Army to “Shoot Off” New Prototype Long-Range Rockets – 2020

By Kris Osborn

The Army plans to shoot off prototypes of a new, high-tech, long-range land rocket designed to destroy targets as far away as 500 kilometers, nearly three times the range of existing weapons.

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The anticipated “shoot-off,” to include weapon prototypes from both Raytheon and Lockheed, is slated to take place in roughly the 2020 timeframe, Army developers said.

The emerging Long Range Precision Fires, slated to be operational by 2027, draws upon next generation guidance technology and weapons construction as part of an effort to engineer a sleek, high-speed, first-of-its-kind long-range ground launched attack missile able to pinpoint and destroy enemy bunkers, helicopter staging areas, troop concentrations and other fixed-location targets from as much as three times the range of existing weapons, service officials said.

“Ultimately, it is about out-ranging the enemy. We are not necessarily guaranteed aerial superiority, and this extends our attack range much further out to be able to strike enemy logistics targets, supply nodes, force concentrations or command and control centers,” Brig. Gen. Robert Rasch, Deputy Program Executive Officer, Missiles and Space, told Scout Warrior in an interview. 

While Rasch did not specify any particular Russian weapons or threats per say, he did explain that Russia’s use of combined arms tactics in Ukraine was by no means lost on US Army weapons developers. Specifically, he mentioned that Russia’s use of combined electronic warfare, cyber attacks, drones and long-range fires introduces a particularly challenging new kind of threat.