Artillery Logistics Lessons.
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Are we still an ally?
Co-production in Canada?
The Indians will be building their own Stryker/LAVs. Did I feel a tremor in London, Ontario?
Co-production in Canada?
The Indians will be building their own Stryker/LAVs. Did I feel a tremor in London, Ontario?
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Small A ally, as opposed to real Allies.
GR66
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OldSolduer
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A whining snivelling ally who always wants you to pay the bar bill.
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US Artillery and Ukraine - M109A7-52, Ramjets and MACS etc
www.nationaldefensemagazine.org
Army’s Cannon, Propellant Updates Reflect Lessons Learned in Ukraine
Army’s Cannon, Propellant Updates Reflect Lessons Learned in Ukraine
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Canada’s Ukrainian refugee crisis is about to get much worse, Gen. Rick Hillier says
Already some displaced families that came to Canada are living in tents. And another 90,000 people are expected in the next 60 days
nationalpost.com
If true (I haven't verified General Hillier's numbers though I suspect they are a good order-of-magnitude estimate) then it suggests a few things:
1 - One thing is not like the other. Ukraine is not like WW1. The scale is radically different. Battalions have been replaced by platoons. Corps replaced by brigades.
2 - This war, if it represents the full extent of Russia's national effort, and if Russia truly represents a pacing threat from which it is possible to draw conclusions about nation-state warfare then it suggests to me that warfare has moved down the threat table globally. This war is contained. The vast majority of the world is going about their daily lives. The impact on the global economy is within the normal bounds of variability. That is true even with the advent of the Middle East and African nonsense. These events are influencing margin calls and derivative sales. They are not approaching meat and bone cuts. The pandemic was a much more significant event.
3 - The world hasn't been serious about war for a very long time. Stocks of ammunition held for years with trickle feeds from industry. Three day Gulf Wars, six day Israeli wars, three week stocks to stave off nuclear armagedon in Europe. Trickle outflows to manage tribal outbursts occasionally.
.....
Pluses and minuses
Plus - The influence of the nation-state is waning.
Minus - The influence of the nation-state is waning.
Plus - the risk of general war between nation-states is less than it was in 1914 and 1939 (+/- a couple of years depending on your point of origin)
Minus - the risk of generalized chaos and a retreat to pre-Westphalian Hobbesian state of affairs is rising.
In other words, with a nod to Fukuyama, history continues.
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Tracking so far.Canada’s Ukrainian refugee crisis is about to get much worse, Gen. Rick Hillier says
Already some displaced families that came to Canada are living in tents. And another 90,000 people are expected in the next 60 days
If true (I haven't verified General Hillier's numbers though I suspect they are a good order-of-magnitude estimate) then it suggests a few things:
1 - One thing is not like the other. Ukraine is not like WW1. The scale is radically different. Battalions have been replaced by platoons. Corps replaced by brigades.
2 - This war, if it represents the full extent of Russia's national effort, and if Russia truly represents a pacing threat from which it is possible to draw conclusions about nation-state warfare then it suggests to me that warfare has moved down the threat table globally. This war is contained. The vast majority of the world is going about their daily lives. The impact on the global economy is within the normal bounds of variability. That is true even with the advent of the Middle East and African nonsense. These events are influencing margin calls and derivative sales. They are not approaching meat and bone cuts. The pandemic was a much more significant event.
3 - The world hasn't been serious about war for a very long time. Stocks of ammunition held for years with trickle feeds from industry. Three day Gulf Wars, six day Israeli wars, three week stocks to stave off nuclear armagedon in Europe. Trickle outflows to manage tribal outbursts occasionally.
Nation-State influence is directly tied to their power and willingness to use it. I think you are drawing the incorrect conclusion above.
As the only reason that certain Nations are not throwing more weight is the concern of Russian stability and their nuclear arsenal.
I think you’re incorrect in the above.
Right now I think history is walking a razors edge on WW3…
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I think WW3 is a possibility in the near future and I can be persuaded that we are actively engaged in it currently. I don't think it necessarily will look like WW1 or WW2. Nor do I expect an Extinction Level Event of any kind. I do expect something more akin to the Hundred Years War (1337 to 1453), the French Wars of Religion (1562 to 1628), the Dutch rebellion (1566 to 1648), and the various other periods of anarchy and instability found in history around the globe.
I foresee the rise of the City State and the Merchant Adventurers with the world looking a lot more like the Holy Roman Empire - a kaleidoscopic structure of small states with constantly shifting alliances while formally considering themselves as part of a unifying government that everybody seeks to dominate.
Brad Sallows
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400,000 rounds per day, on one sector? Really?
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There is this:
And that was the British Army alone, before the factories got spooled up to the 1917-1918 levels. It doesn't account for French and German consumption.
So 400,000 rounds per day back and forth doesn't seem off the mark.
