The US Army has ordered BONUS 155 mm sensor-fuzed munition.
The decision about the impending order was first mentioned at the IQPC Future Artillery
2018 conference held in London from 14–16 May by Peter Burke, who is the
Deputy project manager for combat ammunition systems within the US Army’s Program Executive
Office for Ammunition.
The initial order consists of 500 shells and a total of 3,141 rounds will be procured over
a three-year period.
BONUS is developed & produced by cooperation between BAE systems in Sweden and Nexter in France.
It is currently in use by several countries which includes Finland, France, Norway, and Sweden.
In this video, Defense Updates analyzes why U.S Army is buying ‘BONUS' artillery rounds?
Let's get started.
Though artillery is seemingly old-fashioned, they are and will continue to play an important
role in the battlefield in the foreseeable future.
Artillery is both a defensive and offensive support weapon.
An artillery barrage will keep the enemy’s heads down and provide opportunities for the
Infantry to advance under cover.
Artillery barrages have also been known to have a physiological impact by demoralizing
the opponent.
It is cheaper and faster than air support and is now way more accurate as compared to
old days.
Modern artillery has the ability to place highly precise indirect fire on enemy’s
assets and there is continuous ongoing work to make them more effective.
BONUS is a 155 mm artillery-launched precision shell.
It is compatible with most of the existing artillery guns.
So it will work with U.S Army’s M109 self-propelled howitzer and the M777 towed howitzer.
It is effective against Main Battle Tank, Armored fighting vehicle as well as self-propelled
artillery to name a few.
The shell has a range of 35 km.
The artillery round weighs in at 47-kilogram (104 lb) and contains two autonomous, sensor-fused,
fire-and-forget submunitions.
What makes it different from normal artillery shell is its ability to search for targets
within a given footprint of around 200 m diameters in area.
This is how BONUS Shell works:
1. The BONUS round is fired from a standard 155 mm artillery gun after setting range and target profile(s).
2. The round flies like a normal shell in a parabolic path
3. A timer fuse ignites a small ejector rocket in the nose, which ejects the two submunitions
4. The submunitions deploy winglets and hurl towards the target area scanning for objects
matching target profile.
5. Once the submunitions detect a target beneath them, it makes the final plunge and detonates
its explosive payload to strike the target.
Since the BONUS strikes from above, it is able to hit the top armor.
Viewers may note, that in general the top armors of tanks or other armored vehicles
are weaker than the frontal armors.
This gives BONUS a better probability of taking out armored vehicles.
Also, since it carries two independent smart munitions it has a much better chance of scoring
a hit when compared to the traditional shell.
BAE & Nexter says, “The munition’s high spin rate, high speed of descent and absence
of a parachute makes it virtually undetectable and therefore undefeatable”.
The manufacturers also state that “using a combination of sensors, BONUS is effective
against targets that use both passive and reactive protection systems.”
Technically this means it is effective against regular armor plate and explosive reactive armor.
But it could potentially be countered with Active Protection Systems like Trophy which
is integrated in Israel’s Merkava main battle tanks and Afganit which is present it Russian
T 14 Armata Tank.
These systems detect incoming shells with their sensors and destroys them by firing
fragmentation projectiles before they can hit.
Active Protection Systems are currently available in only a few main battle tanks and are very
rarely present in an armored fighting vehicle or self-propelled artillery, but they will
be more prevalent in the future.