And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Saturday, July 15, 2023
ARCHER Shoot and Scoot. Wow. On the move before the first shell even lands.
1) Field artillery generally depends on adjusting fire. So if your targetting data (firing pos or target location, or both) was in any degree inaccurate, you won't know until you've already driven away. You've just pumped three rounds into an empty field. Thanks for playing, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you. At minimum, unless your rounds are terminally guided by GPS, and the signal for that is unjammed (highly unlikely), you're just wasting ammunition.
2) If counterbattery is good, they've already got tubes ready to respond the second you fire. So it doesn't matter that your outbound rounds haven't impacted. The minute they cleared the treeline, they were ballistically backtracked to your position.
3) While you were launching round number three, and then positioning the tube for travel again, you fired at 23 seconds. The problem there is, someone on the OPFOR did the same thing, and their round was fired 23-30 seconds after that. And very likely, not from 51 seconds away, but a lot closer. And if it was rockets, with cluster munitions or shotgun fragmentation, like our own MLRS, it won't be one round, it'll be a salvo. Which, in the case of MLRS, wipes out a grid square per salvo, and flies one helluva lot faster in on a rocket than your conventional dumb iron shell was flying out (about 800 fps out, vs. Mach 3, 3375fps for the inbound rounds.) So 20 seconds before Archer is pulling away, 6-12 rockets go off within 15m of the vehicle, turning the weapon and crew into so much chowder and confetti.
4) Is Archer a vast improvement in speed of deployment and withdrawal an order of magnitude better than towed tube arty from WWII-Desert Storm? Hell yes. But on a modern battlefield? Just a new way of dying quickly. But it looks good on video to the uninitiated. This is just an updated version of the S. African system from the 1980s, against terrorists with RPGs at best. Against top-tier peer armies, it's not so hot.
Call me when they can shoot rounds on the move, because the rounds are homing, and terminally guided internally. That will be the actual gamechanger.
Yeah, well thank Satan we can bless the 155mm cluster rounds on the demons who fired them. Those old cluster munitions aren't anything at all like modern bomblets from the air drag shells and they'll maim and kill a thousand kids over the next 15 years. You know an bomblet cluster when you see it but not these killers.
Sadly, civilians always suffer more than soldiers in military Sports ball.
I was sighing at the Daily Telegraph's latest headline that NATO has stepped over 100% of Putin's Red Lines and still Putin hasn't used his nukes.
It takes a special sort of sociopath to brag about that, eh?
Like cluster munitions, nuclear weapons have very wide and long lasting results. Very hard on civilians. Solders at least Signed up and are paid to deal with it.
Add in that Russia has air supremacy and Ukraine has little anti-aircraft defense. Russian helicopters, close air support fixed wing planes, and armed drones are wreaking havoc on Ukrainian armor and artillery.
But But But so many bloggers around here are quite sure the Russians are retreating back to Moscow, the Mass Media and Tabloids say so and so does the British "intelligence". Oh, and Putin is in PANIC and so on.
We'll be blessed if someone in the nuclear chain of command refuses to fire off a false flag nuke on the USA to "Rally the PEEEOPLE" like the 911, Remember the Maine, Remember Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin and so on.
Yeah, we've been played by Gov.com and Media once, twice and so on.
Natzsofast, Guido.
ReplyDelete1) Field artillery generally depends on adjusting fire. So if your targetting data (firing pos or target location, or both) was in any degree inaccurate, you won't know until you've already driven away. You've just pumped three rounds into an empty field. Thanks for playing, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you. At minimum, unless your rounds are terminally guided by GPS, and the signal for that is unjammed (highly unlikely), you're just wasting ammunition.
2) If counterbattery is good, they've already got tubes ready to respond the second you fire. So it doesn't matter that your outbound rounds haven't impacted. The minute they cleared the treeline, they were ballistically backtracked to your position.
3) While you were launching round number three, and then positioning the tube for travel again, you fired at 23 seconds. The problem there is, someone on the OPFOR did the same thing, and their round was fired 23-30 seconds after that. And very likely, not from 51 seconds away, but a lot closer. And if it was rockets, with cluster munitions or shotgun fragmentation, like our own MLRS, it won't be one round, it'll be a salvo. Which, in the case of MLRS, wipes out a grid square per salvo, and flies one helluva lot faster in on a rocket than your conventional dumb iron shell was flying out (about 800 fps out, vs. Mach 3, 3375fps for the inbound rounds.)
So 20 seconds before Archer is pulling away, 6-12 rockets go off within 15m of the vehicle, turning the weapon and crew into so much chowder and confetti.
4) Is Archer a vast improvement in speed of deployment and withdrawal an order of magnitude better than towed tube arty from WWII-Desert Storm? Hell yes.
But on a modern battlefield? Just a new way of dying quickly.
But it looks good on video to the uninitiated.
This is just an updated version of the S. African system from the 1980s, against terrorists with RPGs at best.
Against top-tier peer armies, it's not so hot.
Call me when they can shoot rounds on the move, because the rounds are homing, and terminally guided internally.
That will be the actual gamechanger.
Just saying.
Good analysis Aesop. Also, could add that loitering armed drones might have even a quicker response than counterbattery.
DeleteI loved reading that analysis. Thank you.
DeleteVery good assessment: spot on!
ReplyDeleteYeah, well thank Satan we can bless the 155mm cluster rounds on the demons who fired them. Those old cluster munitions aren't anything at all like modern bomblets from the air drag shells and they'll maim and kill a thousand kids over the next 15 years. You know an bomblet cluster when you see it but not these killers.
ReplyDeleteSadly, civilians always suffer more than soldiers in military Sports ball.
ReplyDeleteI was sighing at the Daily Telegraph's latest headline that NATO has stepped over 100% of Putin's Red Lines and still Putin hasn't used his nukes.
It takes a special sort of sociopath to brag about that, eh?
Like cluster munitions, nuclear weapons have very wide and long lasting results. Very hard on civilians. Solders at least Signed up and are paid to deal with it.
catch me if you can!
ReplyDeletesounds of explosions, shredded metal and blood splatted all around.
DeleteCaught ya.
Add in that Russia has air supremacy and Ukraine has little anti-aircraft defense. Russian helicopters, close air support fixed wing planes, and armed drones are wreaking havoc on Ukrainian armor and artillery.
ReplyDeleteBut But But so many bloggers around here are quite sure the Russians are retreating back to Moscow, the Mass Media and Tabloids say so and so does the British "intelligence". Oh, and Putin is in PANIC and so on.
ReplyDeleteWe'll be blessed if someone in the nuclear chain of command refuses to fire off a false flag nuke on the USA to "Rally the PEEEOPLE" like the 911, Remember the Maine, Remember Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin and so on.
Yeah, we've been played by Gov.com and Media once, twice and so on.