Recommendations

In response to Chinese and Russian military threats, the U.S. Army is actively pursuing long-range hypersonic weapons, medium-range missiles, and shorter-range cannons. Consequently, the Army is working on a major science and technology (S&T) development program to build the Strategic Long Range Cannon (SLRC) to fire a hypersonic projectile 1,000 miles. Its goal is to demonstrate capability in fiscal year 2025 after which a decision will be made on whether to begin a program of record. This surface-to-surface capability is based on two complementary systems—a hypersonic projectile and the strategic cannon. The platform consists of a weapon, prime mover and trailer, projectile, and propellant charge capable of delivering massed fires at strategic ranges for Multi-Domain Operations (MDO).

The Committee on Assessing the Feasibility of the Strategic Long Range Cannon believes this demonstrator can fill a critical gap in the Army’s MDO and Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO) concepts and recommends the Army continue to develop the SLRC. The SLRC could fill capability gaps given necessary investment in technology areas to be matured.

The committee has recommendations for the U.S. Army in the following categories: organizational, operational, and technical demonstration development areas.

PRIORITY RECOMMENDATIONS

Committee Priority Recommendation 1: To complete the Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and Education, Personnel, Facilities and Policy (DOTMLPF-P) concept of operations (CONOPS) for employment to inform science and technology developments and risks trades in development of the Strategic Long Range Cannon, the Fires Center of Excellence (FCoE) should provide the U.S. Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) and the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Armaments Center (AC) with CONOPS and preliminary requirements that address considerations such as threat information, target analysis, and operational employment requirements (2.5.3 Fires Center of Excellence). This is the committee’s top recommendation because all capability requirements are established by, and flow from, the CONOPS and will drive the level of investment and maturation needed to fill the technology gaps.

Committee Priority Recommendation 2: Adopt a cost per effect framework. The U.S. Army should implement a “cost per effect (CpE) assessment” for the Strategic Long Range Cannon and adopt the methodology as the

preferred measure of merit for its weapons system choices. The Department of Defense (DoD) should also consider this as its standard practice; especially as multiple services may offer different solutions to achieve similar effects. This CpE (the sum of what it takes to obtain a desired mission result) study should take into consideration the costs of the entire system (cannon, heating and cooling, command and control [C2], supporting sensors, transportation, etc.) rather than just the cost of the projectile (2.4.1 Development Costs and Cost Effectiveness). To complete a CpE metric, the Army should include the following:

• Mission factors, such as the rate of fire, which will dictate how many cannons will be required and ultimately drive the overall operational and life-cycle cost (2.4.2 Cost per Effect Framework) and
• Quantifying the manufacturing capacity in the United States to produce the SLRC production at scale (2.4.2 Cost per Effect Framework)

The committee recommends that the Army use the CpE framework to calculate a CpE in addition to identifying all the traditional DOTMLPF-P development, production, training, employment, and maintenance costs as part of a common CpE metric to help determine the best long-range precision fires (LRPF) weapons needed to fill validated capability gaps (2.4.2 Cost per Effect Framework).

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS

Organizational Structures

Army hypersonics research and technology development is not consistently coordinated or disseminated either within the Service or across DoD, increasing the possibility of gaps or duplication of effort in pursuit of complementary capabilities. The Army needs a singular point of contact in order to have a more consistent and authoritative voice, both internally and externally, on matters related to hypersonics research and development across the department. It should reexamine its internal coordination practices and either reinvigorate existing mechanisms or consider additional measures, such as a consolidated hypersonics office (2.4.3 DoD Hypersonics Development).

The committee believes that the SLRC operational integration is highlighting a broader problem, and the Army would benefit from organizing the Army force modernization proponent and analytical community to better support the Research, Development, Test & Evaluation enterprise. Such an investment is expected to accelerate technology innovation and attain modernization excellence (3.4.3 Enterprise Integration and System-of-Systems Performance).

Funding Observations

The SLRC is not a program of record and is in S&T development to field a demonstrator. The Army has not programmed long-term development funds specifically for the SLRC, which means its project managers must compete annually for a share of Army Futures Command’s technical development fund. These funding amounts have varied, but fiscal year 2022 projections could be up to one-third less than the previous year. The committee observed that the inconsistent funding is particularly detrimental to demonstration testing, because multiple Army and DoD range organizations are involved (2.6.1 SLRC Program Funding).

Overall System Integration and Testing

Integrating across the components and subassemblies that comprise the SLRC projectile and platform was frequently expressed as a significant concern, and DEVCOM AC states that integration is its greatest challenge. The committee recommends the following:

• Adapt and apply integration readiness levels (IRLs) and system readiness levels (SRLs). While technology readiness levels are in use for the SLRC project, neither IRLs nor SRLs appear to be (3.4.1 Weapon System Analysis).

• Use simple component and subsystem reliability block diagrams to understand where component reliability requires improvement. Apply dynamic programming methods to cost-effectively achieve projectile and weapon system reliability goals. Neither reliability component diagrams nor dynamic programming methods appear to be used to cost-effectively allocate Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Dependability improvement investments (3.4.1 Weapon System Analysis).
• A federally funded research and development center, such as the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories, could contribute further to this effort with its Mobile Gun Test Complex and Center for Systems Reliability (3.4.3 Enterprise Integration and System-of-Systems Performance and 3.6.1 Test and Evaluation).

Modeling and Simulation

The overall evaluation for this area is that the SLRC project is making effective use of modeling and simulation (M&S). State-of-the-art computational tools are being employed, community leaders are being engaged as participants, and test data is being used to validate models and to provide key inputs required by extensive use of M&S in support of the SLRC Test Strategy. DEVCOM AC should institute a rigorous Quantification of Margin and Uncertainty approach that quantifies uncertainty in each of the component systems and propagates all uncertainties up to the system level to quantify overall uncertainties (3.5 Modeling and Simulation).

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