WASHINGTON – U.S. Navy surface warfare experts are ordering three computer- and radar-equipped deck guns for Navy littoral combat ships and large U.S. Coast Guard offshore cutters under terms of a $22.7 million order announced Tuesday.
Officials of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington are asking the BAE Systems Platforms & Services segment in Minneapolis to build three 57-millimeter MK 110 Mod 0 gun mounts and related hardware.
The MK 110 gun mount consists of a 57-millimeter gun, muzzle velocity radar, power distribution panel, barrel-mounted television camera, a ruggedized laptop computer gun control panel, and an ammunition hoist.
The computer-controlled 57-millimeter MK 110 Mod 0 gun mount is to defeat medium and short-range surface targets, and provide warning and disabling fire for anti-surface warfare operations.
This order is a modification to an August 2017 contract that calls for producing the gun mounts for large Coast Guard surface vessels like offshore patrol cutters and national security cutters.
The radar-equipped Mark 110 gun mount is a multi-purpose medium-caliber gun designed to destroy or disable hostile surface ships and boats, as well as aircraft and missiles. A 57-millimeter shell is more than two feet long and weighs between 13.4 and 14.3 pounds.
The Mark 110 gun mount can have a pre-programmed proximity fragmentation warhead, as well as an armor-piercing warhead with delayed-action fuze. It can fire salvos of as many as 220 rounds per minute, and has a range of nine miles.
The Coast Guard Heritage-class offshore patrol cutter will be 360 feet long and displace 3,730 tons when it first is delivered in 2021. It will replace the Coast Guard 27-foot and 210-foot medium-endurance cutters, and will perform ports, waterways, and coastal security patrols, drug interdiction, search and rescue, and environmental protection.
The Coast Guard Legend-class national security cutter first took to sea in 2008, and at 418 feet long is the largest and most technologically advanced new cutters It displaces 4,500 tons, and is slightly larger than a U.S. Navy Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate. It replaces the Coast Guard's aging 378-foot high endurance cutters.
The national security cutter is for ports, waterways, and coastal security patrol, counter-terrorism, drug and migrant interdiction, defense operations, environmental protection, search and rescue, and fisheries protection.
The Navy littoral combat ship is a set of two classes of relatively small surface vessels for operations near shore. Littoral combat ships are the American equivalent of corvette small surface warships.
On this contract BAE Systems will do the work in Louisville, Ky., and should be finished by January 2022. For more information contact BAE Systems Platforms & Services online at www.baesystems.com, or Naval Sea Systems Command at www.navsea.navy.mil.
