 | ||
155 BONUS is a 155 mm artillery round, developed in cooperation between Bofors of Sweden and Nexter of France, designed for a long range, indirect fire top attack role against armoured vehicles. The BONUS base bleed carrier shell contains two submunitions, which descend over the battlefield on winglets and attack hardened targets with explosively formed penetrator warheads.
Contents
Design
155 BONUS is a 155 mm NATO artillery round that consists of a 47-kilogram (104 lb) heavy artillery projectile containing two autonomous, sensor-fused, fire-and-forget submunitions.
After the submunition is released it opens two winglets. While descending, the submunition rotates, scanning the area below with multi-frequency infra-red sensors that compares the detected vehicles with a programmable target database. The submunitions each contain a high-penetration EFP warhead for use against even heavy armoured armoured fighting vehicles like main battle tanks.
Competing systems
BONUS is very similar to the German SMArt 155 system; SMArt 155 descends on a parachute rather than a system of winglets.
The USA developed the similar M898 SADARM system (which also descended on a ballute to attack the top surfaces of armoured vehicles), but this was discontinued in favour of the GPS guided M982 Excalibur round. US artillery largely deploys the M712 Copperhead laser-guided round for the anti-tank role.