Royal Artillery/Royal Horse Artillery future developments

[RetroSicotte]

Puzzled by why the Boxer RCH155 isn't everyone's favorite for the BA requirement.

Chassis commonality - check
Protection - check
Tactical mobility - check
Strategic mobility - check
High UK content - check
Shoot & scoot - check


What's not to like?

At least for me, it's because I believe while it checks boxes, it doesn't necessarily mean it takes those checks as far as it ought to given the sort of thing it may be expected to fight in a peer war.

[RunningStrong]

Puzzled by why the Boxer RCH155 isn't everyone's favorite for the BA requirement.

Chassis commonality - check
Protection - check
Tactical mobility - check
Strategic mobility - check
High UK content - check
Shoot & scoot - check


What's not to like?

Chassis we don't own yet.
Protection good.
Tactical mobility somewhere short of tracks.
Strategic mobility, does the mission module allow A400/C17 transport?
High UK Content not known yet
Shoot and scoot, any better than others?

[Jake1992]

Puzzled by why the Boxer RCH155 isn't everyone's favorite for the BA requirement.

Chassis commonality - check
Protection - check
Tactical mobility - check
Strategic mobility - check
High UK content - check
Shoot & scoot - check


What's not to like?

Chassis we don't own yet.
Protection good.
Tactical mobility somewhere short of tracks.
Strategic mobility, does the mission module allow A400/C17 transport?
High UK Content not known yet
Shoot and scoot, any better than others?

- chassis that we are buying ( being main purchase)
- no wheeled is as good as tracked but tracks not as good as wheeled in other ways
- the updated module allow A400M transport
- Boxer contract states 60% UK content
- Faster set up fire and good than Archer

[ArmChairCivvy]

Protection good.[1]
Tactical mobility somewhere short[2] of tracks.

[1] Who says? Top heaviness. and recoil forces playing with that often bring to the fore that the level of protection is only good against 7.62 ball or AP? Do we have the facts?
[2] yes, but intra-theatre? What is the 60/40; 80/20... or whatever other weighting for these
- ACC RULE is "both"... even towed artillery (and!) heavy mortars allowed

[Ron5]

I was guessing most would reply: cost.

[Lord Jim]

The RCH155 is my second choice for the British Army's new self propelled gun. My first is still the modular Archer gun mounted on the MAN 8x8. BAe/SAAB have developed a complete system for the gun including support vehicles. A six gun battery of these vehicles could in the space of a few minutes arrive on station set up, fire between 30 and 40 rounds of any type and depart, and definitely less than five. Then there is the limber platform, also based on the 8x8 MAN chassis, with each carrying four full reloads for the Gun Platform and capable of completely reloading the latter in around five minutes. Having three of these per battery would give each gun two full reloads. You have a recovery platform able to handle the weight of any vehicle in the battery. All these vehicles have the same level of protect, not much but better than nothing. If a Battery comes under small arms fore something has cone really wrong, but the dispersed manner of how the Strike Brigade will be operating will probably mean that all units will have to have security detachments to protect them. If it comes under artillery fire, no current system has much chance of survival if hit, but at least the MAN is fast especially on roads compared to tracked platforms and the MAN 8x8 is exceptional across country as has been proven with its use bay many Armies around the world. General maintenance can be carried out at any MAN dealership with specialised personnel only required for the gun and its related systems. This together with relatively cheap running cost and smaller logistical requirements compared to tracked platforms, and the most likely cheaper acquisition and support costs compared to the RCH155, whilst being a very effective weapon system put it in first place \as far as I am concerned. If we end up with the RCH155 I would be happy, but the less we spend on this programme the more the Army may have to spend on other areas in urgent needed of attention.

[ArmChairCivvy]

This together with relatively cheap running cost and smaller logistical requirements compared to tracked platforms, and the most likely cheaper acquisition and support costs compared to the RCH155, whilst being a very effective weapon system put it in first place \as far as I am concerned. If we end up with the RCH155 I would be happy, but the less we spend on this programme the more the Army may have to spend on other areas in urgent needed of attention.

A good summary, and a good point also about close-in protection being needed in dispersed operations. Areas of urgent attention (money saved for them) reminds me of targeting and leads to: how is Watchkeeper doing? Despite being a bde-level asset, it has become exceedingly important just because all the smaller ones have been done away with
- what are the Americans sending "ahead" to Poland? A Divisional HQ (only the 2nd to be deployed abroad; the other one in Korea), a logs bn, one of the four ready-to-deploy CABs that contain a company of Grey Eagles in themselves... but that does not seem to be enough as there will be a separate UAV bn, too. The mention about Special Forces I interpret to mean force recce (reflagged first to battlefield surveillance and these days to military intelligence).

