Could well be incomplete information regarding canvassing demand for a series of optional Aural / laser / optical fusing options in order to downselect, taken out of context.
It hasn’t yet been certified with all of them, it still needed a novel APAM(HEAT-F) design instead of using the existing M247 HEAT warhead, I don’t know why though.
M247’s been out of production for decades. It was developed as one of the warheads for old FFAR/Mighty Mouse type rockets.
Likely there’s simply not enough remaining in reserve.
Even though M247 would still be accepted on Hydra motors as the US rocket inventory moved on from FFAR to WAFAR (Hydra), that warhead was largely replaced with M261 MPSM from the early 1980s onward. But MPSM has been drawn down as well because it’s a cluster munition with no self-destruct feature on the M73 submunitions.
As such, a new warhead was needed to bring back the anti-armour capability
Seems weird since the M72 LAW uses a similar warhead to the M247 5" HEAT explosive train and nose fuse. Reintegrating production can’t have been that hard considering that the -A8 & -A9 is in active acquisition by the USMC / MOD, and the TDP exists.
Heavy armor targets would probably rate a Hellfire, Maverick, CBU-105 or similar. So to some degree it would be fairly redundant with how ubiquitous Anti-Armor PGMs are.
It still seems like such a weird direction to go in. In place of restarting production since M282 should provide Structure defeat, too.
M72 warhead design has also changed a lot, since the 1990s M72A4 version. The US largely moved on to higher penetration variants like the A4, and enhanced blast variants like A6/A7/A9.
M72A5 is the last version produced with the original low-penetration M72A1-A3 type warhead.
The current US production A8 anti-armour rocket is entirely new. Among other things, Nammo say it’s a PD fuzed design rather than PIBD like old LAW warheads were.
So even re-integrating LAW production for a successor to the original M247 would probably lead the US on a path to looking at a better performing warheads, rather than simply opting for the M72A5’s low-penetration warhead.
Buying a straight HEAT warhead for 70mm rockets just hasn’t been attractive since the 1980s until today. Now that it’s possible to ensure that it hits what it’s fired at, rather than firing a lot of them and hoping for the best
