SBIR-STTR Award

In view of recent arms negotiations, the need to improve our conventional force capability has greater strategic significance and an elevated sense of urgency. It is particularly important to note that the soviets have more than a 10 to 1 advantage in deployed artillery units. Therefore, there is a need to improve the effectiveness of the advanced field artillery system's 155mm self-propelled artillery unit by "leapfrogging" forward with automatic loading capability. Urea developed an autoloader concept that incorporates a 4 chamber magazine and has very high potential to: (1) satisfy the critical burst rate firing requirement, i.s., fire four rounds in fifteen seconds, (2) help promote the "shoot & scoot" barrage concept, (3) decrease the total cycle time for sustained firing, (4) reduce the artillery unit's manpower requirements, (5) reduce the ammunition resupply manpower requirements, (6) increase the survivability of both the self-propelled artillery unit and the resupply vehicle. Aggressive management of the smallest time increments is a critical design goal because the success of the afas burst fire requirement turns on minimizing cycle time. The proposed innovative concept supports the goal of efficient cycle time managment. A similar approach could be developed to reduce the field ammunition resupply time and thus increase survivability

Basic ingredients (innovative concept, design strategy) provide the foundation for a 155mm autoloader subsystem (alss) concept for the advanced field artillery system's self-propelled delivery platform vehicle. The principles embodied in the motion/time minimization strategy (mtms) provide the fundamental design strategy and have been incorporated in the concept. The approach will help achieve their goals for reliability, availability & maintainability (ram) as well as vulnerability reduction. Mtms facilitated mapping an efficient route toward an optimum 155mm projectile/propellant loading system. The mechanical motions have been minimized and, as a result, the detrimental effects of high velocity impact, shock and vibration are reduced and an extended alss life cycle, low maintenance down time, and cost effective hardware is anticipated. When the 4-pack/rotary magazine/robotic transport and reload device (rtrd) concepts are combined with ardec's flick ram device and robotic handling experience, afas requirements, as stipulated in the required operational capability (roc), will be achieved. The phase i research effort concentrated on the mechanical aspects, the computer control, hardware and software, as well as the signal interface requirements were also examined. In addition, the opportunity to integrate certain aspects of artificial intelligence technology, i.e. Expert systems (ai/es) were evaluated. The conclusion of the feasibility study that the concept, i.e., a package containing four projectiles and a rotary magazine, is feasible, practical, and offers a better opportunity to achieve the desired firing rates, ram, and the vulnerability reduction outlines in the roc than the single round loading approaches examined