Army munitions batteries.

• Author: Troast, Douglas C.
• Position: Letters - Letter to the Editor

The Excalibur Program Office would like to add some points to the article in the May 2004 issue entitled "Battery Hitches Hamper Performance of Army Smart Munitions Programs."

We agree that the power supply often is left out of initial designs and that some programs have suffered delays in development due to battery issues. Excalibur, however, is not one of these. In Excalibur's development, batteries were an integral part of the design and were considered in all early design concept trade studies as a critical issue.

This has been shown during Excalibur's development in which the batteries have consistently performed well. The two thermal batteries used in the projectile have met operating life and power requirements during laboratory temperature tests and guidance section integration tests. Both have successfully been through air-gun and rail-gun testing (high-G simulators).

The liquid reserve battery did suffer through a similar problem to the SD Fuze program, but the new design has performed quite well. It is...