And this is where the Strategic Strike Artillery Cannon would come into the picture. The INF does not cover such weapons, regardless of their range.
A cannon firing a chemically or electro-magnetically propelled round nearly 1,000 miles away could offer a way to strike targets well within denied areas, but in a way that is clearly compliant with the INF. The Army would actually have a surprisingly deep knowledge base to draw from in this regard, too. The service captured examples of the lesser known Nazi “vengeance weapons,” the V-3 long range gun, during World War II and extensive evaluated them afterwards.
Then, during the 1960s, the United States and Canada teamed up on the High Altitude Research Project, or HARP, which used modified 16-inch naval guns from fixed sites on land to explore the possibility of the system as a cost-effective means of launching objects into space. Though that weapon set an attitude record for a gun-launched projectile, it was only 110 miles.
It could serve as a good starting place for a larger “supergun,” though. The HARP gun’s designer, Gerald Bull, definitely thought so, shopping the idea of an ultra-long-range artillery weapon around the world after the project ended due to steadily improving rocket boosters and a loss of interest on the part of both the American and Canadian governments.
Infamously, Bull finally pitched an improved concept to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. The Babylon Gun’s design was supposed to offer a range of more than 450 miles, which would have put targets within Iran and Israel in strike distance.
The final weapon never came to fruition though. Assassins, alternately linked to Israel’s Mossad or Iran’s VEVAK, killed Bull in the Belgian capital Brussels in 1990. British customs also seized components for the weapon before they could reach Iraq and the project came to a complete halt after the United States-led intervention to liberate Kuwait and beat back Iraqi forces in 1991.
Bull’s concept for a multi-chamber artillery piece would still likely be one of the best chances for the Army to achieve the ranges it’s looking for with a gun system. The V-3 used a similar mechanism, with the Nazis referring to its multiple sections as a “high pressure pump” to cover its true function.
These types of designs work by propelling a shell with multiple explosive charges. Combined with a long barrel, this method gradually builds up pressure behind the projectile just like a rocket, which extends range and reduces wear and tear on the system at the same time.
Another option would be to pursue a larger railgun that might offer similar range. The conceptual design of the Army’s 32 mega joule electro-magnetic gun already requires two separate vehicles to carry the necessary power source and offers a maximum range of around 100 miles. A system with 10 times that range could have immense power requirements.
It’s questionable how mobile either a chemical supergun or a massive railgun might be at all, though. Historically, plans for super guns have called for them to be fixed in place, aimed broadly in the direction of a large target, such as a city, intended to cause terror and chaos rather that than more specific strategic effects. The World War I-era Paris Gun could traverse 360 degrees, but was still effectively immobile, as were the guns the Germans and the British used to shell each other across the English Channel during World War II.
The Strategic Strike Artillery Cannon might not need to move though. A fixed and properly hardened position could be able to hold a wide area at risk, which could deny an enemy freedom of movement through a large area.
This could be useful for trying to close of access to certain areas in a potential European conflict, especially in constrained multi-domain environments, such as the Baltic Sea or Black Sea. In those cases, various long range artillery weapons could work to neutralize anti-ship threats, as well as anti-aircraft ones, too.
By the strategic weapons, missiles or guns, might actually be better suited to the Pacific theater, where being able to deploy them with any rapidity to small island outposts could easily present a significant challenge to other potential opponents, such as China or North Korea. These weapons would have the range to engage targets in North Korea from distributed sites in South Korea and Japan or various Chinese outposts in the South China Sea from territory belonging to allied or partner nations, such as The Philippines or Vietnam. If they were capable of firing hypersonic projectiles, the weapons in those positions would be even more effective, able to take on time-sensitive targets or otherwise launch strikes with little advance warning.
This “an anti-access, area-denial capability all of our own to make potential adversaries think twice,” Brigadier General Maranian explained. They would “be deterred before making a decision of whether cost is worth the benefit of being provocative.”
