The Army has successfully fired a 155mm artillery round 38.5 miles. Hello from Uncle Sam!

“We just doubled the range of our artillery at Yuma Proving Ground,” Gen. John Murray, Commanding General of Army Futures Command, told reporters at the recent Association of the United States Army Annual Symposium.

Currently, most land-fired artillery shot from an M777 Towed Howitzer or Self-Propelled Howitzer are able to pinpoint targets out to 18.6 miles - so hitting 38.5 miles marks a substantial leap forward in offensive attack capability.

In a concurrent related effort, the Army is also engineering an adaptation to existing 155mm rounds which will extend range an additional 10km out to 40km.

Fired from an existing Howitzer artillery cannon, the new XM1113 round uses ram jet rocket technology to deliver more thrust to the round.

"The XM1113 uses a large high-performance rocket motor that delivers nearly three times the amount of thrust when compared to the legacy M549A1 RAP," Ductri Nguyen, XM1113 Integrated Product Team Lead.” "Its exterior profile shape has also been streamlined for lower drag to achieve the 40-plus kilometers when fired from the existing fielded 39-caliber 155mm weapon systems."

These developments are needed to keep up with very good long range systems in use by the Russians and Chinese, who deeply believe in the utility of artillery, and have proven the truth of that view in the Ukraine.