[Stal]

Turret systems have their advantages and inconvenients.
2 inconvenients are (1) the absence of back up in case any part of the loading system goes wrong. (2) a long time to resupply. I don't know for the RCH, shells seems good if similar to PZH but charges ? Archer, i have not seen 5 mn but 10 mn (for 21 rounds) this is why the Swedish artillery has one resupply vehicle for each gun. That would be a lot of vehicles. Plus what shells do you choose ? 21 in a turret is not the same as on a truck mounted vehicle.
Plus turrets are not that protected as said by ArmChairCivvy, and very automated systems require specialists the Army can't recruit and even less retain.
And cost matters....we need shells, lots of shells to be able to conduct suppressive fire missions (we no longer have submunitions) we need guided munitions 155 and 227. Truck mounted (and not turreted in case you think I mean Archer on a MAN chassis) are just as good but for a fraction of the price. But of course, the worst would be to revert to tracked armoured guns.

[ArmChairCivvy]

And cost matters....we need shells, lots of shells to be able to conduct suppressive fire missions (we no longer have submunitions) we need guided munitions 155 and 227.

I guess the 227 ref is to GMLRS and there we have only the pinpoint target type of warhead, no AW (which is available) for suppressive fire - or area effects, when an opposing formation is spotted massing
- with a 70 km range that would always involve also soft and semi-hard targets (even if that were not the case by the time you actually come into contact with the said formation)

[Stal]

Yes, my point is for suppressive fires we now need more guns and a lot of HE, and we can't have a lot of both if the guns are hugely and unnecessarily expensive. Indeed i wasn't very clear, i also meant that we also need GMLRS, which is also expensive, but not really for suppressive fires. The only thing is that jamming won't make it easy to use guided ammunition, and at least within 155 range id you can't use guided you need a lot of HE, and a lot of guns.

[Voldemort]

Yes, my point is for suppressive fires we now need more guns and a lot of HE, and we can't have a lot of both if the guns are hugely and unnecessarily expensive. Indeed i wasn't very clear, i also meant that we also need GMLRS, which is also expensive, but not really for suppressive fires. The only thing is that jamming won't make it easy to use guided ammunition, and at least within 155 range id you can't use guided you need a lot of HE, and a lot of guns.

I don't quite understand the last one. 155 range can't use guided??

[Stal]

If you are jammed (GPS) you can't use guided, and if your communications are jammed the only thing you can do for defensive fires would be area fire missions

[Lord Jim]

The 5 in reload for the Archer from the designated limber platform was mentioned by the BAe/SAAB representative at DSEI 2019.

As for numbers, well we are looking at two Regiments worth of new guns to replace our existing AS-90 Regiments. Nothing has been announced regarding the two Regiments equipped with the 105mm Light Gun, those tasked with supporting 2 Commando and 16 Air Assault, but this needs to be addressed probably more urgently than the AS-90 replacement. The 105mm light Gun is simply out ranged by nearly any opponent who actually has artillery. The old Russian D-30 122m proliferates all over the world and let use not forget the iniquitous BM-21 122mm MLRS. Ideally a combination of 120mm mortars at Battalion level, able to be moved by the Brigades vehicles and the M777 in its latest guise should be looked at. A limited number of lightweight 60mm mortars should also be retained? purchased for Company use in case the need arises. A UGV would be ideal for carrying the 120mm within 16 AA together with its ammo, being able to be easily transported by the Chinook internally. The M777 can be towed by the JLTV with a second carrying ammo for immediate use and 3 CMDO cad tow the weapon behind a Bv210 or the Bv206's successor. Like with the 105mm LG they would simply mount the weapon on Skis with immediate ammo and crew in the rear half of the towing vehicle.

[Voldemort]

If you are jammed (GPS) you can't use guided, and if your communications are jammed the only thing you can do for defensive fires would be area fire missions

Without comms no fire missions will be executed, simple as that. Not even defensive area fires. GPS can be mitigated with CCF that rely on other methods like adjusting according to V0.

[Stal]

"Without comms no fire mission will be executed, simple as that".
You are obviously not a gunner then.

[Voldemort]

"Without comms no fire mission will be executed, simple as that".
You are obviously not a gunner then.

Please elaborate. The firing unit might know where to fire even without comms but not when!!

