Military Guns and Ammunition
Hosted by gatnerd
This is intended for people interested in the subject of military guns and their ammunition, with emphasis on automatic weapons.
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From: Red7272
9/9/19
poliorcetes said...
I would say that airburst at 2-3m height, with an umbrella pattern, would be more important than a guided projectile for a 6km range shoot, for instance. And an altimeter should be cheaper than a guidance system
They burst higher than that but yes. There are cheap turbine driven proximity fuses for mortar bombs that are perfect for this sort of lowbrow system that is needed in numbers. Because of the low personnel requirements it should be possible to expand a 8 mortar platoon to 12 automated vehicle mounted mortars with the same manpower. A battalion is unlikely be manning more than 10 locations with it actively patrolling companies so this should be sufficient without needing to go outside the existing force structure.
Call in the Super Tucanos if the target is big enough to need a 120 mortar with guided munitions.
- Edited 09 September 2019 18:16 by Red7272
From: gatnerd
9/9/19
"I would say that airburst at 2-3m height, with an umbrella pattern, would be more important than a guided projectile for a 6km range shoot, for instance. And an altimeter should be cheaper than a guidance system."
The US Army has been using programable airbursting fuses on mortars since the 1970's:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M734_fuze
While that is very helpful, I don't see it overcoming the utility of a guided shell. Even an airbursting projectile is not going to overcome a 30-60m miss, which is typical for a 6km firing.
Airbursting is also not helpful if the goal is destroying a structure.
Example, enemies firing from inside a building:
In order to get the occupants inside, it needs a point detonating delay + direct impact with the roof. This would require a mortar barrage of 10-18rds, whereas a guided mortar could make the shot in 1-2 rounds.
From: gatnerd
9/9/19
"Call in the Super Tucanos if the target is big enough to need a 120 mortar with guided munitions."
So rather then relying on a $10k guided mortar thats organic to the infantry, they should wait around for authorization and then flight time of a $1k hr aircraft to deliver $30k per shot missiles?
From: Red7272
10/9/19
gatnerd said...
So rather then relying on a $10k guided mortar thats organic to the infantry, they should wait around for authorization and then flight time of a $1k hr aircraft to deliver $30k per shot missiles?
So how many million dollar mortars with another million in guided mortar bombs do you need to have scattered around to cover your operational area?
From: gatnerd
10/9/19
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"So how many million dollar mortars with another million in guided mortar bombs do you need to have scattered around to cover your operational area?" You seem really hung up on the price. The thing is, waging war is an absurdly expensive enterprise: "From 2010 to 2012, when the U.S. had as many as 100,000 soldiers in the country, the price for American taxpayers surpassed $100 billion each year." That's $274 million per day. So for the cost of 1x day of the war, we could buy 23,000x $12k guided MAPAM mortars.... enough to launch 50x PGM strikes a day for 460 days. By the time we run out of mortars we would have spent $126 billion on other operational expenses....
Shipping cost alone is absurd. It costs $36k in jet fuel just to fly a C130 from Germany to Afghanistan. Each C130 can hold, at max, 1000x 120mm mortars by weight; by volume its likely much less. So simply delivering 23k mortars (guided or dumb) tp A'stan would be a minimum of $828,000 in fuel, to say nothing of the additional cost of the airplane maintenance.... Once the mortars arrive, its then another $400 per gallon of gas to transport them to their respective firing locations: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/63407-400gallon-gas-another-cost-of-war-in-afghanistan- And thats just the fuel cost. Then there's internal shipping to the battlefield. Trucks being hit by IED's or just damaged by the inhosbitable roads to get supplies to firebases. Then there are bases so remote that they can only be resupplied by helicopter/osprey. V22 cost per flight hour $82k...
The point being, if PGM allow you to use 1/5-1/10th the amount of shells you would need to use with unguided munitions, going with unguided shell is a foolish way to look for cost savings.
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- Edited 10 September 2019 2:34 by gatnerd
From: Red7272
10/9/19
Patrol in middle of nowhere is fired on so they call in support. They don't actually know specifically where the enemy is so plastering the location with air burst dumb rounds makes as much sense as anything. If it's a compound then ROE won't allow them to fire on it anyway. If clearing the compound becomes the plan then reinforcement and drones and the on-call Super Tucano become part of the plan in case approval is given to attack the compound.
gatnerd said...
The thing is, waging war is an absurdly expensive enterprise:
And that is with the current 3rd rate equipment. Actually trying to field better equipment will drive that price up further.
The only change I'm suggesting is more mortars in the mortar platoon and procuring a new fairly low tech vehicle mounted mortar system
From: TarheelYank
10/9/19
Do you have any information on sniper locator systems? Specifically the environments they work in, assuming they do work, and their size.
From: Red7272
10/9/19
Short answer is no.
Long answer is, that as far as I am aware, the number of actually useful systems is very small.
This is the blurb for a German system but it has little in the way of facts