XM982 Excalibur by US Army.
Russian air defenses has successfully intercepted an American-made M982 Excalibur extended range guided artillery round that was fired by Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) near the settlement of Miropolye in the Sumy region, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said on November 27.
“An Excalibur guided artillery shell was intercepted near the settlement of Miropolye in the Sumy region,” the spokesman said.
Lt. Gen. Konashenkov didn’t specify what air defense system was used to shot down the guided artillery round, or provide footage of the interception.
The Excalibur round, which was jointly developed by BAE Systems and Raytheon, has a circular error probable of less than 4 meters. This high accuracy is achieved via a GPS-aided inertial navigation system.
The round can be fired from several 155 mm howitzers which were supplied to the AFU by NATO states after the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, including the self-propelled PzH 2000 and AHS Krab as well as the towed M777.
The United States and Canada supplied the AFU with hundreds of Excalibur rounds over the last few months to boost its fire power.
Despite of its high accuracy, the Excalibur round has some issues. A single round could cost as much as $112,000. In addition, the round’s guidance system dependence on GPS makes it vulnerable to signal jamming.
So far, there have been no clear data on the success rate of Excalibur rounds in Ukraine. The ability to neutralize these expensive guided rounds with air defense fire would be a major breakthrough, if confirmed.
