Weapons and Munitions Product Improvement Programs

Abstract

Project ER2: The Close Combat Technology program includes development efforts to upgrade Close Combat technologies, energetics, and munitions, such as counter explosives, grenades, demolitions, shoulder launched munitions, pyrotechnic simulators, countermeasure flares, non-lethal ammunition/systems, networked munitions and mines, that have been fielded or have received approval for full rate production. This program will identify, characterize, study, analyze, test and develop technologies to resolve close combat munition reliability, safety, environmental, storage, standardization, obsolescence and manufacturing/producibility issues. FY 2018 funds will be used to support the following efforts: MK3A2 Offensive Hand Grenade, Countermeasure Flare Decoy Formulations, and AN-M82A Obscuration Grenade. Project ER5: The Indirect Fire and Fuze Technology project includes product improvement development efforts to upgrade indirect fire weapon systems and munitions that have already been fielded and/or are in production. Indirect Fire Weapons and Munitions Product Improvement Projects include improved target engagement, increased reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety, standardization and interoperability with weapons and munitions of Allied Nations, defense exportability features, reduction of failure mechanisms, and supply chain risk through introduction of new and alternative technology and materiel solutions, improvement of manufacturing methods and their associated production and life cycle support processes, new capabilities in response to the evolving and emerging threats and countermeasures, and reduction/elimination of potential environmental and health risks associated with these products. FY 2018 funding supports testing to demonstrate fuze setback spring interface improvements, engineering tests to prove-out the mortar fuze electronics upgrades, studies on medium caliber fuzes to improve throughput and reduce costs, testing to prove-out impact switch upgrades, evaluations on transceiver component replacement prototype devices for indirect fire and direct fire fuzes, studies on second source MEMS-based G-switches for medium and large caliber applications, and 81mm M821A3E1 HE IM Mortar completion of safety/environmental test and analysis and full arena testing and analysis of test data. Project ER6: The Munitions, Survivability and Logistics program funding will be used to support direct fire ammunition from small caliber ammunition, 40mm grenade, medium caliber cannon ammunition and large caliber ammunition enhancements to lethality, effectiveness, survivability, accuracy and general product improvements. FY 2018 funds are used for a more lethal and safer design for 40mm grenades that will be built and tested. Warhead improvement and primer improvement for the 30mm Apache ammunition are also under development. A number of studies on potential improvements for training ammunition and environmentally friendly primers will be conducted. Potential improvements to 105mm and 120mm ammunition will be examined.

Document Details

• Document Type: R2 Budgetary Justification
• Publication Date: Oct 01, 2018
• Source ID: 0607131A_7_2040_PB_2018
• Service Agency Name: Army

Entities

Organizations

• United States Army

Tags

Communities of Interest

• Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

• Ammunition
• Cartridge Cases
• Countermeasures
• Engineering
• Explosives
• Failure Mode And Effect Analysis
• Fire Control Systems
• Hand Grenades
• Indirect Fire
• Insensitive Explosives
• Munitions
• Munitions Testing
• Networked Munitions
• Test And Evaluation
• Training Ammunition
• Training Devices
• Weapon Systems

Readers

• Munitions and Ordnance Engineering

Technology Areas

• Microelectronics
• Microelectronics - Microelectromechanical Systems