Weapons and Munitions Product Improvement Programs

Abstract

Project ER2 Close Combat Technology project 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. Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 funds will resource improvements to the following grenade efforts: MK3A2 Replacement - XM111 Offensive Hand Grenade, M82 Simulant Smoke Practice Grenade, M67 (G881) Insensitive Munition (IM) Replacement, and M98/M99 Non-Lethal 66mm Grenades. Project ER5 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. Efforts 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 by introducing new and alternative technology and materiel solutions, improvement of manufacturing methods and their associated production 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 2021 funding will support the transition and incorporation of the newly translated transceiver prototypes into indirect production fuzes with the generation of Engineering Change Proposals (ECPs) to the Technical Data Packages (TDPs), conduct analysis of the improved prototyping techniques of the Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) impact switches for use in mortar and medium caliber fuzes, support the evaluations on hand grenade fuzes to reduce the number of critical defects, which will increase producibility and safety, conduct tests to prove out performance on the next generation microcontroller for mortar proximity fuzes, conduct analysis on mortar training fuzes for performance improvements during early ballistic flight, and conduct testing of enhanced delay mode design on the M739A1 artillery fuze for increased safety and performance. FY 2021 funding will also support qualification of Hexachloroethane Zinc Oxide (HC) smoke fill formulation into the 60mm and 81mm smoke families of ammunition. 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. Project ER6 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 2021 funds support making lethality and safety improvements to 40mm grenades, performing improvements to 30mm ammunition, making a number of improvements to training ammunition, performing improvements to small caliber primers to make the primers more environmentally friendly, and continuing the effort to reduce Soldier load by developing lightweight small caliber ammunition. FY 2021 also includes potential examination and implementation of improvements to 105mm and 120mm tank ammunition.

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Document Details

Document Type
R2 Budgetary Justification
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2021
Source ID
0607131A_7_2040_PB_2021
Change Summary Explanation
FY 2021 increase of $4.714 million due to increased analysis, evaluation and qualification efforts for Project ER2 Close Combat Technology.
Service Agency Name
Army

Entities

Organizations

  • United States Army

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Ammunition
  • Ammunition Testing
  • Explosives
  • Failure Mode And Effect Analysis
  • Grenade Fuzes
  • Hand Grenades
  • Indirect Fire
  • Insensitive Explosives
  • Microelectromechanical Systems
  • Mortar Cartridge
  • Munitions
  • Munitions Testing
  • Networked Munitions
  • Ordnance Laboratories
  • Procurement
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Weapons Effects

Readers

  • Munitions and Ordnance Engineering

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Microelectronics - Microelectromechanical Systems

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