Bringing a Gun to a Missile Fight—Guns Are Back!

A container ship unloads its cargo beside the battleship USS Iowa at the main port terminal in Long Beach, Calif., on May 10, 2019. Mark Ralston/ AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

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.

Large naval guns with velocities anywhere near those being routinely achieved by modern tank guns can easily reach ranges in excess of 100 miles using conventional chemical propellants. Naval guns incorporating a low-molar-weight propellant, such as hydrogen, can easily reach ballistic ranges of 150 miles. And if you incorporate glide technology into the projectiles fired by big naval guns, ranges of 200 miles or more are possible. And this doesn’t include using more exotic rounds such as battleship-fired scramjet rounds that could precisely strike targets 250 miles away in under 10 minutes.

The ranges mentioned above may seem fantastic, but such ranges have long been possible. In particular, by using sabots to fire sub-caliber rounds, 1940s-era battleship guns firing 500-pound rounds, such as those designed by the United States Naval Fire Support Association, would have ranges well in excess of 100 miles. But the accuracy at such ranges for the very accurate Iowa class 16-inch guns would be in the neighborhood of half a mile. Indeed, the problem with guns firing unguided projectiles is that the farther away the target is, the less chance they have of hitting the target.

Overcoming this problem wasn’t easy. While the late 1940s saw the development of guidance packages that could survive the hundreds of g’s of acceleration generated by a missile launch, that same level of technology wasn’t up to creating compact guidance packages that could survive the many thousands of g’s experienced by a gun-launched projectile. This is one of the primary reasons that after the Korean War the U.S. Navy moved quickly away from guns to missiles.

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.

But guided rounds bring more to the table than being able to hit distant targets; they can also be used to vastly improve the ability of guns in air defense. OTO Melara’s 76 mm Super Rapid, for example, is an extremely versatile gun that fires a wide range of ammunition that allows it to effectively defend against anti-ship missiles, drones, and small boats, as well as attacking ships and land targets. Though 76 mm is a relatively small caliber naval gun, its glide-enhanced Vulcano round can precisely strike targets as far away as 24 miles. And its 127 mm big brother can precisely strike targets out to 60 miles.

But as useful as its ability is to precisely strike land targets, its most intriguing capability comes into play when defending against missiles and drones. And with the right onboard over-the-horizon detection and targeting, 76 mm OTO Melara guns using their radar-guided DART rounds could also defend against supersonic anti-ship missiles such as Russia’s SS-N-22 Sunburn.

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.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.