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Deadly accurate

Army officials at Fort Benning, Ga., want to equip infantry units for the first time with a new, laser-guided 120mm mortar round capable of hitting the enemy on the first shot.

The Infantry Center recommended in mid-October that the Army’s senior leadership approve a plan to arm infantry brigade combat teams in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Precision Guided Mortar Munition by late next year, said Army Col. Don Sando, director of Infantry Futures at Benning.

The PGMM, a developmental program that’s currently unfunded, can be fired from any Army 120mm mortar and steered to within 2 meters of an enemy target from more than 7 kilometers away. That means a mortar crew can destroy a target using one to two rounds instead of a half-dozen, with far less risk of civilian casualties.

“It’s a significant breakthrough,” said Sando, who took part in a recent study launched to address repeated requests from infantry commanders for a precision-strike weapon as an alternative to traditional mortar barrages that result in high numbers of casualties.

The move is intended to give IBCTs a similar precision-fires capability that heavy brigade and Stryker brigade combat teams have with the Excalibur — the first-of-its-kind Global Positioning System-guided artillery shell.

It’s part of a broader study that has the Infantry Center and the Artillery Center at Fort Sill, Okla., focusing on how evolving technologies in precision indirect fire will change how commanders fight in the future.

The Army has been working on precision-guided indirect fire for the past decade, but the high-tech endeavor has gained momentum with the recent success of Excalibur, which was deployed to Iraq in the spring.

Excalibur is the first GPS-guided artillery round ever used in combat. Currently, there are just a few hundred in theater, but the Army has ordered more than 1,200 of these rounds. Excalibur has cost the Army about $100,000 each, defense industry officials say. Raytheon has pledged to bring the cost down to $30,000 per round once production increases.

The advanced 155mm round, artillery experts maintain, gives commanders another option when other precision weapons, such as missiles and fast-attack aircraft, are ineffective or unavailable, said Army Col. John Tanzi, Training and Doctrine Command’s capabilities manager at the Army’s Artillery Center at Sill.

“We have seen some occasions where insurgents are in a building and an M1 tank engaged it from 100 meters and that didn’t work, and [close-air support] wasn’t available,” Tanzi said.

On the first round fired, an artilleryman can put an Excalibur shell within 10 meters of a target up to 30 kilometers away.

“Excalibur is a great munition,” said Tanzi, explaining how artillery crews are using it to go after high-value targets in densely populated areas, a scenario that would have been too risky in the past with standard artillery for fear of hitting civilians.

The problem is Excalibur isn’t available to infantry brigade combat teams because those units are lighter and equipped with 120mm mortars and 105mm howitzers.

As early as April, light infantry commanders began beseeching the Army for the Precision Guided Mortar Munition, describing the difficulty units have in transporting heavy mortar rounds through the mountains at high altitudes.

In July, XVIII Airborne Corps Commander Army Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin III sent an operational needs statement to Army headquarters stating that “this capability is critically needed” and should be “organic” or a permanent part of these units’ inventory.

And in August, the headquarters of the U.S. Combined Joint Task Force in Afghanistan sent a second operational needs statement, asking the Army to buy and quickly field precision-guided munitions for the 105mm towed howitzer and 120mm mortar.

Army Col. Mark Murray, Joint Fires and Effects coordinator, wrote that the rules of engagement in Afghanistan “limit the use of conventional artillery and mortar projectiles in support of combat operations.”

The complaints from the battlefield prompted the Army to order the infantry and artillery centers to come up with both short-term and long-term solutions for ensuring that all combat brigades have precision fires built into their organization.

In the first phase of the study, the Infantry Center was tasked to select an interim solution that could be fielded to IBCTs within 12 months, Sando said.

“Our charge was, ‘Look at what is available out there.’ Based on our analysis, the best solution” was the Precision Guided Mortar Munition, Sando said. The study looked at 11 different munitions ranging from aviation missiles such as the Hellfire or more TOW missiles to other mixes of indirect fire.

The plan would involve equipping “a number of brigades” with a combat load of 72 PGMM rounds per infantry brigade combat team, Sando said.

One challenge up front with this solution will be money, because the precision 120mm rounds would cost about $9,000 each, Army officials said.

Despite its success in testing, Congress terminated future funding for the PGMM last December, after 10 years and roughly $100 million of development. Nevertheless, the developer, ATK, continues testing.

However, Army Gen. Richard Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, has said the Army will consider “reinstating the program” if the service decides it’s the best system for the job, according to an Aug. 24 letter to Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Meanwhile, artillery officials at Fort Sill have been conducting a broader study, looking at how doctrine and tactics may need to change to ensure that infantry brigade combat teams will be as capable as heavy and Stryker brigade combat teams are at delivering precision fires.

“In Phase 2, we have got to look at more than just the munition,” said Sam Coffman, senior field artillery technical adviser at Sill’s Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate.

The Artillery Center is scheduled to present its findings to the Army in January.

One possibility could mean changing the organization of the IBCT by replacing one of its two organic 105mm howitzer batteries with an Excalibur-capable 155mm battery, he said.

Another option could be to look at how to field the Army’s future Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System, which is one of the armored vehicles being developed under the Army’s Future Combat Systems program.

The biggest payoff may be to put the high-tech missile system in the IBCT first, Coffman said.

In a perfect world, Coffman said, IBCTs and their heavy and Stryker counterparts would have a blend of precision indirect fire options in their arsenal.

The challenge will be to find the right mix in the evolving future of cannons and mortars on the battlefield.

“Up until now, we have always been an area fire capability,” Coffman said. “Accuracy is one thing; having precision is another.”