The M109 Paladin self-propelled 155mm howitzer was introduced in 1963, and while it is a perfectly serviceable platform, shortcomings in range and mobility have led the US Army to look for a replacement.
In the late 1980s, it was the now Advanced Field Artillery System, which after a decade morphed into the large, heavy, complex, and ruinously expensive XM2001 Crusader, which was canceled for the aforementioned features, and then they tried to replace the Paladin with the lighter, but even more complex and expensive XM1203 Non-Line of Sight Cannon (NLOS-C), and now they have US Army has canceled the M1299 Extended Range Cannon Artillery system, because of excessive barrel wear.
High barrel wear was kind of a given, seeing as how the tube was 58 calibers long, by comparison, the 16 inch guns on the Iowa class battleships were only 50 calibers long, had a barrel life of about 290 rounds.
Given the high propellant loads, the barrel life of the M1299 was significantly less than that of the M109, which has a barrel life of about 2000 full charge rounds, which under Ukraine war type conditions is a few weeks at best.
Given the advances in manufacturing and metallurgy, my guess would be that the M1299 has a longer life than the Iowas, though in tests there are indications that it was throwing rounds down range at speeds significantly higher than that of the Iowas.
This problem was foreseeable, but not accounted for, and led to the cancellation of the program.
This focus on difficult to achieve performance has resulted in program cancellation has happened at least 3 times over the past 6 decades.
Perhaps, the Pentagon should just buy an off-the shelf system from the Germans, or the Koreans, or the French, or the Swedes.
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