The Canadian Royal Army has enlisted assistance from Picatinny engineers to guage the life-span in their World War II-era C3 Howitzer.
“We are trying to find engineering data that, unfortunately, we’re missing immediately,” said Canadian Army Maj. David Lebel, Equipment Management team leader for Field Artillery Systems.
The C3 Howitzer is a 1950′s technology that the Canadian Army is attempting to maintain in service for ten or 11 more years.
“The fleet is now about 60 years old, and after it was modified to suit Canadian needs, we didn’t think at the moment to have the contractor provide engineering data — to envision the rail forces or validate the forces which are applied to the structure, either while it’s firing or while it’s being towed,” Lebel explained.
“Now that it’s been around for 60 years, we’re beginning to experience a number of cracks here and there, but we can’t explain how these cracks are being made. We have to be capable of find solutions without needing to ground the fleet for a protracted period of time.”
The Canadian Army uses the C3 howitzers for training, although they use the 155 mm M777 in combat. The operation procedures for towed howitzers are similar, but 105 mm ammunition is cheaper than 155 mm ammunition.
“We take loads of time to coach before going into operations, so this reduces cost,” Lebel said.
AVALANCHE CONTROL
In addition to training purposes, the C3 is usually used for avalanche control within the snow-covered Canadian mountains.
“There’s a stretch of highway within the (Canadian) Rockies called Rogers Pass, that’s in Glacier National Park,” Lebel explained.
“Because of the mountains’ elevation, there’s about 300 inches of snow during winter, and it’s very liable to avalanches,” Lebel said. “We’ve got a detachment from the Royal Canadian Artillery with [C3 Howitzers] able to support Parks Canada in managing the risks at the main road of Roger’s pass. Once Parks Canada gives us the go ahead, we shoot to stabilize the realm, this means that sometimes we do create an avalanche in order that we will shovel the snow out.”
DISCOVERING DEFICIENCIES
Picatinny’s Program Executive Office Ammunition, referred to as PEO Ammo, employees, with help from Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, or ARDEC, engineers, is conducting an analysis of the stresses of the C3 Howitzer so that it will support the howitzer’s life cycle, said Luke Helsel, ARDEC’s C3 Evaluation team lead.
The team will conduct a sequence of tests over the following year to figure out potential problems which may occur during the system.
“We’re going to do analysis to aid the Canadian Army find those problems ahead,” said Helsel. “It helps them better predict areas to focus on for inspections or to accomplish upgrades. Sometimes that may be a challenge when staring at a design that was done years ago, and has no support from the unique contractor.”
The data packages for the howitzer are from the 1940s, and that they were updated throughout the 1980s, but there’s no topic expert to consult for questions.
“It’s fascinating to observe the older form of design, and to work out what we will be able to do to support them maintain their fleet for a higher couple of years,” said Helsel. “Some of those slick things they did back then are good to watch now. The old design can inspire us for contemporary work and dealing in this project we will discover new analysis techniques that we will be able to use here for the M119 or M777.”
A gun was recently shipped to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., for mobility trials. In April, it will become transferred to Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., for firing trials.
At Aberdeen, engineers will instrument the gun with strain gauges to measure the quantity the metal is being pulled while towing the gun. The gun can also be towed around a chain of courses over hills and other terrain while recording data from the gauges.
“Then, using that data, we are able to predict virtually what the stress is during the whole carriage,” said Hesel. “After that, we will get back and determine where we predict the opposite high strain areas are and perform another test to substantiate our analysis.”
At Yuma, engineers will do similar testing while firing the howitzers at different elevations and azimuths.
“This will give us the engineering technical argument to pursue the direction we have to,” Lebel said. “Hopefully, we’ll have the capacity to discover a few simple, small fixes to increase the lifecycle with no need to re-engineering big assemblies at the gun.”
The Canadian Army currently has almost 100 deployed across Canada, and the method for replacing the howitzers with newer models could soak up to 2 decades.
“We can’t stop every unit from training six months while we’re scratching our heads attempting to decide solve the issue. So by giving us the technical data that we’re attempting to find, ARDEC is admittedly making our job that rather more easy either to do preventive maintenance that’s way more accurate on potential failure locations. And may there be a failure, they’ll be enough engineering data to place together an answer that won’t take us four or five months to get to.”
“At this point, we all know there are problems, but I don’t think there’s going to be one approach to fix all of them. We’re gonna ought to choose the difficulty that’s probably the most risky and go about it in a deliberate fashion. But there may be many conclusions,” Lebel said.
FRIENDLY RELATIONS
“The reason Canada came to us is that we’ve got an excellent working relationship,” said David Wong, Foreign Military Sales manager for PEO Ammo’s Project Manager Towed Artillery Systems.
“Canada purchased 37 of our M777 155mm howitzers, so that they know us and the capabilities and resources we now have. This project extends the nice working relationship we’ve had for seven years,” Wong said.
In addition, the dept of National Defence, especially the Director of Armament Sustainment Program Management, has benefited on several aspects of howitzer maintenance and support from both Project Manager Towed Artillery Systems expertise and Picatinny’s resources, Lebel added.
Picatinny also recently updated their M119 Howitzer fleet, which required similar data collection and engineering processes.
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