In before sold to ISIS

I think we could use an RPG way before this but okayfine.

Besides standard towed arty, there are several levels of mobility you could apply to howitzers and mortars:

Level 1, the APU:



Level 2, wheeled APC chassis:



Level 3, tracked tank heavy chassis:



Level 4, rubber tracked light chassis:

From the FDC side of this...

Considering the current 109s, trip7s and HIMARS/MLRS all use similar/same FCSs, if a gun looses GPS and they didn't know it immediately then that gunner isn't paying attention.  If GPS does go down, the location can still be updated for that gun from either my end or theirs.

Attached File


Found in Hungary

Stupid question - how do they prevent the muzzle blast from shattering the windshields?

Easy. They have FM radios.

Ha-Ha!  Go back to coloring and snacking on crayons.

Drones can plot where a tracked vehicle is simply by following the disturbed earth (counter battery fire is a BEAST!)

IED's can be anywhere.

Trucks can go more places than tracks can.

Especially when it takes a tracked recovery vehicle to recover a tracked vehicle.

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/04/08/soldiers-shooting-artillery-off-ships-tell-it-to-the-marines/

And far cheaper to upgrade the gun or the truck over the life-cycle.

Kharn

I guess I don't get your point. Do the math on spare parts, total fuel/lubricants, and OR/total maintenance downtime on something like HEMTT vs. Paladin.

Its not in the same ballpark, its the not the same damn sport...Now, trust me, I'm ALL about maintaining armored cav/heavy mech divisions, but I'm about fires superiority more.

The 109A6 doesn't give that much more protection to the crew that HIMARs does now, and HIMARs is our divisional long stick.

The biggest issue that our divisions, esp. our heavy ones have is immense logistics requirements, esp. in fuel and spares. Combat_Jack would have know the per day numbers, but he was a proponent of re-engining the entire mech fleet, and he had a great point.

This....

155mm tube artillery is a very different animal from rockets, with different uses, different missions, probably different danger-close limits, etc.

Undoubtedly, but the bottom line is that we are 1) resourced constrained and 2) fires deficient in our line units.

Fires in MCO is an attrition/salvo fight, and we can't be assured that our air assets will be effective in reducing the capability of threat artillery systems like we've done for decades. Ground force unit designers cannot make the LRRPF52 assessment that we can F-35 strike all the things, for a variety of reasons.

So, we need massed fires (as opposed to precision strike, perhaps in conjunction with, more precisely) and we need them cheaper from a total cost perspective, less manpower intensive, and less logistics consumptive for starters. Honestly, I'd also be prepared to have these wheeled SP arty units in the Guard, which comes with more incentive for reduced costs at the potential impacts to mobility and protection.

Again, I'm not totally sold on the mobility/protection of a 109A6 (as the baseline SPA unit) vs. HIMARS vs. baseline CAESAR/G6 (G6 being my first choice, though it would need some serious re-engineering, I would imagine, but the concept is cool and I've been told the execution is solid.)

For starters, you need 2 people with developed communication skills to safely drive them. Visibility for the driver is shit and gets even worse when the driver's hatch is closed. You have to have a someone in the turret with eyes on surroundings to give the driver instructions.
Next, a driver has to learn how the tracks behave and the differences between forward steering and pivot steering. A driver that doesn't understand the nuances can easily throw a track or lose control/roll the tank over.
Then of course there's the simple fact that 70 tons in motion has all sorts of ways of making life interesting.