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Guided munition may be canceled

For more than a dozen years the Navy has waited as Raytheon struggled to build a reliable rocket-powered munition to be fired from 5-inch guns on ships. After repeated test failures, years of delays and rising costs, the Navy may be ready to cancel the program.

A Raytheon official acknowledged March 20 there were “many rumors swirling around” the fate of its Extended Range Guided Munition (ERGM) program, including the possibility that it will be canceled.

A Navy official would not comment on the program’s fate.

The end for ERGM, if it is imminent, would come just weeks after multiple munitions flunked test shots, according to an industry source.

A Raytheon spokesman insisted that the tests in February were not failures. He said Raytheon was testing for “specific functionalities, not testing for overall functionality” of the rounds.

Cancellation of the ERGM would leave the Navy with only one other source for a long-range, precision 5-inch round — Alliant Techsystems, which is developing a ballistic trajectory extended-range munition (BTERM). The BTERM is similar to ERGM but has had serious test problems of its own.

Both munitions were intended to give Navy ships the ability to strike targets with great accuracy from more than 50 miles away. If they worked, they would give some cruisers and destroyers long-range precision fire support from the sea for Marines ashore.

Rocket-propelled during part of its flight, the ERGM was supposed to use signals from global positioning satellites to fly to within 20 meters of its target.

Five feet long and 5 inches wide, with fins at the rear and canards near the nose, the 110-pound ERGM looked more like a missile than a 5-inch gun projectile. And it was supposed to fly like a missile, too.

After being fired like a projectile, the ERGM’s rocket motor would ignite, blasting the munition to 80,000 feet. From there, the fins and canards would pop out to guide the ERGM precisely to its target.

It was expected to be quite an improvement over the standard 5-inch projectile, which can be shot about 13 miles and is not a precision weapon. Only the ERGM hasn’t worked as hoped.

Over years of testing, tail fins failed to deploy, rocket motors didn’t ignite and electronic components such as GPS guidance systems didn’t survive being shot from a deck gun. Sometimes only one in four or one in three ERGMs fully performed when tested.

Meanwhile, the price has tripled, rising from $45,000 per weapon in 1997 to $191,000 per weapon by 2006. As a result, the number of munitions to be bought was cut from more than 8,500 to about 3,150.

Staff writer Christopher P. Cavas contributed to this report.