End of ERGM spotlights other future guns

[unhappycamper]

An MK-45 Mod 4, 5-inch/62-cal, lightweight gun mount is fired during an exercise. The gun was designed to be used with the Mark 171 Extended Range Guided Munition for over-the-horizon range and improved lethality. Since the Navy pulled the plug on Raytheon's Extended Range Guided Munition program March 19, Marines are wondering how long it will be before Navy guns get the firepower the Corps contends it still needs.


End of ERGM spotlights other future guns
By William Matthews - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Apr 1, 2008 6:26:12 EDT

In June 2007, a Navy destroyer used its 5-inch gun to shell Islamic militants in Somalia. That was 16 years after the last use of naval gunfire: at the start of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Before that was Lebanon in 1983, Vietnam a decade earlier and Korea two decades before that.

Using ships to attack targets on land is rare, but naval surface fire support remains a must for the Marine Corps, said Maj. Eric Dent, a service spokesman.

And since the Navy pulled the plug on Raytheon’s Extended Range Guided Munition program March 19, Marines are wondering how long it will be before Navy guns get the firepower the Corps contends it still needs.

“When you look at how the Marine Corps is going to be employed, we’re going back to our roots. We’re going to be expeditionary,” Dent said.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/03/navy_ergm_033108w/



uhc comment: We spent a piddling $600,000,000 on ERGM --> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=259x12632