UK Defence Forum

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 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.

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.

wonder if the strike brigades will have Light gun or AS90

............

I could be wrong, but I don't think the Americans actually signed up to Ottawa. Instead they brought in a couple of rules that by a certain date submunition weapons would need a dud rate of less than X, that they would all be gone by Y date and that, in the meantime, they would require the authorisation of a Theatre level commander to authorise the use of (which I believe never happened). The last submunition warhead GMLRS were produced around seven years ago, but they are still stockpiled as are some submunition ATACMS which are in the process of conversion to unitary. There has been a massive programme of demilitarizing (mostly) time expired MLRS and MLRS-ER rockets and of demilling 105 and 155 DPICM and converting many thousands of the latter into illuminating and practice (not effectively fragmenting) HE rounds.

I posted the following video (see below) on the GMLRS AW on tank-net.com a few weeks ago. There is no doubt this warhead is extremely impressive, but it does lack some features of its predecessor. Firstly it is only effective within line of sight of the burst. Effectiveness vs more heavily armoured AFVs must be questionable (but then so was the bomblet payload). Lastly it is unlikely to detonate or ignite anything in the target area. On the plus side you have treaty compliance (for signatories), it won't result in a UXO nightmare and it's likely to be much cheaper than the submunition version, so could be used in greater quantities to compensate for less effective coverage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5h7BkCj5rI

L118/L119 will probably be as long lived as the 25 Pounder and in the light role will be difficult currently to replace

http://forces.tv/10503849

Perfect.

yeap manufacturing errors happen

Chris Werb wrote: GMLRS AW on tank-net.com a few weeks ago. There is no doubt this warhead is extremely impressive, but it does lack some features of its predecessor. Firstly it is only effective within line of sight of the burst. Effectiveness vs more heavily armoured AFVs must be questionable (but then so was the bomblet payload). Lastly it is unlikely to detonate or ignite anything in the target area. On the plus side you have treaty compliance (for signatories)

A very valid point for discussion: Is Russia a signatory?

AW is equal to 155mm against massed APCs, but will fall short on any other effects.(higher density of hits with v little lost in penetrating such level of armour].

ArmChairCivvy wrote:
A very valid point for discussion: Is Russia a signatory?

Haha, no. Recently defensenews ran a very interesting interview with the head of the Potomac Institute about the new types of doctrine being trialled by Russia in Ukraine. The guy in question has visited the Donbass region frequently since fighting broke out there and recalled one particular instance where he claimed to have seen an entire BM-21 battery, utilising cluster munitions, decimate two Ukrainian mechanized companies with a full salvo of rockets.

He was very concerned about Russia's greater ability to generate massed firepower as compared to almost all NATO nations these days, the US included. Not only do they have the sheer number of platforms to create mass-fire effects, but the nature of their munitions and their operational procedures are very much oriented in this way too.

The US Army is reacting to Ukraine by restarting ATACMS production; thinking about a successor / replacement; the Alternative Warhead for GMLRS and, latest revelation, a 52 caliber M777 ER derivative, plus a 52 caliber retrofit for the Paladin.

Finally, they are doing something to close a capability gap which has been worsening for many years. It really was obvious to everyone with eyes, but it was given very low priority. Now, maybe, things will change a bit.

Hopefully it will begin to catch on over here in good time too. We really need to be looking at regenerating some of the conventional punch that we have lost in recent years. I doubt we will recover the numerical mass we need any time soon, but some corrective measures on the equipment and operational doctrine front would be a good start.

yes more AS90's would be good with ammo designed for them

Braveheart update; ammo already designed and in production?

Or upgrade, rather, a whole new turret to accommodate the punchier gun/ barrel upgrade.

I'd think we would be better off looking at new ammunition natures first, but that is just my amateur opinion. Longer range and potentially guided rounds would be something to look at but also would sub-munition natures too. That goes for both our rocket and tube artillery. We could probably do with looking at some form of return to “dumb bombs” and sub-munitions on our aircraft too.

Changing our RoEs and attitudes towards the use of such weapons would also be needed as well. There are decent alternatives out there today that strike a good balance between ethics and capability and they should be pursued to my mind.

We need to return to mass fire effects any way we can as suddenly, large scale, peer level, conventional warfare doesn't seem a distant fantasy anymore and those are the exact tools needed to wage such a conflict.

was looking at some interesting personal pics on face book of light gun being underslung in Belize in 1979 in 2 parts by Puma

Carriage being one load and gun being the second. When i was there we underslung in 1 load. Still i suppose 2 loads is better than moving an L5 pack howitizer (Oto melara M56) by whirlwind that was 13 lifts per gun

After the upgrade the Puma lifts three times the weight and flies twice further (may be the other way round... it is just detail), so I think you can now take a fair number of rounds along, too, in the initial lift.

The only reason for keeping the LG instead of 777 is that it not only goes to places (so does the 777) but is easier to supply due to the weight of rounds (less manpower intensive, too, I believe).

these were HC1 pumas

ArmChairCivvy wrote:The only reason for keeping the LG instead of 777 is that it not only goes to places (so does the 777) but is easier to supply due to the weight of rounds (less manpower intensive, too, I believe).

I'd add higher rate of fire and smaller danger area, both of which can be desirable when working in close support.

mr.fred wrote:

ArmChairCivvy wrote:The only reason for keeping the LG instead of 777 is that it not only goes to places (so does the 777) but is easier to supply due to the weight of rounds (less manpower intensive, too, I believe).

I'd add higher rate of fire and smaller danger area, both of which can be desirable when working in close support.

All true, and also the gun turns more than the 777, which
- with a smaller crew (to keep it that way) is quite important, and
- also, if you are dealing with gentlemen in turbans (as the OpFor), you never know in which direction you may have to engage

"Close" close support seems to have become a forgotten art within the artillery?
http://militaryanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/ ... hette.html

thought the foos in afghan were good at "danger extreme close" missions

I think that ACC may mean close support in the sense that the gun is close and an FOO is not required.

So close that the gun is level with the target (no angle or indirect fire calculations involved, just turn quick enough, rinse & repeat)
- these flechettes from CG (ie. for it, if you happen to have "the special issue" Carl Gustav to hand) are available today as a round, but not sure if they are time-fused like in the (ex?) 105 mm artillery round, or are spat out pretty much straight after the round has travelled the safe distance (tens of meters)

The closest we get to the effect is what Gaby wrote about in his blog

" soon be replaced, there is also the famous M18A1 Claymore mine. The evaluation process is complete, and the new Fixed Directional Fragmentation Weapon will be assigned to units in training this December. ISD is planned for September 2015.
The FDFW is virtually identical to the Claymore in general look, concept and effect, but with an improvement in lethality. The new mine is produced in Finland. "

A poor substitute for an aim-able weapon when you are talking about defences against a massed infantry attack; good, though, for ambushes, and retreats from such (when the AI dismounts, to find the culprits).

if a gun is exposed in that way its in the wrong place.