The US Army will initiate its programme to make an off-the-shelf self-propelled howitzer (SPH) procurement within the next few months, it has emerged. The selected system will supplant the army’s Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) prototyping effort to replace its M109A7 Paladin SPHs, which ran into systems engineering problems and was scrapped in March 2024.
Speaking on 22 January at the Defence iQ 2025 International Armoured Vehicles conference (IAV 2025), held in Farnborough in the UK, Major General Glenn Dean, the US Army’s Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat Systems, said that a request for proposals for a two-phase competition will be released within the next 45 days.
“We have just concluded a series of demonstrations around the globe with a number of nations’ artillery pieces that continue to modernise in the ‘rate and volume of fire’ space,” said the general, “and our conclusion, after assessing five of those systems, was, frankly, I could buy any one of them and park it outside of the US Army motor pool and I’d have more capability outside the motor pool than in it. And so we’re moving to a competitive selection for an off-the-shelf artillery system focused on range, precision and volume of fire.”
The initial aim of the programme is to produce enough systems to equip a first battalion from 2030, the general added.
Potential off-the shelf SPH solutions include tracked 155 mm SPHs, such the K9 Thunder from South Korea’s Hanwha and the PzH 2000 from KNDS Deutschland, as well as wheeled 155 mm systems such as the Archer system from BAE Systems, the CAESAR and Boxer 8×8-based RCH 155 systems from KNDS and the Sigma from Israel’s Elbit Systems.
Speaking of the US Army’s SPH plans, Maj Gen Dean said, “There are really three sets of requirements that can be built. We have a requirement to support the division artillery and long-range fires. … We have a requirement now to replace towed systems in the many formations that use towed howitzers [as] we see the towed howitzer is not survival and not relevant outside of niche applications. And then finally we have a need to improve the armament on our existing self-propelled howitzers – and whether [solution] is to take the gun from a new system we select and migrate it onto the M109, or replace the M109 entirely with whatever new system is selected, is a decision that will be made down the road.”
In moving to an off-the-shelf SPH procurement, Maj Gen Dean said, “We’re trying to rapidly acknowledge that pure development in this space is less effective for us than to take advantage of the great modernisation that has occurred, and that the real growth in artillery capability for the future is innovation at the lab; it’s the munitions development, which, frankly, is of even greater importance than the platform development.”
