|
|
Old Guns
And all this time I thought it'd be the B-52 that would be the weapon system to see active duty in its 100th year:
The U.S. Army was developing a new, semi-robotic, tracked howitzer, as part of the Future Combat Systems family of vehicles. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates killed FCS, in April. The howitzer — the so-called Non Line-of-Sight Cannon — was funded separately from FCS, so wasn’t subject to the FCS termination.
...
Anticipating NLOS-C’s death, the Senate just voted to spend an extra $60 million, to keep the Army’s existing, M-109A6 Paladin howitzers, in service until 2050. That’s nearly 100 years after the first M-109 entered U.S. service, and 70 years after the A6 version reached the field.
I just wish the Wikipedia article detailed why it's such a long-lived system.
The Browning .50 caliber machine gun M2 was adopted just after WWI (that's one "I"). An attempt to replace it was recently abandoned, so it will almost certainly reach 100 years of front-line service.
The B-52 bomber first flew in 1954 and is still in service. We are now farther from that first flight, than it was from the Wright Brothers' first flight.
Posted by: Bob Hawkins on July 1, 2009 08:58 PM