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 2020 funds resource improvements to XM111 Offensive Hand 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. Initiatives 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 2020 funds will support engineering testing and evaluation on replacement electronic transceiver prototypes for indirect and direct fire proximity fuzes, testing on optimized impact switches for use in mortar and medium caliber fuzes that will improve producibility, testing of the medium caliber fuze safety design modifications, analysis of prototype low cost electronic safe and arm devices, analysis on hand grenade fuzes to reduce the number of critical defects that will improve producibility and increase safety, and evaluations on the next generation microcontroller to replace a one-time programmable component due to part obsolescence for mortar proximity fuzes. FY 2020 funds will also support qualification of Hexachloroethane Titanium Oxide (HX) smoke fill formulation into the 81mm smoke family of ammunitions. Engineering efforts will identify the formulation percentage of constituents and identify the production processes required to promote effective smoke production that is less toxic and ultimately provides effective smoke screening and burn time performance. FY 2020 funds will also support reliability improvements and increased range within current fielded Artillery and Mortar Conventional Ammunition. Project ER6: The Direct Fire Technology 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 2020 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 30mm ammunition are also under development. A number of improvements for training ammunition, environmentally friendly primers, and lightweight small caliber ammunition will continue to be developed. Potential improvements to 105mm and 120mm ammunition will be examined.

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Document Details

Document Type
R2 Budgetary Justification
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2020
Source ID
0607131A_7_2040_PB_2020
Change Summary Explanation
FY 2020 increase of $2.905 million includes the following budget adjustments: $0.323 million decrease to Project ER5: Indirect Fire and Fuze Technology. $3.228 million increase to Project ER6: Direct Fire Technology.
Service Agency Name
Army

Entities

Organizations

  • United States Army

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Ammunition
  • Cost Analysis
  • Explosives
  • Failure Mode And Effect Analysis
  • Fire Control Systems
  • Grenade Fuzes
  • Hand Grenades
  • Indirect Fire
  • Insensitive Explosives
  • Mortar Cartridge
  • Munitions
  • Networked Munitions
  • Ordnance Laboratories
  • Scatterable Mines
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Training Ammunition
  • Weapons Effects

Readers

  • Munitions and Ordnance Engineering

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics

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