The Army says it recently achieved its first big milestone with the Strategic Long-Range Cannon that may one day fire rounds over 1,000 miles

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• The US Army said at the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, DC, that it recently achieved its first big milestone with the Strategic Long-Range Cannon.
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• The cannon, which may one day fire rounds over 1,000 miles, started a year ago as an abstract concept, but a few weeks ago, a test asset was successful in a test of a propelling charge, Col. John Rafferty, head of the Long-Range Precision Fires Cross-Functional Team, said Tuesday.
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• "We've got a long way to go to the tech demonstration in [2023]," he explained, "but I feel pretty good about where we are after one year."
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The US Army says it has achieved its first big milestone with the Strategic Long-Range Cannon, a future weapon that was little more than an abstract concept a year ago.

"We fired the first slug a couple of weeks ago," Gen. John Murray, commander of Army Futures Command, said Monday at the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, DC.

Col. John Rafferty, head of the Long-Range Precision Fires Cross-Functional Team (LRPF CFT), clarified what the test entailed on Tuesday. A test asset that the team at Picatinny Arsenal built over the past year was successful in testing a propelling charge at Dahlgren a few weeks ago, Rafferty explained, calling it the "first big milestone that we overcame."

"We've got a long way to go to the tech demonstration in [2023]," he added, "but I feel pretty good about where we are after one year."

In addition to leveraging lessons on propelling charges and cannon-tube technologies learned from other Army programs, such as the Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA), the Army has already been working with various commercial industry partners on projectile design and build.

Rafferty said his team is primarily working with two vendors, but it is keep its options open. "This will be a government-led program, but obviously, we have to have a lot of partners to do this," he explained.

The Strategic Long-Range Cannon remains a Science and Technology investment. As this system knocks down certain "technology gates" (critical command information requirements), the Army will decide whether or not it wants to move forward on this as an official Army program of record.

Rafferty said that the Army is still looking at how to integrate the Strategic Long-Range Cannon into the force, but he is certain the service won't be buying a lot of these weapons.

"We won't have huge quantities and deep magazines with these things," he said, adding that the US is going to have "just enough to win. Just enough to open the window of opportunity for the joint force."

The idea behind the various LRPF systems, which include the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) and Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), and ERCA, is layered standoff for surface-to-surface fires able to penetrate the anti-access, area-denial systems employed by US rivals.

The Strategic Long-Range Cannon would likely be forward deployed and complement the LRHW by eliminating "lighter-skinned area targets" while the latter destroyed strategic infrastructure and hardened targets, among other things.

As the Army moves forward with this project, Rafferty's team will be tracking cost estimates. "We're keeping our eyes wide open on the lethality and what we think the total investment in this is," he explained.