[Stal]

I meant that if we think of high intensity warfare we can't just accept we won't be firing when our frontline units and FOOs are jammed for a certain period, either with standard jammers or jamming munitions, or if batteries are jammed. We can't just do nothing as the frontline units are attacked. We will have to revert to old types of comms and do defensive fires, harrassing fires to protect frontline troops, and to do CB fire missions. This is usually why we do fire planning. We would have to do unobserved fire missions, although it seems countrary to usual practice. These types of fire missions involve a lot of dumb HE, and a lot of guns, that was my initial point. And in these situations, guided ammo will be irrelevant (but of course we need both types of ammo because 24/7 jamming doesn't seems very possible).

[Voldemort]

I meant that if we think of high intensity warfare we can't just accept we won't be firing when our frontline units and FOOs are jammed for a certain period, either with standard jammers or jamming munitions, or if batteries are jammed. We can't just do nothing as the frontline units are attacked. We will have to revert to old types of comms and do defensive fires, harrassing fires to protect frontline troops, and to do CB fire missions. This is usually why we do fire planning. We would have to do unobserved fire missions, although it seems countrary to usual practice. These types of fire missions involve a lot of dumb HE, and a lot of guns, that was my initial point. And in these situations, guided ammo will be irrelevant (but of course we need both types of ammo because 24/7 jamming doesn't seems very possible).

So there are comms afterall.

[RunningStrong]

"Without comms no fire mission will be executed, simple as that".
You are obviously not a gunner then.

No bombs without comms. I'm not an experienced gunner, but even I know that one.

If you are jammed (GPS) you can't use guided, and if your communications are jammed the only thing you can do for defensive fires would be area fire missions

That's not entirely true either. All guides systems use a combination of GPS and inertial navigation, and later units are implementing seeker heads. No one is naive enough to think we'll always have GPS control.

[Stal]

"So there are comms afterall."

Yes, emergency comms, like flares...

[Stal]

"That's not entirely true either. All guides systems use a combination of GPS and inertial navigation"

You are not going to do area fire missions, sometimes preventive covering fire missions where you don't know accurately where the enemy is with smart ammo are you ?

[RunningStrong]

"That's not entirely true either. All guides systems use a combination of GPS and inertial navigation"

You are not going to do area fire missions, sometimes preventive covering fire missions where you don't know accurately where the enemy is with smart ammo are you ?

That depends. If the enemy is at a know location, cross cross road or building, it's not difficult to get an 8, or even 10 figure grid of the target, even without using a LRF.

[Stal]

"That depends"

Well, no. You will usually have 10 digit grids of all points in the area in front of you (these things are not done at the last minute), but in the cases discribed above you may not be sure that the enemy is right there right now, and in what size and shape, therefore no one will use guided munitions in that case. Arguably we could use a few Bonus like ammo which is both area and precision in a way. Which bring us back to my former point, we would need a lot of ammo (dumb HE) and a lot of guns to do area fire missions included in unobserved covering fire missions. And if you want to have numbers of amo and guns to be able to do that you can't afford too expensive guns. But of course if you think it will never happen you need these fancy guns even less.

[Lord Jim]

What you fire and when depends a lot on what the target is and the circumstances of the fire mission. You do not fire expensive GPS rounds at a grid square except in dire circumstances. But you would for example fire BONUS rounds to dispense large numbers of Sensor Fused Munitions if the target was a formation of enemy AFVs. As far as I know the current GPS rounds be they the high sophisticate Excalibur or the more basic GPS Fuse variety cannot currently target an object that is moving. GPS type rounds tough ae becoming essential in Urban warfare these days as it is no longer acceptable for most armies to launch a barrage of "Dumb" shells for fear of causing civilian casualties. As for weight of fire, one thing is for certain we are not going to increase the number of guns we have anytime soon so to increase the weight of fire, each platform will have to shoot faster, a minimum of 10 rnds/min possibly. One option that might be revisited of 155mm munitions is that of laser guidance, to allow precision fire as long as something has line of sight. Technology has moved on along way from when the US Army tried to introduce the Copperhead guided round/Aquila UAV combination in the 1970s and 80s.

[RunningStrong]

GPS type rounds tough ae becoming essential in Urban warfare these days as it is no longer acceptable for most armies to launch a barrage of "Dumb" shells for fear of causing civilian casualties.

It's not the fire for effect (barrage) that the smart round replaces, but the adjustment phase. It's not that difficult to adjust a single gun onto a target, but the adjustment can have huge collateral in an urban environment.

The cheaper alternative to a fully guided shell is one that automatically adjusts for length, reducing the length of the "zone".