.
This is not how a competent land force (this may have been marines) sets up towed artillery nowadays (if it's stupid enough to still use towed artillery at all). More about this soon in the blog. https://t.co/kfT1WdUhQc
— Defence and Freedom (@DefenceFreedom) March 6, 2022
Destroyed Russian Artillery unit somewhere near Mykolaiv. pic.twitter.com/lbtz7NSl6M
— Aldin 🇧🇦 (@aldin_ww) March 6, 2022
A towed artillery firing unit used to be organised as a battery and set up as either a battery or half battery. Half batteries made sense; they supported the infantry like a battery using half as many artillery pieces, so the battery could leap frog; one half was always emplaced with guns ready to shoot and often times one half was not ready because of movement.
Batteries were often emplaced as seen in the videos, even as a long line. This made command & control easier. You might need to correct the aim of at leat some guns of such a linear battery, for else they would not aim at the same point.
This is utterly obsolete, outdated behaviour and has been utterly obsolete and outdated for well over 20 years.
See, the biggest issues with setting up an artillery piece is to know your position precisely (satellite navigation or measuring the angles towards multiple landmarks) and to know your orientation precisely (finding north - using landmarks or stars is better than a mere compass and map). You cannot accurately shoot at a coordinate if you don't know where your gun is and what direction your barrel is pointing at.
This has become rather automated with the availability of satellite navigation since the 1990's, and it's since become state of the art to give such navigation ability not just to the battery or half-battery, but to each individual towed gun crew or self-propelled gun vehicle.
This permits to emplace the guns with a wide spacing of kilometres, distances where counterfires would not hit more than one gun and radio or cable communication is still easily possible within the entire battery. Self-propelled guns might even be completely independent, having their own fire control (no more need for one or two fire direction centre vehicles per battery), navigation and presumably self-defence capability.
So you can protect a towed gun firing unit even when you don't have the time for field fortifications to protect the guns (the hydraulic recoiling system is quite vulnerable to fragments, and the tires sure are as well) or at very least the crews (which didn't have even only shallow trenches in the video).
What we see in the videos is a battery of 1960's guns (actually very good ones back then, but badly outranged and thus very restricted in their possibilities today) in a hasty firing position that's reminiscent of the 1700's to 1980's. This is a consequence of incompetence at the small unit and/or unit level. I mentioned that the use of landmarks and maps for position-finding and north-finding is doable without any electronics. It takes simple yet accurate mechanical tools (to determine horizontal angles between landmarks correctly) and good maps. Technically, artillery firing positions could already have had spacings of 300 m between individual guns in the 1920's.
Furthermore, it's possible to explosively excavate a foxhole on the quick (been around for a long time, can be improvised). Towed gun crews who had no time to dig for cover could prepare such foxhole excavator charges and set them off once they notice counterfires. Combine this with a DRFM jammer against radio frequency proximity fuses and the odds of survival are greatly increased even against MRSI counterattacks.
- - - - -
By the way, the aforementioned advance in the state of art is a good reason to give up the concept of a "battery". Artillery firing vehicles should be self-propelled with a bulletproofed cabin and munition stowage, have a nearly 360° defensive gun (I would prefer a .338 machinegun) and be accompanied a second bulletproofed vehicle with the same armament (ideally a munitions resupply vehicle) for covering the dead angle in firing position (and especially if it's a 4x4 car also as advance guard during movement). This small unit should move, secure itself and navigate independently one the battlefield. It would receive firing missions by radio datalink and the "battery" turns into a artillery firepower unit (such as a company), which is merely an administrative construct with little relevance on the battlefield. The independently moving firing small units of two (maximum three; 8x8 SPG, 8x8 resupply and 4x4 scout car) vehicles each would also have to report by datalink where from where they have fired shots, so others don't drive into counterfires meant to hit another team.
A bit about hardware; we shouldn't spend big on getting stored Panzerhaubitze 2000 back into service in Germany. They are a pain in the a** to move long distances on road and guzzle much fuel.
The Rheinmetall/MAN 10x10 HX3 with 155 mm L/52 AGM turret seems much better-suited (capable of long range self-deployment by road) and could easily be accompanied by another HX2 or HX3 series resupply vehicle.
(sorry for the stupid audio, that's a stupid fashion from beyond the great pond)
In case that the AGM is so far commercially unsuccessful because its Panzerhaubitze 2000-derived autoloader doesn't convince: The Swedish Archer on MAN HX2 series 8x8 vehicle is another option (easily transferred to HX3). Both AGM and Archer vastly outperform the wheeled 155 mm SPG competition in terms of burst fire capability.
