- An artist’s rendition of the the AGS at work.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead in an interview with Navy Times last month voiced his commitment to providing Marines precision littoral fire support.
We’re looking at rounds that give us extended range and are compatible with 5-inch guns. Precision is going to be key. In today’s world, if you are developing a fire solution, it must be able to give you almost pinpoint accuracy, to within a couple of meters. GPS technology offers that. Of course, there is a huge G-force, so [the round]will have to be able to withstand a pretty significant speed of launch and flight.”
As that science is worked out, Devil Dawgs can give an emphatic “Ooh-Rah” to the Advanced Gun System. The 155mm system, which is part of the DDG 1000 program, can tattoo targets from 70 miles using Lockheed Martin’s 230-pound Long Range Land Attack Projectile. The program hit a milestone this week as BAE delivered the first AGS automated magazine. A mammoth of a magazine, this thing can organize and process 38 pallets weighing three tons each and fire up to 10 rounds per minute, according to this release. The world’s largest fully automated magazine, this two-story magazine is 45 x 30 and weighs 160 metric tons.
That’s enough firepower to make any Marine smile.
1 Comment
I still say it wouldn’t hurt to bring the USS Iowa out of mouthballs. The AGS is a great idea but it has limits; small round (explosive), each round is expensive, and lastly, you wouldn’t want to ‘park’ the DDG-1000 off of some one coast for fear of it being hit. Park a battleship off of someone’s coast and the bad guys know they can’t do a thing about it.