed to engage a ground/surface target they'd use standard shells on a reduced charge or potentially an XM1155 for extreme range. So design the polymer or new alloy band into the sabot rather than tinkering with standard ammo.
 
apparition13 said:
Speaking of naval guns:

Sweden 120 mm/46 (4.7") TAK120 - NavWeaps

www.navweaps.com www.navweaps.com

the Swedish 120mm/46 TAK120, at 80 rpm and 28 tons for the mounting. Scale it up to 127 and you could use DART or HVP.
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Simply scaling it up wouldn't work, it's designed to work with lightweight fixed ammunition used for a land-based anti-aircraft gun, not the heavier and two-piece ammunition used by the Mk 45.
 
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
Simply scaling it up wouldn't work, it's designed to work with lightweight fixed ammunition used for a land-based anti-aircraft gun, not the heavier and two-piece ammunition used by the Mk 45.
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I've got an idea for the two-piece ammunition problem: have the ready racks loaded with both shell and case so there's a single loading action needed into the gun. Yes, that pre-supposes your ammunition requirements, but if you are doing either DART/HVP or prox HE/frag it doesn't matter. Reloading the ready racks would be slower than the gun could fire, of course.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I've got an idea for the two-piece ammunition problem: have the ready racks loaded with both shell and case so there's a single loading action needed into the gun. Yes, that pre-supposes your ammunition requirements, but if you are doing either DART/HVP or prox HE/frag it doesn't matter. Reloading the ready racks would be slower than the gun could fire, of course.
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Would need an entirely new feed system, given the longer round, it wouldn't just be a simple scaling up of an already existing design.
 
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
Would need an entirely new feed system, given the longer round, it wouldn't just be a simple scaling up of an already existing design.
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The ready racks would be longer versions of the 120mm. Depending on how they were laid out, might need another 2 sets of rails to hold the shell and casing properly.

The shell elevators from the magazine would have to be different, designed from scratch. Or copied from a 5" piece.

But I admit I really need to physically see the two guns to decide what can be scaled up and what needs to be bespoke.
 
The United States Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) intends to issue a sole source Request for Prototype Proposal (RFPP), in accordance with 10 U.S.C. § 4022, to BAE Systems Land & Armaments L.P., 4800 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55421, for the award of a prototype Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) for the Multi-Domain Artillery Cannon (MDAC) and Hypervelocity Projectile (HVP) prototypes.



U.S. Army RCCTO has a requirement to develop and deliver a full Multi-Domain Artillery Cannon System (MDACS) Battery no later than Q4FY27 followed by an Operational Demonstration (OD) in FY28. A full MDACS Battery consists of eight (8) Multi-Domain Artillery Cannons (MDAC), four (4) Multi-Function Precision Radars (MFPR), two (2) Multi-Domain Battle Managers (MDBM), and separately, no less than 144 Hypervelocity Projectiles (HVP). The MDACS mission is to defend Joint Force fixed and semi-fixed locations against attack by a broad spectrum of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), Cruise Missiles (CM), Fixed Wing (FW), Rotary Wing (RW), and other advanced air and missile threats and to complement existing air and missile defenses by operating in integrated operational scenarios. Based on market research conducted in July-October 2024, to include Requests for Information (RFI) for both the MDAC and HVP, each published on 08 July 2024 and closed on 24 July 2024, the U.S. Army RCCTO believes BAE Systems Land & Armaments L.P. is the only responsible source capable of developing and delivering both the MDAC and HVP prototypes within the required schedule; competition of this effort is not practicable and will not meet mission fielding requirements.
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SAM.gov

sam.gov sam.gov
 
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
Simply scaling it up wouldn't work, it's designed to work with lightweight fixed ammunition used for a land-based anti-aircraft gun, not the heavier and two-piece ammunition used by the Mk 45.
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DART wouldn't be as much of an issue since it's 76mm. You could use the the 120mm case with a larger sabot if you can't scale the gun up to 127. I have no idea what that would do to velocity and range of the DART round, but I'm sure someone here could figure that out.

HVM would be an issue. How about the Italian 127? There was talk about using DART in that as well.
 
apparition13 said:
DART wouldn't be as much of an issue since it's 76mm. You could use the the 120mm case with a larger sabot if you can't scale the gun up to 127. I have no idea what that would do to velocity and range of the DART round, but I'm sure someone here could figure that out.

HVM would be an issue. How about the Italian 127? There was talk about using DART in that as well.
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Not sure about Dart, but Vulcano is also a subcaliber round
 
Scott Kenny said:
Not sure about Dart, but Vulcano is also a subcaliber round
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Dart is also subcaliber, but subcaliber for 76mm. I'm having trouble locating a source for a 127mm version though, it might have just been supposition since it seems an obvious development. Vulcano for 76mm is in development, though that has been the case for several years and I don't know how much progress has been made.

Here's a question though. The OM 127/54 guns had a rate of fire of 40 rpm, the 127/62 is 32. The Mark 42 was originally 40 before derating (and the two barrel Mark 66 was intended to be 48 each for 96), while the Mark 45s are 16-20. Why do the newer guns have lower rates of fire than the older ones? I would have thought the opposite would be the case.
 
apparition13 said:
Here's a question though. The OM 127/54 guns had a rate of fire of 40 rpm, the 127/62 is 32. The Mark 42 was originally 40 before derating (and the two barrel Mark 66 was intended to be 48 each for 96), while the Mark 45s are 16-20. Why do the newer guns have lower rates of fire than the older ones? I would have thought the opposite would be the case.
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The Mk 45 specifically prioritizes light weight and reliability over maximizing rate of fire. (There was a proposed high-ROF single mount as well, which would have been heavier and likely more prone to breakage.)

Likewise, the OTO LW mount is substantially lighter than the older Compact version, and a revised, somewhat slower, loading mechanism is part of how they achieved that weight savings.
 
Also help that as technology improve it increase the Accuracy and as such hit rates.

Going from needing to full a 50 meters with proxy fuse HE in a second out to 10km to being able to put that shell inside a 10 meter circle at that range drastically decrease the speed needs.

Throw in better shell and fuse designs?

What took 3 48 rpm guns to do can now be done by 1 22 rpm mount
 
I'm thinking of them as dual purpose AA and surface attack mounts. For AA the higher fire rates with HVM type missiles could defend against a much larger attack, while for surface attack with something like guided Vulcano the higher fire rate would be much harder to intercept. With good enough shells and range you could get rid of everything up to and including ESSM.
 
apparition13 said:
I'm thinking of them as dual purpose AA and surface attack mounts. For AA the higher fire rates with HVM type missiles could defend against a much larger attack, while for surface attack with something like guided Vulcano the higher fire rate would be much harder to intercept. With good enough shells and range you could get rid of everything up to and including ESSM.
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I'd want to keep ESSMs, since they use a different guidance channel than the gun. Plus, most ships are only carrying ~3 cells worth anyways, so that's ~12 stored kills.
 

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