BAE Systems Ordnance Systems Inc.; more and improved ammunition and energetics for the US and its allies
Ordnance Systems Inc., OSI in short, is a business unit within BAE Systems and is the operating contractor for the Holston Army Ammunition Plant located in Kingsport, Tennessee, and for the Radford Army Ammunition Plant in Radford, Virginia. Both sites were built in the 1940s to support the war effort and have played a key role in every American conflict since then. The company is ramping up its production and developing new material to answer the request for increased numbers and performances
“We have had a 25-year contract that we’ve just completed to operate the Holston Army Ammunition Plant, and earlier this year we were awarded a contract for 10 more years, which really validates us being the Army’s trusted partner,” John Swift, Vice President, General Manager for BAE Systems OSI explains.
Confronted with the increasing need of artillery ammunition, BAE Systems OSI doubled deliveries in the past year, and is currently ahead of schedule in delivering both propellant and explosives. Moreover, it is modernising and increasing the capacity of both plants, this process being planned on a four-year timespan.
The plants that BAE Systems OSI is currently running proved to be very flexible, even they were built over 80 years ago. At Radford, the company was able to pivot a third of the facility to make a product in propellant that it had not made in 15 years, adapting that part of the plant to that legacy product in less than 90 days. It delivered over 2 million pounds of that product in less than a year, which is a testament to the adaptability of the plant.
Increasing ammunition production has quickly become a transnational issue. “What is important and what is relevant for us being here at Eurosatory is that we have the chance to meet in person with a lot of our colleagues. Some would say competitors; I do not see them as competitors, but rather as future partners. We have met with a lot of personnel from the industrial base across both Eastern and Western Europe, and we are all looking at the same challenges,” John Swift details. “We are to a point where we are looking to see how we can leverage partnerships to move forward more efficiently. Before the current conflicts, the ammunition industrial base was distributed across the world. Many countries are now looking to contain that within their own borders, which we support, but us relying on many of the same components or ingredients, we need to look how we can really collaborate to move forward, and that is not just for raw materials, but also technology,” he adds. The issue is to increase capacity while keeping an eye on modernisation, and of course safety, which means taking people out of the process of manufacturing energetics, hence robotisation.
BAE Systems OSI is not only producing and delivering energetics, modernising, and sustaining the two plants but is also deeply engaged in research and development in future technologies both for explosives and propellants. “We have had immense success with advanced explosives and advanced propellants, capable of exceeding what is the requirement for artillery well beyond 50 kilometres,” John Swift says, before leaving the word to Mike Irvin, the company responsible for Research and Development.
“The Holston and Radford plants are unique within the US industrial base. At Holston we manufacture RDX and HMX explosives. In more recent times we manufacture NTO (Nitrotriazolone), TATB (triamino- trinitrobenzene), and we do that on a scale that is really unmatched in the world,” he states. However, even if production is huge, this is not enough in the current environment.
“The Radford facility is dedicated toward propellant ingredients and propellant formulations, so military grade nitrocellulose, and we are bringing a brand-new plant online this year. Looking at nitro-glycerine, we do a full array of solvent single base and multi base propellants, and those are in high demand to support the artillery surges across the globe. We also do a line of high performance, solventless propellants, which are used in tactical rocket motors and several other applications. So, we do propulsion components and motors,” Mike Irvin explains.
Built since inception for producing energetic materials during World War Two, they have been significantly modernized over time, and especially over the last couple of decades, the last 15 years having seen significant investment. The US Government treated them like national treasures, national assets, investing according to their recognized importance.
If on one side production capacity is key in the current scenario, on the other improvements linked to research and development are also of paramount importance, and at OSI the two go together. “We do R&D with a production mentality; of course, we can produce a few grams of explosives, we have the PhD synthesis chemists that can develop the new molecules, but what we do is to develop new energetic materials with an eye toward being able to produce it and field it,” Mike Irvin underlines.
Environmental factors minimising waste streams, supply chain considerations using commonly available chemicals, cost, are all issues taken in consideration at OSI, the latter being probably the top one.
One example is what might replace the TNT (trinitrotoluene), a popular material due to its cost and availability. At OSI something new is being developed that will keep the cost target while improving both performances and safety, the latter being another critical factor.
The company is working on new propellants to improve rockets range. “We have a line of extruded double base propellants that are used in tactical rocket motors. We developed a family of new propellants that are utilizing nitramine explosive ingredients, incorporating those into the traditional extruded double base materials. In that way we keep some of the insensitive effects of the extruded double base and their high performance in high launch type environments because of their nature, but we add energy, and we are seeing 10 to 15% improvement in energy in those formulations. I cannot give much more detail right now, but those are being studied in several artillery and tactical rocket systems to enhance range and performance,” Mike Irvin unveils, defining those new material as nitrogen based extrudable formulations.
EDR On-Line understood that these new technologies might also improve RAP (Rocket Assisted Projectiles) artillery rounds performances in terms of accuracy, one of the issues with those type of ammunition being the high dispersion, mostly due to differences in thrust between rocket motors of the same type. “One of the things that we are trying to do is to exploit these technologies to address some of RAP rounds historical shortfalls. In the artillery type environment, the system must be able to perform, but it must also be able to survive that gun launch. And that is where the nature and characteristics of some of the extruded, double based materials have an advantage because of their plasticity, of the the physical characteristics of the propellant,” the R&D responsible explains.
He also underlines that there are other ways to gain range on tactical rockets. “Rather than just having a single grain, you can have a dual pulse type system. And we are working on several things there, that we have demonstrated and tested. These are improvement that are not yet fielded, but we are closely with our Army and DoD customers toward that objective,” he unveils.
Typically, 10-inch diameter rocket motors were obtained by casting. “We have demonstrated that we can now apply the extruded double base technology to that, while matching performance. That is where the introduction of the nitramine comes in, so we have the cost advantage of the extruded double base technologies while we are matching performance,” Mike Irvin explains, adding that this would help from a volume throughput perspective, as the process takes less time than casting.
While propellants are key to deliver the warhead over the target, it is the explosive that impacts the round terminal effect, which in the end is the raison d’être of an artillery system.
“We are the largest producer of HMX in the world, we make millions of pounds a year to support grassroots applications, but we are very focused with our military on developing new, high performing materials. We are now developing and scaling to true production scale, a higher performing type of material that is going to add 10 to 15% improvement in energetic performance over the HMX, but I cannot detail more,” Mr. Irvin says. EDR On-Line understood the company is also working on improving more traditional material, such as the HMX. Moreover, thermobaric as well as metalized explosives are increasing in their usage across the munitions portfolio because they offer an enhanced blast type effect.
New types of ammunition will certainly be soon produced thanks to energetics developed at BAE Systems OSI facilities.
Photos courtesy DVIDS/US Army
