100 km range guide round from China

hardware

Banned Idiot
U8929P27T1D729536F3DT20130627094842.jpg
according to the latest issue of Kanwa, chinese firm ALMT is offering WS-35 guide round with 100km range. according the magazine it come two version,one has shorter range.but it do not provide additional data.
 

rhino123

Pencil Pusher
VIP Professional
And you didn't mention the accuracy of 40 meters spread...

At a CEP of 40m, it didn't sound pretty dangerous... however do note that the PLA or any army intending on using that weapon will not be using it with mere 1 artillery piece. They will be utilizing it as an entire battery (not sure how many canons are there), so in my point of view... although the CEP is 40m, when many of the guns are firing together and coupled with satellite imaging, unmanned aerial vehicle imaging and translating the error back to the gunners.

This weapon can be very devastating.
 

duskylim

Junior Member
VIP Professional
And you didn't mention the accuracy of 40 meters spread...

Yes the round dispersion is 40 meters at a range of 100 kilometers, that's about:

40/100,000 = 0.0004 actually very decent.

For comparison here's the specs of Excalibur

Range is 40 to 57 km with a designed dispersion of 5 to 20 meters.

that's:

20/57,000 = 0.000351

The performance of the Chinese round is not really very far from the Excalibur's given that dispersion is bound to be greater at 100 km range.

Furthermore these are design features.

After testing things turned out differently.

92% of Excalibur Increment 1a rounds (40 km range) fell within 4 meters of the target.

More shooting and more practice and I believe the performance of the Chinese round will improve also.
 

Phead128

Captain
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
What are the intended targets of this guided round?

Is 40 m spread sufficient to fatality among target personnel formation?
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
What are the intended targets of this guided round?

Is 40 m spread sufficient to fatality among target personnel formation?

Moving tanks and armored vehicles. This would make the field artillery even more deadlier in battle along with small drones to go along to find them in over the horizon range.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
What kind of guidance does it use to achieve 40m CEP? From the picture, the shell does not seem to have a homing seeker, so the 40m CEP is likely based on inertial navigation or GPS, which is pretty respectable.

If the shell is using IN or GPS to keep costs down, it can quite easily be upgraded with a laser homing warhead for single digit CEP, but that will raise the unit cost of the shells, and also would require someone on the ground near the target lasing it to achieve the best CEP. But it is not always possible to have SF units on hand to laser tag targets, and in a lot of causes, such extreme precision isn't really needed.

The main aim of this shell is to extended the effective range of the artillery piece to between double to triple the range typical 155mm artillery can achieve with conventional shells or even rocket assisted shells.

The control fins are necessary to correct for wind and other external factors as well as the inherent limitations of the canon itself to achieve useable CEPs at such extreme ranges, but the shell itself is not designed as a PGM to keep unit costs down.
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Guys the picture is of a US Army GPS guided Excalibur shell...
 

rhino123

Pencil Pusher
VIP Professional
Since US is still developing LRLAP, I highly doubt Chinese capability to offer this kind of round

And why is that? Just because the US is still developing means that the Chinese are not capable of having developed this type of round... There might be a number of reason why US is still developing the rounds, might not be technical constraint, but they might not be putting too high a priority to the developement of this round. The Chinese on the other hand, might make it a top project for that company developing it.
 
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