In Ukraine we are looking at 40,000 rounds per day back and forth on a high day. Less than 10,000 seems to be more like the thing (2000 Ukrainian and 6000 Russian?)
Brad Sallows
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I understand WWI. I meant Ukraine. What's the point of citing a WWI figure that is higher by an order of magnitude?
daftandbarmy
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I wasn't sure how to respond to this one to be honest.
Somethings are the same. Somethings are different.
WW1 - a massive number of those rounds were 75mm French, 77mm German and 84mm (18 pdr) British with lots of them being used in the anti-personnel role (shrapnel).
WW2 - the calibre rises to 88mm (25 pdr) British and 105mm American with the Germans seemingly adopting anything they could get their hands on.
Cold War - 105mm, 155mm, 203mm
And the range has been increasing constantly.
Why do we compare WW1, 2 and the Cold War to events in Ukraine? Are they any more or less relevant that the sieges of Vauban, Marlborough and Wellington? Or for that matter the trench warfare of the US Civil War and the Russo-Japanese War?
One thing that does seem to be common, IMO, the planners are often wrong.
Brad Sallows
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If we don't understand the evolution, I doubt we understand what's needed now and why.
All the attention is on the total number of shells per month. If anyone is drilling down into the firing missions to find out what the actual usage and consumption patterns are where the fighting is heaviest, few of them are openly talking about it. The only stuff I've ever come across that really talks about what it's like when an artillery unit is working close to exhaustion (humping the ammo and then firing it) is George Blackburn's trilogy. I gather that 10 rounds per gun per day doesn't amount to much, and that at the other extreme there is the kind of fighting that saw planners arrange for 900 rounds per gun to be delivered (20th July 1944, I gather).
Obviously it takes a lot of 25-pounder shells to equal the weight of a single 155, but the number of rounds is part of what makes a useful psychological impression, and the difference between suppression and mere harassment. How many rounds ought a 155 battery be receiving if it is expected to participate in suppression fires totalling 60 minutes duration (assuming all guns available and firing) each day? (I have no offhand notion of the quantities.) The few videos I've watched of what is going on in Ukraine look like as little as one tube is half-heartedly puking out a round every 30 seconds or so, and my gut reaction was "WTF is that supposed to be?"
FJAG
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It depends on the area to be covered as well. There are tables for this, most having their genesis from statistics in WW2.
You aren't the only one with no notion of the quantities. Its more an art than a science and its one the army and the logistics system behind it hasn't thought about much less practiced in generations. 4 CMBG was relatively adept at this in its heyday but its gone out of fashion since the decade of darkness.
A bit of the problem is discussed fairly well in Conrad's book "What the Thunder Said" when addressing the ammunition shortage crisis just before Op Medusa. The system has, during peacetime, degenerated into a "just in time" delivery system at peacetime rates and had a hard time adjusting to wartime factory to gun position management - both strategically as well as tactically.
A Battery had put a mere 600 rds 155 downrange in support of TF Orion and the system was challenged in supplying them tactically. E Bty had upped that to 6,500 155mm, 1,500 rds of 81mm and 100 rds of 120mm and the system was extremely challenged in both respects. And that's the total for a full year - which is hardly a massive amount. Numbers went up a bit thereafter and then decreased and the the system lapsed back into business as usual.
When it comes to rates of fire, circumstances vary. I had one case where my 3-gun L5 troop had to fire 400 rds of WP in one fire mission. In a pinch we could put nine rounds per minute down range. I've seen a video of an M777 doing almost the same with a really good crew. It can't be done for long. The rated, sustained rates for both guns are much lower. One of the unstated issues is that 155 ammunition comes in four pieces, fuze, projectile, charge and primer and is heavy. All of these come well packaged and need to be unpacked from pallets and prepared for firing. You need people to do that - hence 3-man gun detachments are brochure puffery.
On the other hand, if you are suppressing a platoon or tight company position, a round coming in randomly every 30 seconds or so, especially mixed with airburst, does tend to keep heads down in trenches. Add a second gun firing an erratic pattern and they'll probably stay down.
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It depends on the area to be covered as well. There are tables for this, most having their genesis from statistics in WW2.
You aren't the only one with no notion of the quantities. Its more an art than a science and its one the army and the logistics system behind it hasn't thought about much less practiced in generations. 4 CMBG was relatively adept at this in its heyday but its gone out of fashion since the decade of darkness.
A bit of the problem is discussed fairly well in Conrad's book "What the Thunder Said" when addressing the ammunition shortage crisis just before Op Medusa. The system has, during peacetime, degenerated into a "just in time" delivery system at peacetime rates and had a hard time adjusting to wartime factory to gun position management - both strategically as well as tactically.
