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This is intended for people interested in the subject of military guns and their ammunition, with emphasis on automatic weapons.
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26-Dec
OK, the "Operational Concept" graphic mentioned GPS, so that is presumably the guidance measure used. Compared with semi-active laser homing, this has the benefit of being less expensive and not requiring an illuminator somewhere (presumably in a drone, at this sort of range). However, GPS is less precise than SAL and obviously can only attack fixed targets whose GPS location is exactly known. It may also be jammable (there's a battle going on over that...). SAL can pick off moving targets such as vehicles.
Excalibur M982 was originally GPS guided but the latest S version has SAL as well - the GPS puts the round in the right ballpark for the SAL to score a very precise hit. It is expensive, however (last I heard around $50,000-100,000 per round).
26-Dec
For now GPS is the cheap option its also independent of the designator lasing the target, which of course is very practical in small wars but not that realistic in peer conflict. The price of a round is relative in consideration to how many unguided rounds it takes to hit a target. On the other hand, there are still targets that will need fire saturation that will be quite expensive with guided rounds.
27-Dec
Moose (Beomoose) said:Truck-sized target, looks like a nice hit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyb_eyxce6E
Nice shot, but if it was GPS guided they had to know the exact location of the truck, and of course that it would remain in place. I suspect that in combat, setting up such a hit would be considerably more difficult with GPS alone - terminal guidance by SAL would be needed, but that means an illuminating drone would have to be close enough to do the job - and a lot of effort is currently being put into detecting and destroying such drones.
27-Dec
From what i have read they chose the GPS as a primary as SAL is not quite as useful in peer war as its in small wars where drones or boots on the ground provide the targeting 24/7 , its also way more expensive and complex as in addition to GPS needed to get it roughly over the target it also needs a seeker for laser marker.
In any case guided rounds are a great boost too lethality and even relatively cheap as you don't need hundreds of rounds to hit a target. Moving targets were never really domain of the artilery but now if the target track is there they can be.
Now its just a question on how long before rest of the world has the same capability. I am sure there are plenty of Excalibur remains or duds from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan already being looked into. Everyone is already fielding MLRS with guided rounds (easier to make)
28-Dec
Differential GPS + link 16 guidance has demonstrated moving target capability; ISAR GMTI is a fairly standard AESA feature. OFC that still relies on proper target location to begin with.