The ERCA system uses a service-developed, 58-caliber gun tube mounted on the chassis of a BAE Systems-made Paladin Integrated Management howitzer. (Ana Henderson/U.S. Army)
The U.S. Army is changing its approach to acquiring a long-range artillery capability and scrapping its 58-caliber Extended Range Cannon Artillery prototyping effort, according to the service’s acquisition chief.
“We concluded the prototyping activity last fall,” Doug Bush told reporters at a March 8 briefing on the fiscal 2025 budget request. “Unfortunately, [it was] not successful enough to go straight into production.”
The new plan — following an “exhaustive” tactical fires study meant to revalidate elements of the extended-range cannon requirement led by Army Futures Command — is to evaluate existing options from industry this summer “to get a sense of the maturity of those systems.”
Of the 24 new Army systems slated to make it into the hands of soldiers by the end of 2023, only the Extended Range Cannon Artillery program missed that goal. The ERCA system uses a service-developed, 58-caliber gun tube mounted on the chassis of a BAE Systems-made Paladin Integrated Management howitzer.
The Army was building 20 prototypes of the ERCA system: two for destructive testing and the remaining 18 for a battalion.
The operational evaluation of ERCA revealed “engineering challenges,” Bush said a year ago. Observations in early testing of prototypes showed excessive wear on the gun tube after firing a relatively low number of rounds.
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