Smart ammunition is a research and development package proposed by the United States 20 years ago, which covers many projects such as smart bullets, smart artillery shells, smart missiles and aerial vehicles. However, due to the fault line in the U.S. R&D system, especially the loss of a large number of top talents after "deindustrialization", the U.S. government was also willing to lie down after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so that many projects ended hastily without research and understanding. And just recently, a paper from the National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Energy Technology of China's Naval Engineering University unveiled China's development in this area. As can be seen from the article, this satellite-guided ultra-high-speed guided missile relies on an electromagnetic railgun as a launch platform. This is the world's first successfully developed smart munition and represents the development trend of the future.
This smart ammunition can be understood as an advanced intelligent weapon to support the electromagnetic railgun, which has been installed and tested in the Chinese Navy. The electromagnetic railgun is characterized by providing an acceleration to the projectile, which can easily reach hypersonic speed, which can both extend the range and improve the accuracy of shooting. However, when the shell is fired from a distance, there will always be an error between the impact point and the target point. For this reason, this smart ammunition has appeared. Different from the general guidance method, when the electromagnetic railgun fires the projectile, the general guidance means are difficult to meet the requirements of use, including pressure deformation, but also poor communication and other problems. To this end, this smart munition that relies on satellite navigation systems to provide guidance services focuses on this. It is reported that this smart ammunition has been able to reach 7 times the speed of sound during the test, which is already in the hypersonic category, and its range is more than 100 kilometers, and the error is less than 15 meters.
Many people may think that this data is still insufficient compared with anti-ship missiles and other long-range strike weapons, but for artillery ammunition, it is already a very unnatural existence. Unlike long-range guided weapons, the ammunition fired by electromagnetic railguns focuses on high speed, high kinetic energy, and low cost. The electromagnetic railgun fires a projectile loaded with smart ammunition, which costs less than 1 155 mm guided projectile. Moreover, the electromagnetic railgun also has a very fast rate of fire, which can meet the coverage of the target, which was difficult to achieve in the past. For this reason, the battlefield environment targeted by this artillery shell should be land support during amphibious landing operations, and the field of air defense is still slightly insufficient, and there is still uncertainty in intercepting some high-speed incoming ammunition.
But even so, the intelligent ammunition launched by the electromagnetic railgun still represents the future trend, especially the addition of satellite navigation systems, which can be regarded as a breakthrough. The advantage of satellite navigation is that in addition to correcting the flight attitude and adjusting the trajectory, it can also be linked with ships or land fingers, and the forward command can determine whether it is necessary to continue to cover the shooting based on the damage assessment provided by the satellite navigation system. And the shell can also be corrected according to the target information provided by the forward command, and this is where its intelligence lies. Of course, it is very difficult to implement such a technology, because the whole process of the artillery shell is in a hypersonic state, which puts forward rigid requirements for communication and real-time measurement, and it is difficult to do even GPS.