The Army is seeking information on industry’s potential solutions for an Extended Range Artillery Projectile (ERAP) munition, detailing an aim to begin production by fiscal year 2029.
As the Army continues its pursuit of extended-range artillery requirement, a new market survey notice for ERAP notes the service’s intent to achieve initial operational capability with a new munition by FY ‘30.
“The ERAP solution is a 155mm artillery projectile designed to engage and defeat imprecisely located or moving armored/mechanized targets at extended ranges to improve the lethality of cannon artillery assets organic to the Brigade Combat Teams. It will support both current and future weapon systems and defeat infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled howitzers, multiple rocket launchers, air defense targets, main battle tanks and maritime targets of interest,” the Army writes in the notice, published on May 24.
The Army recently announced it ended development of the Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) future howitzer system and will be pivoting to a new approach that will look to consider industry’s more mature, existing capabilities, with plans to hold demonstrations this summer (Defense Daily, March 12).
The ERCA development effort had focused around integrating an Army-developed 58-caliber, 30-foot gun tube on BAE Systems’ M109A7 self-propelled howitzer chassis with an aim to develop a system capable of hitting targets out to 70 kilometers at a rate of six to 10 rounds per minute.
Army officials, however, have reiterated the service plans to continue next-generation munitions development efforts that had been occurring in parallel with ERCA.
BAE Systems and a team of Boeing [BA] and Norway’s Nammo have been developing and testing next-generation projectile solutions under the Army’s XM1155 program to inform requirements for future long-range artillery munitions.
Last October, BAE Systems and Boeing said they had achieved record ranges in recent tests with their respective XM1155-SC guided munition and ramjet-powered 155 projectile solutions, while noting they couldn’t disclose specific distances (Defense Daily, Oct. 9 2023).
Jim Miller, BAE Systems’ vice president of business development for combat mission systems, told Defense Daily, in March the company had recently conducted another live fire of its new XM1155-SC long-range artillery projectile that demonstrated the munition’s maneuvering capabilities (Defense Daily, April 1).
For ERAP, the Army said it’s interested in munitions compatible with current 39-caliber cannon systems with capability to reach targets at a minimum 65 kilometers away and have capacity to achieve ranges of greater than 70 kilometers when fired from 52 caliber weapon systems and “developmental 155mm artillery weapon systems currently under consideration by the Army.”
“The solution must be target seeking, be able to operate in GPS heavily degraded environments and include a mode of operation that does not use GPS,” the Army writes in the notice.
The Army notes current requirements restrict the program to “qualified producers” in the U.S. or Canada, with the service interested in demonstrating a target-seeking solution by the third quarter of FY ‘26.
For future ERAP production, the Army said it aims to begin building a minimum of 300 projectiles per year by mid-FY ‘29 and ramp up to 1,500 projectiles within six years.
Army Acquisition Chief Doug Bush said earlier this month that a “significant number” of companies have shown interest in the new effort to get after extending the range of its cannon artillery, noting a potential competition could begin in FY ‘25 (Defense Daily, May 3).