HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: After 20 years and two costly cancelled programs, the US Army finally has a new artillery vehicle. While the ceremonial rollout isn’t till Thursday, contractor
has already delivered the first pair of self-propelled howitzers. Oft-overlooked and blandly named, this Paladin Integrated Management program is a modest but much-needed success for
.
“So far, it has moved along without drama or significant problems,” one Hill staffer told me. “It is not a truly new vehicle in that it borrows from others, but still a success.”
Small though it may seem from the Hill, PIM is a harbinger of three bigger things to come:
M109A7 Paladin PIM self-propelled howitzer
- a revival of the field artillery, the “” against conventional threats but a neglected “” during counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq;
- an overhaul of the , which will lead to 72 percent of the brigade’s heavy vehicles having the same BAE-built automotive systems;
- a , in which expensive, ambitious, all-new designs give way to incremental but still substantial changes to existing platforms.
At first glance, PIM looks like just the latest upgrade to the 1960s-vintage M109 howitzer, from the current M109A6 to PIM’s
. In fact, PIM is more like surgically transplanting someone’s head onto a new body: It takes the old gun turret and installs it on an all-new chassis. What’s more, since earlier upgrade programs rebuilt the turret, the PIM has basically nothing in common with the original Vietnam-era M109 except the name.
“M109A6 built a new turret and put it on the old chassis,” said Mark Signorelli, head of combat vehicle programs at BAE Systems. “M109A7 put a new chassis under the A6 turret, with a few upgrades to the turret, and effectively in two steps the Army built a new howitzer.”
The 650 horsepower engine makes PIM much more maneuverable than the current Paladin model, which is notorious for falling behind other armored vehicles. PIM’s 70 kilowatt generator not only accommodates the latest electronics, from
to
: It also allows the replacement of the turret’s leaky, maintenance-intensive hydraulics with modern electric motors. (This “electric drive” technology was actually salvaged from the cancelled FCS program). With a new engine, new transmission, and a hydraulics-free turret, the Paladin PIM should also be much more reliable than the decades-old equipment it replaces.
The Paladin PIM will actually be more modern than the mainstay of the armored brigade, the heavily armed
troop carrier. The new Paladin PIM chassis is “derived from the Bradley chassis, [but] actually somewhat more advanced in many ways in terms of electrical power and other things,” said Brig. Gen. David Bassett, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, in an interview at AUSA. “It’s the leading vehicle in terms of technology for where we’d like to take the Bradley family of systems.”
Brig. Gen. David Bassett
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The last and biggest piece of the modernization effort will be the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle. AMPV is a lightly armed but
support vehicle to replace the vulnerable Vietnam-vintage
. It will use the same automotive systems as the Paladin PIM and Bradley ECP-2. It will also have a new hull, based on the Bradley’s but redesigned for maximum protection against roadside bombs.
AMPV is the Army’s largest modernization program left after the most recent round of cuts, and given budget constraints, the Army can only modernize
. But once a brigade gets all three upgrades — Paladin PIM, Bradley ECP-2, and AMPV — 72 percent of its armored vehicles will be using the same modernized propulsion system, improving mobility and easing maintenance. Only the M1 Abrams tanks — with their infamously fast and fuel-hungry turbine engines — and a small number of specialist vehicles will require unique spare parts and maintainer training. The added electric power will also ease future upgrades with new networks, sensors, and jammers. It’s a far cry from the comprehensive family of hybrid-electric vehicles envisioned by FCS, but it’s also something the Army can actually achieve.
As the lead vehicle in this slow-but-steady modernization drive, the Paladin PIM isn’t without problems. Some on the Hill though the Army’s acquisition strategy unnecessarily slow, while
— and the program has yet to face full-up operational testing. “That is the graduation event,” the Hill staffer told me.
That staffer’s awareness of Paladin is fairly unusual, said industry analyst and consultant
. “Few members of Congress are conversant with Paladin, which is sad considering how positively it displays the Army’s ability to manage complex technology projects,” Thompson told me. “Paladin is shaping up as a success story for the Army….The Army needs more money to modernize, but Paladin proves significant improvements can be made with relatively modest investments.”
An artillery piece like Paladin may seem archaic in an era of smart bombs and
, when the Air Force is developing
, the Navy is
, and the Army itself is considering creating
. Indeed, US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq relied less on artillery than airstrikes and attack helicopters. But that reliance presumed the aircraft could get through. Against
, one with
and
to drive off American aircraft or decoy their weapons, old-fashioned cannon might be the only big guns a ground commander could rely on.
The Army will get its first full battalion of PIM Paladins — 18 howitzers and 18 armored ammunition carriers — when the program reaches Initial Operational Capability in April 2017. With Army analysts saying
, and
proving the effectiveness of traditional bombardment on Ukrainian bodies, 2017 is none too soon.