While I agree with you that precision is where we need to be, there are instances where mass is critical too: area fires (such as prep fires), fires where you don’t know exactly where the enemy if concealed, final protective fires, etc.
I think that you are being a bit more optomistic about PGM prices; Excalibur had a price closer to $250K each last I heard.
Lastly, improvements in on-carriage fire control, aiming using Ring Laser Gyros, improved MET, etc., has given ordinary tube artillery much greater first- round precision. We got first-round CEPs around 15m with our XM-326 system at Yuma a few years ago.
By the way - while you were at YPG, did you see the HARP gun out there? I was amazed to see that monster sitting by its lonesome no that far from the range gate.
250k is the price of a round with the amortized development costs. The 68K price is the cost of production at the time the article was written.
The 182K per projectile price has all been spent, and will only go down as more projectiles are produced.
The PGK price was quoted from the article about the current contract. It makes sense. The PGK is just a smart fuse that you screw into a “dumb” round.
You are right that sometimes, you need area fires. I probably should have mentioned it. But the big saving for smart rounds is the logistics that you free from having to transport, store and guard hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, and the lesser number of batteries and guns that you need.
How long before we get “smart” 81mm mortars?
As for the HARP gun, I drove by it many, many times. It always angered me that we had treated Gerald Bull so badly.
He should have been an honored American hero, instead of being assassinated by Israeli agents when he was working for Sadam while we were still allies with Iraq, before the First Gulf War when Sadam invaded Kuwait.
What a waste.