Long Range Land Attack Projectile

The Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) is a canceled[1] precision guided 155 mm (6.1 in) naval artillery shell for the U.S. Navy's Advanced Gun System (AGS). LRLAP was developed and produced by Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, the prime contractor being BAE Systems.

The LRLAP would have used a rocket-assisted projectile with fin glide trajectory. The warhead effectiveness was considered comparable to that of the M795 artillery shell, and with the AGS it would have been capable of 6 round Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact (MRSI) in a span of 2 seconds.[2] It would have used a blast fragmentation type warhead.[3]

The LRLAP was designed for use in the AGS and is not compatible with any other weapon. The AGS is used only on the Zumwalt-class destroyer, with two AGSs on each ship. In November 2016, the Navy announced it had decided to cancel procurement of the LRLAP. This was due to rising costs resulting from the trimming of the Zumwalt-class destroyer fleet to just three ships, raising individual shell cost to $800,000-$1 million, about as much as the Tomahawk cruise missile. About 90 rounds had been secured for testing aboard the three hulls, but a full buy of about 2,000 planned rounds would be about $1.8-$2 billion.[1][4]

  1. ^ a b New Warship’s Big Guns Have No Bullets - Defensenews.com, 6 November 2016
  2. ^ "Long Range Land Attack Projectile".
  3. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-07-30. Retrieved 2012-10-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. ^ Navy Planning on Not Buying More LRLAP Rounds for Zumwalt Class - News.USNI.org, 7 November 2016