The US news service Task and Purpose has reported the US Army has begun fielding a new ‘proximity’ airburst round to its Stryker force for use against incoming airborne drone threats.
“Developed by defense contractor Northrop Grumman and dubbed the XM1211 High Explosive Proximity (HEP) cartridge, each 30×113 mm round comes outfitted with a tiny radio-frequency sensor that detects unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and explodes, giving soldiers a better chance at destroying an airborne target than relying on a direct hit.
The XM1211 is planned for with the M230LF Bushmaster chain gun adopted as the XM914 weapon system for both Army’s Maneuver Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) Stryker vehicles and the Marine Corps’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicle-focused Marine Air Defense Integrated Future Weapons System (MADIS) project.
According to Northrop Grumman:
“The 30mm x 173mm airburst cartridge will feature a contact set fuze design with three operational fuze modes: Programmable Airburst, Point Detonation and Point Detonation with Delay. The initial contract will fund the completion of the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase and final qualification by the Army….The newly fielded gun system nearly doubles the range of the platform’s current .50-caliber machine gun. The addition of an airburst cartridge provides a complete family of ammunition that arms the crew to meet the challenges posed by peer and near-peer adversarial threat systems.”
For more information
https://taskandpurpose.com/tech-tactics/army-xm1211-high-explosive-proximity-round-fielding/
(Image: Northrop Grumman)