A Battery had put a mere 600 rds 155 downrange in support of TF Orion and the system was challenged in supplying them tactically. E Bty had upped that to 6,500 155mm, 1,500 rds of 81mm and 100 rds of 120mm and the system was extremely challenged in both respects. And that's the total for a full year - which is hardly a massive amount. Numbers went up a bit thereafter and then decreased and the the system lapsed back into business as usual.
When it comes to rates of fire, circumstances vary. I had one case where my 3-gun L5 troop had to fire 400 rds of WP in one fire mission. In a pinch we could put nine rounds per minute down range. I've seen a video of an M777 doing almost the same with a really good crew. It can't be done for long. The rated, sustained rates for both guns are much lower. One of the unstated issues is that 155 ammunition comes in four pieces, fuze, projectile, charge and primer and is heavy. All of these come well packaged and need to be unpacked from pallets and prepared for firing. You need people to do that - hence 3-man gun detachments are brochure puffery.
On the other hand, if you are suppressing a platoon or tight company position, a round coming in randomly every 30 seconds or so, especially mixed with airburst, does tend to keep heads down in trenches. Add a second gun firing an erratic pattern and they'll probably stay down.
But even that comes a cropper with the 3-week war standard for the Cold War.
Nobody seems to have been planning on keeping those rates of fire indefinitely. The means of production of shells and barrels, the means of transportation from factory to front, the number of guns and gunners. There has been nothing like that chain in place since 14 Aug 1945.
The mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were supposed to make all of that unnecessary.
Aside from dealing with the occasional unruly insurgents.
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There is also the issue of falling into a false expectation of requiring the same levels as Ukraine on a broader scale.
One thing the Ukrainians don’t have is the USAF, which has done the lions share of ordnance delivery since 1945 in terms of Western Armies.
When we look at GWOT, the Air Force (again predominantly the USAF but other partners as well) dropped a significant amount of munitions on targets compared to Artillery and Mortars. In fact since Korea most Western Armies have tried to ‘solve’ the Artillery problem with Air Power.
I’ve seen a few studies (yet have not found a decent OS one) comparing the logistics requirements of Artillery to Air Power, with arguments that Air Power is ‘cheaper’ in terms of manpower and logistics to support (apparently no one factors in enemy air power or Air Defense into that equation though) as the justification is that a single A/C can drop more ordnance than a 155 Bty can in the space of 5 min (that was a Vietnam era case using an F-4 Phantom and F-105 Thunderchief as platforms and their tons of 500lb bombs). The argument was made that an A/C like that can drop its load of 6-9 tons of ordnance and return to base and be back on station inside 2 hours having more range and flexibility than artillery - as well as more weight / min on target (which is only applicable if the range is limited of the sorties from the Air Base). Compared to the requirements of trucking or airlifting artillery ammo to a FOB, then the support needed for the FOB to protect the Artillery Bty (again Vietnam era study).
When we look at GWOT the Air Forces don’t have much of a role outside ground pounding, there was no Afghani/Iraqi/ISIS/AlQ AF to fight, so the AS missions where nigh, and at least down here a lot of Arty units where busy not crewing their guns but being used as Constabulary units to attempt to police Iraq.
So when we look at what is needed from the Artillery, one also needs to look at what the Air Force can provide, in both an Air Supremacy type environment but also what occurs in an Air Parity environment. Incorporating the Air Force is a much needed component of understanding the future needs of Artillery, as some mission / Areas of Operations won’t require the same levels of Artillery.
To me there is a clear case for long range rocket/missile artillery regardless of AF levels of involvement, as well as for heavier armored SPA, as the type of missions that would require larger artillery presence are ones that are going to see limited ability/availability of the AF to conduct ground strikes either due to AD or Enemy Air itself. Which is turn requires the ability to support the Artillery in volumes much higher than currently alllocated for.
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Comparing lifecycle costs 155s to Phantoms/F35s would be interesting. You might want to include the costs of building and maintaining the airfields, including the costs of shipping the engineers and their plant to build the fields and hardened structures as well as the costs of defending and repairing them.
A modern take would have to look at the middle ground, as you suggest, rocket/missile artillery. It would also have to consider the rato/jato class of ground launched long range drones that can launch an F5 Freedom Fighter class aircraft from any flat surface.
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- Length: 48 ft 2.25 in (14.6876 m)
- Wingspan: 26 ft 8 in (8.13 m)
- Height: 13 ft 4.5 in (4.077 m)
- Wing area: 186 sq ft (17.3 m2)
- Aspect ratio: 3.86
- Airfoil: NACA 65A004.8[250]
- Empty weight: 9,583 lb (4,347 kg)
- Gross weight: 15,745 lb (7,142 kg) clean
- Max takeoff weight: 24,675 lb (11,192 kg)
So I exaggerated a bit on the CF 5 comparison - but probably not far off in terms of payload delivery.
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