This is really cool:
A guided munition that BAE Systems and Italy’s Leonardo are offering the U.S. Navy will triple the range of the Mk 45 guns installed on about 100 Navy vessels, keeping ships out of harm’s way in littoral operations, a BAE official has said.
The article gives the guided Vulcano round range for the 5" gun--our standard ship cannon--as 100 kilometers. The proposed shell will be based on Vulcano.
While the focus is on land attack from the sea, I'd rather see advances in anti-ship applications. Ships can carry a lot more cannon rounds than they can carry missiles.
Although allowing our ships to reload their VLS missile cells while at sea would help on the missile side a lot.
Putting long-range guns back in the anti-ship fight would allow more of the VLS space to be taken up by air defense missiles, no?
