Under contract to the Italian and German governments, Leonardo and Diehl Defence developed the precision-guided munition family VULCANO 127 mm and 155 mm and successfully carried out the 127 mm qualification program agreed between Germany and Italy.
Qualification tests for VULCANO 155 mm according to the agreed program are close to completion. Compatibility with all 127 mm and 155 mm weapon systems is ensured.
The VULCANO 127/155 mm ammunition family is already being tested for operational use by the Italian Navy and artillery. Thus, the "vulcanization" of their 127 mm weapon systems, including fire command and ammunition programming, is completed. The fire command unit "pFCU" with the embedded fire command computation program "NABK" was successfully tested by the artillery for the Army ammunition V155mm and is used with its weapon systems FH70 and PzH2000.
The operational suitability test for VULCANO 127 mm on the German Navy's frigate F 125 is being planned. Integration of VULCANO 155 mm into the PzH2000 weapon system and another ammunition program for the German Army is currently being carried out for the German Army.
The VULCANO ammunition is designed to achieve extended ranges of 70 km for VULCANO 155 and 80 km for VULCANO 127 in conjunction with unique accuracy against stationary and moving targets.
The ammunition family reaches highest target accuracy through the unique combination of satellite-based navigation with laser- or infrared-sensors for terminal homing. This makes the VULCANO family the most accurate artillery ammunition for land and naval applications worldwide.
The powerful multi-role, insensitive high-explosive (IHE) warhead with pre-fragmented tungsten splinters is most effective against soft targets, vehicles, semi-armored vehicles, infrastructures and all typical infantry command posts.
VULCANO programming kits enable artillery platforms to fire VULCANO ammunition in an easy way. The kits allow either fully integrated or standalone operations. The embedded fire command computation program, NABK-M+, has been officially released.