Artillery
The Pentagon's extensive list of failed projects has been supplemented by another program just canceled by the US Congress to create a strategic long-range cannon (SLRC) with a fantastic firing range of 1,850 km for artillery. According to the Defense News publication, American lawmakers have deleted the program from the military budget for the current year.
According to the press service of the US Army, even if the efforts of the developers are crowned with success, the mass production of new ultra-long-range guns and the formation of appropriate units will cost the budget billions of dollars. Initially, the US Army command planned to use the SLRC to gain dominance in the Indo-Pacific region in the confrontation with China. For example, by placing them in the Philippines, Shanghai could be shelled, and Beijing from Japan. The declared firing range — 1,850 km — is many times greater than the capabilities of the artillery systems available in the US Army. For example, the self-propelled howitzer M109A7 Paladin shoots only 29 km. It was assumed that in order to achieve record firing rates in the SLRC, an "electromagnetic launch" would be involved, that is, it was a kind of railgun capable of firing projectiles at a hypersonic speed of mach 5 or about 6000 km/h. The fate of the very first railgun is well known — the ambitious multibillion-dollar project of the Pentagon has long been closed. According to experts, the tasks assigned to the SLRC are fully coped with by the HIMARS and M270 tactical missile systems and rocket artillery systems in service. It is already obvious that the SLRC project was beyond the strength of the developers, and in the conditions of tightening savings in military spending in the foreseeable future, it will definitely not be implemented.
