A U.S. Army self-propelled howitzer firing a Mach-5 shell just shot down a cruise missile for the first time.
It’s a big deal. Imagine, in some future war, Army howitzers ringing a strategic air base in the western Pacific, swatting down incoming missiles so the base’s planes can take off and land unmolested.
The shoot-down took place at the White Sands missile range in New Mexico on Wednesday. An M-109A6 Paladin tracked howitzer fired a 155-millimeter-diameter hypervelocity shell at an incoming BQM-167 target drone, blasting it to pieces.
“Tanks shooting down cruise missiles is awesome—video-game, sci-fi awesome,” said Will Roper, the U.S. Air Force’s top scientist.
This took place using the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System, which is an AI-assisted data fusion system.
This was against a cruise missile, but the builder claims with further work it can shoot down ballistic missiles. The description of the shell as a "super-aerodynamic, precision-guided" shell is unclear to me. Is "precision-guided" the same as "precision?" That is, does it alter course? Or does the precision come from the ability to aim at the interception point with tremendous precision? I suspect the latter, which is impressive. But I don't know. It is a clarification that I will look for in future articles.
The Air Force really wants ABMS. And if it works like that along with shells that shoot down missiles, it is a big deal in tilting the missile defense race in favor of the defense--depending on how cheap the hyper-velocity round can be made. The stated price is really cheap compared to missiles. Can that hold or go down with mass production?
Remember the problem Israel has that demonstrates the offensive edge. Israel's system helps alleviate the offensive edge somewhat but that is against dumb rockets. Tube artillery air defense would really help against precision.
