After many decades of being out of favor with our Navy, big naval guns are poised to make a comeback.
This comeback is being fueled by a broad spectrum of advances in gun-related technologies, including advanced propellants, multipoint plasma-based ignition, stronger, more durable gun barrels, and guidance systems that can survive being launched from guns at very high velocities.
Collectively, these advances give us the potential to field guns that will radically improve fleet air defense as well as being able to precisely strike targets 100 to 300 miles away for far less cost than a missile. Along with the cost advantages advanced propellant-powered guns can bring to the battlefield, they can also deliver firepower in smaller increments than can missiles. This fine control makes missions possible that are cost-prohibitive, or even impossible, to execute using missiles. Plus, a gun projectile doesn’t have to bring its propellant with it, thus avoiding the tyranny of the rocket/missile equation.
The ability to manufacture naval artillery with pure ballistic ranges well in excess of 100 miles exists right now. And increasing the number of guns on ships firing radar-guided anti-missile projectiles would radically improve ship and fleet air defense over ships relying purely on missiles and close-in weapon systems like the radar-controlled Phalanx gun that fires unguided rounds.
But that was then, and this is now. And now the technology for compact packages capable of surviving a gun launch not only exists, but has also been well vetted by such successful programs as the Army’s M982 155 mm artillery shell. So, not only can gun-launched projectiles be fired to great distances, they can precisely strike targets at great distances.
Utilizing the modern gun’s potential for air defense wouldn’t eliminate the need for air defense missiles, but they could provide another layer of defense that would allow ships to effectively engage missiles at ranges far greater than our 20 mm Phalanx close-in weapon system guns. And a case can be made that guns could supplant some shorter-range air defense missiles such as RIM-116 missiles that cost $1 million dollars each. And with each 76 mm round being a fraction of the size of a missile, as well as a fraction of the cost, our large surface combatants could carry thousands of these rounds in their magazines.
But as good as the 76 mm is, it’s only one example of what modern guns are capable of. Larger caliber guns using the exact same over-the-horizon targeting technology that missiles use can fire at targets that have yet to break the horizon. Large rounds can also be very effective in spraying clouds of steel balls into the path of missiles, critically damaging or destroying them. For each missile that must be intercepted, multiple maneuverable rounds will be fired in a pattern that takes into account the incoming missile’s terminal maneuvering capability so as to ensure whichever way it zags, a round is there to meet it.
While the above has focused on guided rounds, there are still scenarios in which large volumes of unguided rounds being fired for suppressive effects or for the purposes of destroying large targets such as airfields or large formations of enemy troops can be invaluable.
And last but not least, a renewed emphasis on guns will provide a path forward to restore the naval gunfire support that the Navy promised the Marines it would replace, but never did, when it retired the four recently modernized Iowa class battleships in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
