U.S. Army Tests General Atomics 155mm ERAP for GPS Resilient 70 km Howitzer Strikes.

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems has secured a U.S. Army contract to flight-demonstrate a maneuvering 155 mm artillery projectile, the company announced on June 12, 2026, advancing a round designed to strike far beyond current cannon-artillery ranges while maintaining accuracy under GPS jamming or denial. The award matters because the Army needs precision fires that can survive electronic warfare and hit targets at distances once reserved for rockets and missiles.

The Long Range Maneuvering Projectile will now be tested under the Extended Range Artillery Projectile program, where General Atomics is competing against General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems and BAE Systems. By keeping multiple designs in play, the Army is preserving options for a future production round that could expand Western artillery reach, improve survivability, and strengthen long-range deterrence by fiscal year 2030.

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General Atomics will demonstrate a maneuvering 155 mm Extended Range Artillery Projectile for the U.S. Army, aiming to give existing howitzers longer-range, GPS-resilient precision fire against artillery, air defense, armor, and other high-value battlefield targets (Picture source: General Atomics).

The armament itself is not a conventional high-explosive 155 mm shell with a guidance kit attached at the nose. General Atomics describes its projectile as a long-range, winged, maneuvering round engineered to extend range without rocket assist, while remaining compatible with legacy cannons and loaders. The published features include deployable wings and redundant guidance, which implies a design that obtains much of its additional reach from lift and controlled glide rather than from post-launch propulsion. That distinction matters because rocket assist usually trades internal volume, thermal margin, and mechanical complexity for range; a glide-body approach moves the engineering burden to aerodynamics, launch survivability, flight-control authority, and miniaturized guidance electronics.

The Army’s own technical discussion of extended-range 155 mm work explains the trade space in practical terms: range can be increased through post-launch propulsion, higher muzzle velocity, or more lift. For a maneuvering round, the most difficult event remains gun launch, where a 155 mm projectile can experience roughly 15,000 to 20,000 Gs, a shock environment severe enough to damage electronics, moving surfaces, energetic materials, and internal assemblies. This is why the August 2025 Yuma Proving Ground test is relevant beyond the fact that a round left the barrel. Fired from an M777 155 mm towed howitzer using M231 modular propelling charges, the General Atomics projectile demonstrated sabot separation, de-spin stabilization, wing deployment, and controlled descent, all of which are prerequisite events for a round that must transition from spin-stabilized gun launch to controlled aerodynamic flight.

Range figures need to be handled carefully. The Army’s ERAP requirement calls for at least 65 km from current 39-caliber howitzers and 70 km or more from 52-caliber guns, with compatibility across current and future 155 mm artillery weapons and Joint Ballistic Memorandum of Understanding standards. Separately, General Atomics has stated for its LRMP Common Round work that the design has the potential to defeat static and moving targets at 120 km and beyond, and Defense News reported that a version of the projectile struck targets more than 74 miles away after launch from an M777. Those numbers are not identical program thresholds; rather, they show the gap between the Army’s stated minimum requirement, the company’s design objective, and reported test performance.

Operationally, the most important point is that ERAP is designed to change the geometry of brigade and division fires without requiring every unit to wait for a new howitzer. A 39-caliber M777 or M109A7 normally gives the Army less reach than modern 52-caliber European self-propelled howitzers, while rocket artillery and tactical missiles are fewer in number and more expensive per shot. A precision 155 mm projectile capable of engaging targets at 65 km, 70 km, or farther allows artillery battalions to attack enemy self-propelled howitzers, multiple rocket launchers, short-range air-defense systems, command posts, logistics nodes, and moving armored vehicles from firing positions that are harder for enemy counter-battery systems to service quickly.

The tactical requirement is more demanding than range alone. The Army’s 2024 ERAP language specified a target-seeking 155 mm projectile able to operate in heavily degraded GPS conditions and to include a mode that does not use GPS. It also identified targets including infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled howitzers, multiple rocket launchers, air defense targets, main battle tanks, and maritime targets of interest. This target list suggests the Army is not buying ERAP only as a deep-area bombardment round; it wants a munition that can prosecute time-sensitive and moving targets whose location may be uncertain when the shell is fired. In practice, that requires midcourse correction, terminal target discrimination or target updates, and enough maneuver authority to correct accumulated error over long flight times.

The non-GPS requirement is central to the munition’s battlefield relevance. A 155 mm projectile flying for tens of kilometers through a contested electromagnetic environment cannot assume continuous access to satellite navigation. Redundant guidance may combine inertial navigation, anti-jam GPS when available, and other undisclosed sensing or targeting inputs; the Army has not publicly defined the full architecture. The value for a field-artillery commander is resilience rather than elegance: if satellite signals are jammed, spoofed, or intermittently available, the round still has to arrive close enough to defeat a vehicle, radar, launcher, or command node with a limited warhead volume. That is a different problem from firing conventional high-explosive shells in volume against a grid square.

Industrial capacity is another constraint that should not be separated from performance. The Army’s market survey described production beginning at 300 projectiles per month in the first production year and increasing to 1,500 per month by the sixth production year, which is a demanding ramp for a precision round containing deployable structures, guidance electronics, control mechanisms, and a specialized airframe. General Atomics says it has invested in manufacturing capacity, scaling methods, and production infrastructure, including work tied to its Mississippi manufacturing base. If ERAP reaches procurement, cost and monthly output will determine whether it becomes a routinely available artillery munition or a small-inventory weapon reserved for selected targets.

The near-term significance of the award is therefore specific: the Army is testing whether 155 mm cannon artillery can regain operational depth through ammunition rather than by relying only on longer gun tubes or larger missile inventories. General Atomics’ approach offers a no-rocket-assist, winged, maneuvering projectile that promises range, compatibility, and GPS resilience, but it still has to prove repeatable accuracy, lethality, producibility, and affordability under Army test conditions. For U.S. commanders, the useful outcome would not be a spectacular single shot; it would be a munition available in sufficient numbers to make enemy artillery, air defense, armor, and logistics units vulnerable at distances they currently use to reduce their exposure to U.S. cannon fire.

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Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.