AGM:
9 rpm, MRSI 4...6 rds depending on range, 360° traverse (though over cab likely with some restrictions regarding elevation, maybe also propellant charge strength), shoot-on-the-move indirect fire capability, 60 rounds stored on 10x10 HX3 including 30 ready rounds in turret
9 rounds per minute, 21 rounds in 2.5 minutes (then reload needed), MRSI 4...6 rds depending on range, 170° traverse, 20 seconds into action & 20 seconds leaving site (according to brochure), 21 rounds stored on MAN HX2 (or HX3) 8x8 vehicle
now for comparison a famous non-autoloader 155 mm SPG on wheeled vehicle:
6 rounds per minute, thus much weaker MRSI, 60° traverse, "less than" 60 seconds into action, "less than" 60 seconds leaving site, 36 rounds on 8x8 vehicle
edit: I should have mentioned Zuzana 2 as well: 6 rpm, 16 rounds in 3 minutes, MRSI 2...4 rds depending on range, autoloader and (very slow) backup manual loading, 360° traverse, 40 rounds stored on 8x8 vehicle that could use a German engine. I don't know if the 360° traverse means 360° capable of shooting full charge in lower register. Videos show Zuzana 2 firing without even deploying its two hydraulic legs, but I don't know how much propellant was involved in such shots. The advantages over Caesar 2 are the better crew protection and the certainly (even with caveat) greater traverse.
Zuzana 2 is supposedly cheaper than Caesar and Archer. AGM would be a fully domestic product, so about half of the price paid would return to the government through taxes. Its price should thus by understood t o be half of its nominal price, whatever that would be (I guess 10+ M € for the turret unless it's a bulk order for 200+ pieces).
S O
.
Do you know if any of those autoloader-equipped artillery systems (including the tracked ones) does have an efficient mechanism to cope with different munition types? I mean, the ability to fire, let's say SMArt, on short notice would
ReplyDelete- preclude any autoloader which does not allow any magazine position to be accessed at random
- necessitate some device to prevent registration errors when refilling the magazine manually or have this done by automatic means only
- have a munitions inventory available at the gun or even at the controlling level
They have such capabilities for the shells, but at least Archer is limited to modular propellant charges of a certain maximum length.
ReplyDeleteRussian army isolated vehicles/small units are receiving many attacks by Ukrainian forces.
ReplyDeleteSo, grouping the guns together could be less risky than maintaining them separated.
JM
That should not be much of a concern at 300 m separation and considering that seven men belong to a gun crew and tractor and support vehicles could form a picket ring around the battery.
DeleteThere is a possibility that this battery consisted of guns captured at the Ukrainian base at Kherson and was then employed by a makeshift unit of irregulars or paramilitary who had no more clue than needed for slow shooting at a general area of a city.
Imo one conclusion of the current conflict is, that we need more rocket artillery instead of conventional barrel artillery. The money must be in the ammunition and not in the plattform and the plattform must be cheap, light and with a low signature. Also we need short range / light rocket artillery at the border between ATGM and normal rocket artillery.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote "rocket" instead of "missile", so I suppose you meant unguided MRLs.
DeleteMRLs cover an extremely different purpose than howitzers/SPGs. MRLs are practically useless for illumination, for point targets, rarely useful for smokelaying, they cannot switch quickly between munition types.
MRLs have a horrible minimum range even if it's a model that allows mounting nose rings or that has trajectory-correcting deployable air brakes.
MRLs are a logistical nightmare, as they are much more bulky and heavy for the buck due to the lower efficiency of the rocket principle.
MRLs belonged to a time when artillery had no accurate potitioning or target coordinates, and even howitzers were often massing uncorrected and unobserved fires of multiple battalions for a shotgun-like approach. A MRL could do the same easier. Nowadays a SPG can aim at a family home-sized building from 20 km and hit it on first shot.
The time of dumb MRLs has gone and I suppose the only ones still worth it may be trench busters like TOS-1.
Multiple Missile Launchers on the other hand could be very helpful.
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-brigades-ideal-mrl.html
Don't you think there is still a place for towed artillery ?
ReplyDeleteThey still enable more firepower for the same cost and they are easier to transport
Towed artillery is a much too easy target. The ordinary 155 mm towed artillery piece has a traverse of less than 60° and needs a 6x6 at the very least for towing.
DeleteYou can just as well mount it on the 6x6 or 8x8 logistics vehicle directly with a spade or two and are much quicker into and out of position.