At the Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) 2024 Conference, Naval News had a chance to catch up with representatives from BAE Systems to discuss the future of artillery and cannon ammunition. BAE Systems was one of two contractors that developed railguns for the U.S. Navy, and the projectile developed under the railgun is guiding future development of long-range cannon rounds.
The HVP projectile is leveraged from BAE Systems’ Electro-Magnetic Laboratory Rail Gun program, which was cancelled after funding was cut in the U.S. Navy’s Fiscal Year 2022 budget. The original sub-caliber projectile is used across the family of HVP rounds, for Army and Marine Corps 155mm howitzers, Navy 5-inch Mark 45 cannons, and the now-defunct electromagnetic railgun itself.
The HVP was tested aboard USS Dewey in 2018 as part of a RIMPAC exercise to test the round against cruise missiles and other airborne targets. The HVP program, renamed “Gun-Launched Guided Projectile”, was cancelled in 2022. Now, Naval News has learned from Jim Miller, Vice President of Business Development at BAE Systems Combat Mission Systems, that the U.S. Navy is currently conducting tests of the HVP with a capability fielded to destroyers that are at sea today.
“There is ongoing testing with the US Navy right now that provides air defense to our destroyers at sea.”
Jim Miller, Vice President of Business Development at BAE Systems Combat Mission Systems
According to another BAE spokesperson, the HVP “successfully demonstrated effects on a various number of airborne threats” in their tests at-sea which “can help support the Navy’s air defense requirements”.
The HVP has been in and out of testing with the U.S. Navy over the past several years, with the last reported test being in 2018. In 2022, the development of HVP was reportedly cancelled according to U.S. Navy budget documents. Since then, BAE Systems has displayed the family of rounds at several conferences, including SNA 2020 which Naval News covered here. Naval News also covered the testing of HVPs from U.S. Army howitzers.
On top of traditional interceptors stored in a destroyer’s Mark 41 VLS cells, HVP would offer a significant improvement in both volume of fire and magazine depth. Fielding HVP rounds on a destroyer would permit the firing of an additional 16-20 effectors per minute against incoming airborne threats like cruise missiles, drones, and aircraft. Each U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer typically carries 600 rounds for the Mark 45 gun mount.
“There’s an air defense capability. [We’re working with] the Navy, Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO), and Air Force. We’re also looking at base defense with these projectiles. Can a howitzer shoot down an incoming missile, UAS, or aircraft? The answer is yes. We know that from history. A projectile like this, with a seeker on it, shooting at such a high velocity? There’s real air defense capability.”
Jim Miller, Vice President of Business Development at BAE Systems Combat Mission Systems
HVP has an unspecified seeker which allows it to prosecute airborne targets. Future upgrades include seeker modifications that will allow the sub-caliber round to hit moving targets at sea and over land, according to Miller. The induction of HVP across the services would offer affordable magazine depth against massed UAS and cruise missile attacks, saving high-end interceptors like the U.S. Navy’s RIM-174 or U.S. Army’s PAC-3 MSE for more appropriate threats. Such a capability would deepen the magazines of integrated air defense networks, enhancing capabilities against large swarms of one-way attack drones or cruise missiles.
The U.S. Navy’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget also lays out plans for the service’s continued development and preliminary testing of fire control elements for the HVP, with a specific interest in capability for high-resolution tracks for multiple low cost interceptors.
The Precision Fire Control (PFC) effort will develop a fire control architecture that delivers high precision, high update rate guidance solutions to enable cruise missile defense with small, low-cost interceptors and dramatically increase number of interceptors per ship or Expeditionary Advanced Base. It will develop fire control capability for multiple interceptors (missiles and gun projectiles) that contribute to layered defense of surface combatants, expeditionary forces, and homeland protection.
U.S. Navy RDT&E Justification Book FY2024, Volume One
The U.S. Navy’s effort to integrate HVP onto surface combatants is well under way and will continue into the mid-2020s according to budget documents. Testing of the guidance system with the HVP seeker is planned for FY2024. Development and testing of the HVP is ongoing with the U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, and U.S. Air Force.
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 could give U.S. Navy destroyers up to 600 additional interceptors for air defense missions and is in testing at sea.){kind=link}