The U. S. Army has awarded a $ 5 million contract with Alliant Techsystems for the first phase of development of the Army's Accelerated Precision Mortar Initiative (APMI) with GPS
Geolocation technology has fallen in price so much that now it can be used even in ammunition. Considering that the United States has "settled" in Afghanistan for a long time, the new mine may come in handy.
No matter what miracles technology gives us, the most versatile weapon is still an ordinary soldier - “holy gray beast,” in the words of General Dragomirov, and the most versatile unit is infantry and small arms. Most of the riflemen's weapons can hit the enemy only along the line of sight, direct fire, as politicians pathetically exclaim. This is how submachine guns and sniper rifles, machine guns with grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles and cannons of infantry fighting vehicles work. But that's not good.
No, not from a moral point of view, but from a purely technological point of view. The enemy can hide behind an obstacle and get away from our fire. This means that you need a weapon capable of acting with hinged fire. Historically, mortars have been such weapons. When shooting, it's good to get away from enemy fire yourself. So, in the Russo-Japanese War, in the battle of Jinzhou, shooting from closed positions was born. Captain Gobyato hid his guns behind the relief, transmitting target designations to them from afar. And the same Leonid Vasilyevich Gobyato invented the over-caliber mine during the siege days of Port Arthur. It made it possible to use the abundant 47-mm guns removed from the ships of the First Squadron for hanging fire. A new type of weapon was born - the mortar.
The next stage of improving the mortar falls on the First World War. The Knight of St. George, General Gobyato, fell near Przemysl, leading the infantry to attack. Machine-gun fire drove the armies into the trenches. The need for infantry hanging fire weapons was growing. And here the British engineer Wilfrid Stokes, a civilian designer of cranes from Ipswich, creates a very effective example of a portable mortar. Barrel-tube ending with a base plate. Two support legs. The barrel is smooth, loading from the barrel, like in mortars of half a thousand years ago. The mine is ejected by an expelling charge packed in a 12-gauge case. The same exactly that millions and millions were produced for a purely civilian hunting weapon. Impaled by gravity on the drummer at the end of the barrel with the same primer with which the hazel grouses were fired.
Thanks to the false triangle scheme (the plate and two supports were closed, giving stability, mother damp earth), the mortar was light, allowing for a caliber of 81.4 mm to be carried by soldiers. This is due to the fact that the support plate transferred the recoil energy to the ground, eliminating the need for a heavy gun carriage and complex recoil brakes. At first, the mine was tumbling and intended to spray asphyxiant gases. Then she acquired stabilizers, shifted back relative to the center of gravity. Stokes became a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire and, last but not least, received from the royal treasury a pound sterling for each mine …
In this form, the mortar in the period between the world wars spread throughout the world, becoming during the Second World War one of the most effective types of weapons of rifle units and units. The Red Army used 50-mm company, 82-mm battalion and 120-mm regimental mortars. The latter, designed by Boris Ivanovich Shavyrin, was so good that the Wehrmacht, having seized its technological documentation in Kharkov, started production on its basis, a 12-centimeter Gr. W.42 mortar. Such recognition as the most advanced power of the technological age speaks volumes.
After the war, with the transformation of infantrymen into motorized riflemen, the caliber of the Soviet army's battalion mortar became a 120-millimeter one. Pood mines (you can't really drag them on the ridge) are capable of destroying a noticeable part of the structures in which the enemy can hide, and, being subordinate to the battalion commander, simplify fire interaction. (No need to mess with the battery, which has its own boss …)
Mortars, of course, changed. They acquired loading from the treasury, this made it easier to work with large-caliber mines, eliminating the need to lift heavy ammunition to the muzzle height. Received the second system of stabilization of the mine on the trajectory - a rifled barrel. The mine rotation given to them makes it possible to reduce the impact on the firing accuracy of the mine hull asymmetries: the deflecting moments caused by them do not act in one direction, accumulating, but in different directions, largely compensating. But at high elevation angles, rifled mines can overturn due to the fact that the gyroscopic effect overcomes the aerodynamic effect of the stabilizer, which then causes tail-flying and somersaults befitting a shot down duck, not ammunition … Mortars were mounted on combat vehicles, wheeled and tracked. An excellent example was the domestic 120-mm "Nona", relying on the states of the end of the USSR for each battalion. But these are all industrial technologies, and now it has come to information.
Mortar guided by ammunition was acquired a quarter of a century ago. In Afghanistan, Soviet troops used a laser-guided 240-millimeter "Daredevil" mine (targeting a bunny reflected from the target), which covered a well-concealed target from the first shot.
The US troops, which were led by the unforgiving imperial logic after the British Empire and the USSR into the Afghan gorges, have a laser-guided XM-395 120mm mine.
But laser guidance, with all its accuracy, does not eliminate all problems. The target must be highlighted with a laser, and the spotter is in line of sight, which makes him vulnerable to enemy fire. Let us entrust this task to the drone, and the cunning "spirit" will be hammered into a narrow gorge, into which not a single flying baby will fit. That is why the development of guided mines with GPS guidance was required. It is enough for the spotter to determine the coordinates of the target once and transfer them to the control of the mortar battery. They are then injected into ammunition using the Lightweight Handheld Mortar Ballistic Computer - a handheld mortar ballistic computer - and it hits the target. The companies Raytheon, General Dynamics and Alliant Techsystems (ATK), who took part in the exciting competition for the Pentagon money, were required to ensure that 50% of the mines hit a circle with a diameter of 5 m at a distance of 7 km.
A guided mine is obtained from an ordinary 120-mm M-394 mine by screwing a GPS-guidance device, a global positioning system receiver, an on-board computer and rudders operating according to the Duck aerodynamic scheme in front of the main wing in front of the main wing, which is the stabilizer. Comparing the measured GPS coordinates with the desired trajectory of the mine, the computer generates correction signals, working out which the rudders bring the ammunition to the target. So far, ATK has achieved an accuracy of 10 m at a distance of 6.5 km. At this stage, this satisfied the customer, and money was issued to continue the work.
The United States borrowed the tactics of using mortars in mountain warfare from the experience of our troops in the Caucasus during the Great Patriotic War and in Afghanistan. GPS receivers are so cheap that they can be embedded in every mine, the Yankees have due to the fact that their initially defense navigation system has become a worldwide standard for which microcircuits are mass-produced. The dialectical spiral of conversion and recruitment of mass products into military service.
