Indirect Fire and Fuze Technology
Abstract
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. This Project supports the identification, study, analysis, and development of fuzing technologies and safe arm devices in production and in the field. This Project will implement technologies into fuzing systems to preclude obsolescence, maximize standardization, enhance performance, and improve the safety and exportability of existing munitions. The Project addresses two major areas: (1) analysis and (2) block upgrades. Analysis efforts will identify second sources for fuzing systems that may reduce costs by providing competition, and maintain production when sources or parts are no longer available. It will also allow for the performance enhancement of current ammunition items by conducting studies of major fuze components to detect and identify latent defects. The second major area is block upgrades, which will identify and perform studies on improvements to fuzes, increase commonality of fuze components and requirements. Block upgrades will enable the introduction of the latest technologies into fuzing, keep the fuzing design current to avoid obsolescence issues, and add capabilities. FY 2020 funds will support the engineering tests and evaluations on the prototype replacement electronic transceiver prototypes for indirect fire and direct fire proximity fuzes, will conduct engineering tests on optimized impact switches for use in mortar and medium caliber fuzes that will improve producibility, will conduct engineering tests of the medium caliber fuze safety design modifications, will support the analysis of the prototype low cost electronic safe and arm devices, will support the analysis on the hand grenade fuzes to reduce the number of critical defects that will improve producibility and increase safety, and will conduct evaluations on the next generation microcontroller to replace a one-time programmable component due to part obsolescence for mortar proximity fuzes. This Project also supports the incorporation of the new Hexachloroethane Titanium Oxide (HX) smoke fill formulation while utilizing the existing illumination shell body configuration to support mortar smoke training for US Army Europe (USAREUR). The HX smoke fill formulation is less toxic and less incendiary than the current Mortar Red Phosphorus (RP) or White Phosphorous (WP) Smoke rounds and will reduce risk of unintended collateral damage or environmentally hazardous waste. USAREUR has yearly requirements for procurement of smoke mortar cartridges across all calibers to be used for training, but is prohibited from training with the current WP or RP smoke munitions in Europe due to environmental restrictions. FY 2020 funds support qualification of 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. This Project also supports artillery and mortar conventional ammunition enhancements to lethality, effectiveness, survivability, accuracy and general product improvements. FY 2020 funding will support reliability improvements and increased range within current fielded Artillery and Mortar Conventional Ammunition.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Project
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2020
- Source ID
- ER5_0607131A_7_2040_PB_2020
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