Te program was canceled in the 1980s. Later, defense analysts would recognize the technological developments that ATACMS capitalized on as the “second offset,” when precision guidance, coupled with stealth technology, set the U.S. mili- tary far out of any competitors’ reach.
POINTING IN A NEW DIRECTION The M57A1 Army Tactical Missile System missile is fired over the cab of an M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launcher. New battle conditions call for the Army to have precision lethal and nonlethal fires that can be fired from land to produce effects in all domains, as joint, multidomain operations are expected to be increasingly common. (U.S. Army photo)
Ten, after a decade of unquestioned military superiority, the United States and its allies got involved in two wars and eventually two counterinsurgencies in which artillery was less important and consequently received less attention and money. During that time, Russia and China, in the course of becoming the near-peer adversaries the Army has since refocused on, both developed long-range weapons that, coupled with their electronic warfare and intelligence capabilities, shift the battlefield advan- tage in their favor. ATACMS is now 30 years old, bulky and not as modular as current requirements demand, and the technologies that were breakthroughs 30 years ago have proliferated widely. Tus, Milley and McCarthy’s call for “a long-range precision fires capability that restores U.S. Army dominance in range, munitions and target acquisition.”
In other words, the U.S. doesn’t want to just catch up, it wants to leap ahead.
guidance for more precision and had a range of 165 to 185 miles. Ground commanders of land-based units didn’t have access to that kind of range before ATACMS; the Lance missile that ATACMS replaced had a maximum range of 46 miles when fitted with a conventional warhead, but it had been intended primarily to deliver nuclear warheads.
Te future demands it. Te new para- digm of multidomain battle calls for the Army to broaden its focus from just land warfare, “to have both lethal and nonlethal fires that are delivered from the land domain to produce effects in all domains,” Gen. David G. Perkins wrote in the November-December 2017 issue of Military Review. (Perkins has been commanding general of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command since March 2014, and in that role was instru- mental
in shaping the multidomain battle concept.) Operating jointly across
air, land and sea, the Army may need to be able to help another service maintain control of its traditional domain—so the possibility of a long-range missile fired from land by an Army unit downing a ship is, if not a central requirement, nev- ertheless part of the conversation.
Te present calls for better long-range fires, too. No longer can the Army assume that air power can destroy key targets, given the robust air defenses developed by Russia and China and the web of technological and military improvements that allow adversaries to deny access to territory they claim. In any conflict with a near-peer, the Army needs to be able to strike from farther away—out of range of the adversaries’ own long-range fires.
What will it take to develop a long-range weapon that not only replaces ATACMS but does better? Te wish list includes:
• Much greater range. “Tis will not be the artillery of yesteryear; this will be an artillery where capabilities strike with land-based precision fires at very extended ranges that our enemies will never expect, well beyond what we have now,” said Milley at the October 2017 AUSA meeting.
• Te ability to swap in new com- ponents as they improve. Open architecture—so that individual com- ponents or subsystems can be upgraded piece by piece and by suppliers other than the original manufacturer if needed—is also on the Army’s list of requirements for the next long-range missile. Better guidance technol- ogy is one such swap, as navigation improves. Another might be a new motor that could fly the missile even farther. Te range of ATACMS’ replacement is capped by the United States’ obligations under the 1987
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THEN & NOW
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