Improvements in packaging 60mm smoke and illumination mortars by Picatinny engineers will save the Army money and allow soldiers quicker access to the rounds during battles, officials said.
Mortar packaging: Picatinny engineers have devised improvements to the packaging of 60 mm smoke and illumination mortars that will save the Army money and allow Soldiers quicker access to the rounds.
“It’s very simple,” said Lenny Freilich, lead 60mm mortar packaging engineer with the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC). “We’ve strengthened the metal container in order to remove some of the external packaging. The packaging inside the metal container remains exactly the same.”
Traditionally, the 60mm cartridges were packaged individually in fiber containers. Eight fiber containers were then put into a metal container called the PA124.
“Two of those PA124 metal cans were placed inside of a wire-bound wood box,” Freilich said. “Then you’ve got eight in one container and eight in another container, for a total of 16 in the wire-bound wood box.”
To save money on labor and packaging, ARDEC engineers, sponsored by the Program Executive Office Ammunition’s Project Manager Combat Ammunition Systems, designed a more robust metal container to eliminate the wood box.
“We made the container stronger and it’s now called the PA191,” said Freilich. It can survive the same environmental conditions that the two containers inside the wooden box used to, but you’ve got a lot less material.”
The reduced size of the outer pack allows for an additional eight cans (64 cartridges) on the same transportation pallet, so logistical shipping costs are reduced as well.
The new containers also eliminate a step in the packaging process at the factory.
There’s a cost savings because there are two fewer people on the manufacturing line packing containers in the boxes, Freilich said.
Between labor and material cost cuts, the packaging improvement saves the Army $2.48 per round.
Due to the success of the program, this packaging method is also being adopted for 60mm high explosive cartridges.
The packaging also means soldiers don’t have to remove the wooden box, so they can access the ammo quicker, which is important when the enemy is firing at them. Soldiers can now access the rounds an average of 15-25 seconds quicker.
Removing the wooden box also brought benefits because finding the right quality of wood was becoming more difficult.
“You just think it’s a wood box, but like anything in the Army it has to be a particular wood–it has to meet certain standards,” Freilich said. The box is built from hard woods, and the Army has strict requirements for the kinds of wood used. Also, the price of wood keeps rising.