Israel Aerospace Industries is course correction artillery fuzes. The fuze, called TopGun, is an add-on fuze mounted on 155mm shells. It allows guiding the shell to its a pre-defined coordinate after it has been fired. Small wings controlled by miniature avionics embedded into the fuze is used for the guidance.
Use of the fuze essentially converts standard artillery ammunition into a precision guided weapon.
TopGun converts standard artillery ammunition into a precision guided weapon, by using a guidance integrated fuze, without significantly altering firing routines. TopGun performs 2D correction of the ballistic trajectory, i.e. it reduces dispersion in both range and deflection for improved accuracy – 20 m CEP at any range.
Features
TopGun converts standard artillery ammunition into a precision guided weapon
TopGun performs 2D (two-dimensional) correction of the ballistic trajectory
Accuracy – better than 10 meters CEP at any range
The fuze complies with zone 6 / charge 10 firing
Total projectile length complies with NATO standards
Advantages
No registration required – fire for effect with 1 st round
Fire mission accomplished with less ammonition and time
More targets per gun’s stowage
Shortened logistic tail
High responsiveness of artillery for fire support
Minimal collateral damage
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Or Israel re-invented the wheel. Back in the early 80’s when the US Army did this, it was called the Copperhead System. It’s also both armies using a variant of the proximity fuse. Instead of buying and using the Buck Rogers missile system that both costs an arm and a leg, with the added attraction of being battlefield tactical toxic, make the best use of your artillery, the King of Battle.
Israelian do not feel ashamed to attribute themselves innovation of guided 155 mm shelters though French made it with bonus nexter technology
Israelian do not feel ashamed to attribute themselves the origin of bonus technology shelters .hese ammunitions are used by French Army since 20 years.
(fyi)
In the military science of ballistics, circular error probable (CEP) (also circular error probability or circle of equal probability) is a measure of a weapon system’s precision.
It’s by no means clear to me that a CEP of 10 meters is going to make artillery completely effective against tanks. You still have a good chance of missing the tank all together even if your point of aim was dead centre on the tank.
The article gives a CEP of 10 meters and 20 meters. So either they stuffed up (always a possibility) or they mean 10 m radius/ 20 m diameter. Well even a nice big tank sits in a 20 m circle with lots of room to spare.
Aim at a Toyota Hilux with a machine gun in the flatbed and hitting close enough will take it out, but a tank is designed to deal with mere blast and shrapnel.
Fair point regarding a 10m CEP not being precise enough to kill a tank but if the fuze is cheap enough one might be able to put 10, 20, 30+ guided 155mm shells down range for the same price as a Hellfire. With that volume of fire, even if you miss the tank you will at least have dug one hell of a hole for the tank to get out of.
Also, this comment system blows.
It will all come down to cost effectiveness. Can I accomplish the same mission at a lower cost with the guided shells. If the answer is yes then we have a deal.
Seems to me that this is a capability already existing in the M712 Copperhead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M712_Copperhead and M982 Excalibur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur 155mm rounds. Perhaps this is the artillery counterpart of the JDAM kit, which turns a “dumb”, unguided bomb into a “smart” bomb. I guess it all comes down to the question of the cost of a TopGun fuze atop a standard round compared to an Excalibur or Copperhead round.