SMART MUNITIONS INCREASE MARKET SHARE

Top attack munitions are now widely developed for different artillery calibers with varied ranges.

- Chirstopher F Foss

While aviation assets now employ precision-guided munitions (PGM) and smart munitions on an increasing scale, the land sector has been more cautious as their target sets are different.

A key role of artillery is still to provide suppressive fire against opposition forces using high-explosive (HE) projectiles, with secondary natures including smoke and illumination.

To engage hard targets such as armored fighting vehicles (AFV) cargo rounds were developed and deployed. These carry a large number of small sub-munitions fitted with a small high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warhead to penetrate the vulnerable, lighter armoured upper surfaces of AFVs. These sub-munitions can have a high dud rate and therefore limit the maneuver of follow-up forces as well as potentially causing later casualties to civilians.

For these reasons such munitions are banned under the Convention on Cluster Munition (CCM) and the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) agreements and have therefore been phased out of service with most countries, although they are still deployed by such countries such as China and Russia.

As with all artillery projectiles, the key requirement is target acquisition, especially at long ranges and PGM are expensive and would normally be used against high-value targets.

To counter AFVs, more advanced 155mm top attack weapons have been developed and deployed with market leaders in Europe, including the GIWS SMArt 155 and the Bofors/Nexter BONUS.