The L118 is great from that "expeditionary" point of view. But the 105 mm is clearly not getting too much love in terms of new ammunition, particularly precision-guided.whitelancer wrote:While commonality is always desirable, two artillery calibres is hardly extravagant. The 105 is ideal for rapid reaction forces, for both mobility and logistic reasons. While having a light weight 155 gun backing it up, for its range and terminal effect, would be desirable its cost in terms of purchase price, manpower and logistic support rules it out at least for the British Army. Even a light weight GMLRS, probably a better option seems to be ruled out ,at least for now.
At least we can be thankful that the L118 is as good as you can get.
The trend seems to go towards 155 mm howitzers complemented by the 120 mm mortar, which fires almost as far, is pretty much as deadly, is receiving greater attention (including guided ammo) and is lighter and smaller still than the L118. It is what the USMC, the French and the italians do / are trying to do.