newsletter

Artillery

A Phalanx close-in weapon system fires aboard USS Nimitz in the Pacific, May 2013.

The Navy’s Phalanx close-in weapon system fires 20mm rounds at up to 4,500 a minute from a 1,550-round magazine, and it was first installed on USS Coral Sea in 1980

Phalanx is the gun a warship counts on when everything else has missed. The Mk

Read more
M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System launcher vehicles on a dirt range

In the first official combat launch of an MLRS on Feb. 13, 1991, a battery firing as a single unit launched more than 100 rockets in a single minute, Lockheed Martin says

Where the borders of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait meet, a battery of 10 armored

Read more
M65 280mm atomic cannon on its carriage at an outdoor display

Only 20 of the Army’s 83-ton M65 atomic cannons were built, and in a 1953 test one fired a nuclear shell that burst 524 feet above its target

Rock Island Arsenal keeps one of the rarest pieces of Cold War artillery the U.S.

Read more
A World War I-era gun, the first test-fired when Dahlgren became a naval proving ground, arrives at Naval Support Facility Dahlgren in 2009.

The U.S. Navy built only one 18-inch gun, and it fired 114 shots at Dahlgren between 1942 and 1957

As presently configured, the complete gun assembly weighs 559,974 pounds. Its official name is the

Read more
A U.S. Army 50mm chain gun on a test stand.

Northrop Grumman flight-tested its guided 50mm Raid Hunter round from an XM913 chain gun as a lower-cost answer to drones and cruise missiles

A guided 50mm projectile built to knock down aerial threats with a cannon instead of

Read more
An Army M109A6 howitzer crew trains with the M1156 Precision Guidance Kit in 2014. The kit shown is the standard PGK, not the long-range kit.

General Dynamics says its new guidance kit steered 155mm artillery shells beyond 50 kilometers in a test at Yuma Proving Ground

Fifty kilometers is the number General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems is putting on its

Read more

6 howitzers that outlived the wars they were built for

Wars end. Budgets swing. Armies modernize—at least on paper. Yet certain howitzers refuse to disappear,

Read more

6 artillery weapons so extreme they reshaped modern warfare

“Extreme artillery” isn’t only about larger shells or longer barrels. The systems that truly left

Read more

6 artillery weapons that helped reshape modern warfare

Modern warfare didn’t become “modern” all at once. It arrived in steps, often driven by

Read more
Pentagon Signs 7-Year Deals With Lockheed Martin to Triple PAC-3 and Quadruple THAAD Interceptor Production Amid Iran War Stockpile Crisis — "We Are Cutting Red Tape, Shortening Timelines"

Pentagon Signs 7-Year Deals With Lockheed Martin to Triple PAC-3 and Quadruple THAAD Interceptor Production Amid Iran War Stockpile Crisis — “We Are Cutting Red Tape, Shortening Timelines”

The Pentagon announced Monday it has signed two seven-year framework agreements with Lockheed Martin and

Read more