From DefenseNews

 

U.S. Navy's ERGM May Face Cancellation

By william matthews

Published: 20 Mar 15:55 EDT (11:55 GMT)

 

For more than a dozen years the U.S. Navy has waited as Raytheon struggled to build a reliable rocket-powered munition to be fired from 5-inch guns on ships. After repeated test failures, years of delays and rising costs, the Navy may be ready to cancel the program.

 

A Raytheon official acknowledged March 20 there were "many rumors swirling around" the fate of its Extended Range Guided Munition (ERGM) program, including the possibility that it will be canceled.

 

A Navy official would not comment on the program's fate.

 

The end for ERGM, if it is imminent, would come just weeks after multiple munitions flunked test shots, according to an industry source.

 

A Raytheon spokesman insisted that the tests in February were not failures. He said Raytheon was testing for "specific functionalities, not testing for overall functionality" of the rounds.

 

Cancellation of the ERGM would leave the Navy with only one other source for a long-range, precision 5-inch round - Alliant Techsystems, which is developing a ballistic trajectory extended-range munition (BTERM). The BTERM is similar to ERGM but has had serious test problems of its own.

 

Both munitions were intended to give Navy ships the ability to strike targets with great accuracy from more than 50 miles away. If they worked, they would give some cruisers and destroyers long-range precision fire support from the sea for Marines ashore.

 

Rocket-propelled during part of its flight, the ERGM was supposed to use signals from global positioning satellites to fly to within 20 meters of its target.

 

Five feet long and 5 inches wide, with fins at the rear and canards near the nose, the 110-pound ERGM looked more like a missile than a 5-inch gun projectile. And it was supposed to fly like a missile, too.

 

After being fired like a projectile, the ERGM's rocket motor would ignite, blasting the munition to 80,000 feet. From there, the fins and canards would pop out to guide the ERGM precisely to its target.

 

It was expected to be quite an improvement over the standard 5-inch projectile, which can be shot about 13 miles and is not a precision weapon. Only the ERGM hasn't worked as hoped.

 

Over years of testing, tail fins failed to deploy, rocket motors didn't ignite and electronic components such as GPS guidance systems didn't survive being shot from a deck gun. Sometimes only one in four or one in three ERGMs fully performed when tested.

 

Meanwhile, the price has tripled, rising from $45,000 per weapon in 1997 to $191,000 per weapon by 2006. As a result, the number of munitions to be bought was cut from more than 8,500 to about 3,150.

 

Christopher P. Cavas contributed to this report.

?!?!?

 

WTF is wrong with these people? The army has been using rocket assisted and guided 155mm rounds for DECADES! This is not new technology!!!!!

From DefenseNews

 

U.S. Navy Ends ERGM Funding

By william matthews

Published: 24 Mar 17:25 EDT (13:25 GMT)

 

The U.S. Navy has stopped funding Raytheon's extended range guided munition (ERGM), effectively killing the 12-year-old program.

 

The end comes after the Navy spent more than $600 million on unsuccessful efforts by Raytheon to produced a precision munition that could be fired from a ship's 5-inch gun and then fly, guided by satellites, to a target about 50 miles away.

 

ERGM failed a series of test firings in February, according to industry sources.

 

Navy spokeswoman Pat Dolan said the Navy notified Raytheon March 19 it would no longer fund the program. The Navy cited a contract technicality for cutting off funds. Raytheon failed to notify the Navy "in a timely fashion" that it had spent almost all of the money in the ERGM program budget.

 

But Dolan said the Navy also "made a decision that continued investment in ERGM was imprudent."

 

A Raytheon spokesman said he did not know why the Navy decided to stop funding ERGM.

 

Dolan said the Navy plans to study a variety of "technological solutions" to take the place of the ERGM, which was intended to provide long-range fire from the sea to support Marines ashore.

 

One alternative is Alliant Techsystems' ballistic trajectory extended range munition, which is similar to ERGM. But it, too, has experienced serious problems in testing.

Maybe it is the rail gun lobby causing trouble

From Navy Times

 

End of ERGM spotlights other future guns

By William Matthews - Staff writer

Posted : Monday Mar 31, 2008 17:12:09 EDT

 

In June 2007, a Navy destroyer used its 5-inch gun to shell Islamic militants in Somalia. That was 16 years after the last use of naval gunfire: at the start of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

 

Before that was Lebanon in 1983, Vietnam a decade earlier and Korea two decades before that.

 

Using ships to attack targets on land is rare, but naval surface fire support remains a must for the Marine Corps, said Maj. Eric Dent, a service spokesman.

 

And since the Navy pulled the plug on Raytheon’s Extended Range Guided Munition program March 19, Marines are wondering how long it will be before Navy guns get the firepower the Corps contends it still needs.

 

“When you look at how the Marine Corps is going to be employed, we’re going back to our roots. We’re going to be expeditionary,” Dent said.

 

Marines expect “to transition from sustained land-based operations” back to operating from ships that sail to hot spots around the world, Dent said. And when they do, the Corps will need fire support from the sea.

 

That’s what ERGM had been promising — but couldn’t deliver — since 1996.

 

It was to be fired from a 5-inch gun like a conventional shell, then use a rocket motor to climb like a missile to 80,000 feet, then glide like a precision-guided bomb to a target 50 miles away.

 

ERGM was supposed to turn a 5-inch gun into tolerable replacements for the 16-inch battleship behemoths that could fire 2,500-pound shells up to 23 miles. The last of those old Iowa-class guns retired in 1992.

 

But throughout 12 years of development by Raytheon, ERGM was trouble-plagued.

 

Too many challenges

 

Over years of testing, guidance fins failed to deploy, rocket motors didn’t ignite and electronic components such as Global Positioning System guidance systems didn’t survive the shock of being shot from a deck gun.

 

In February tests at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., guidance components, rocket motors and tail fins all flunked, according to news reports.

 

Raytheon officials refuse to discuss the February tests in detail, but one official insisted that they were not failures. Raytheon was testing for “specific functionalities, not testing for overall functionality” of the rounds, he said.

 

But the Navy concluded “we were not seeing the return on investment that we had hoped to see,” spokeswoman Patricia Dolan said.

 

According to the Government Accountability Office, the ERGM’s program research-and-development costs went from $80 million to $400 million between 1997 and 2004. Total program costs went from $400 million $600 million, and the price per ERGM jumped from $45,000 in 1997 to $191,000 per weapon by late 2004.

 

To counter rising costs, the Navy cut the number of munitions to be bought from more than 8,500 to about 3,150.

 

Raytheon officials refused to discuss ERGM’s cancellation but issued a written statement saying, “We are disappointed in this decision [to cancel the ERGM] and feel that it is premature, given the critical point we have reached on this engineering development program.”

 

The statement claims Raytheon was “on the verge” of building a reliable ERGM, and would have demonstrated as much during a 20-round test scheduled for September.

 

The Navy was not convinced.

 

After years of “nonreliability issues,” the Navy had “no confidence” that Raytheon could produce a working weapon, Dolan said.

 

Instead, the Navy is preparing for an “analysis of alternatives” that will examine “a variety of technological solutions to meet Marine Corps naval surface fire support requirements,” she said.

 

Some options are sure to be ruled out early. Cruise missiles could do the job, but at $600,000 or more a missile, are much too expensive, Navy analysts said.

 

Another possibility is ERGM competitor, BTERM — the Ballistic Trajectory Extended Range Munition by Alliant Techsystems — but it has experienced problems similar to the ERGM’s.

 

The Navy has stopped requesting money for BTERM, but members of Congress keep slipping BTERM allocations into the Navy’s budget along with orders to keep the program alive.

 

“It’s a congressional plus-up,” Dolan said. “We continue to execute funding because of Congress’ instructions.”

 

Another possibility: Replace the current 5-inch guns with new 6.1-inch guns designed for the DDG-1000 destroyer.

 

The new guns fire a 6.1-inch — or 155mm — shell that is similar to the 5-inch ERGM, but doesn’t appear to have the ERGM’s performance problems.

 

According to the Congressional Research Service, the rounds have an 83-mile range, and in place of the ERGM’s 8-pound warhead, they carry 24 pounds of explosive.

 

“It might be possible to fit the DDG-51 with one of the 155mm guns to be carried by the DDG-1000,” the CRS said in a report to Congress. “It would likely require the removal of both the DDG-51’s 5-inch gun and its forward 32-cell vertical launch system. In this configuration, the DDG-51 might carry about 120 of the gun’s 155mm shells.”