daftandbarmy
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C3 Howitzer Replacement
- Thread starter MattGotts
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How much does it cost per hour to suppress a grid square?
How much does it cost to neutralize a point target with dumb rounds?
How much does it cost to destroy a point target with dumb rounds? A moving target?
Alternately how much does it cost to keep a grid square under observation with an FPV swarm located beyond the grid square?
I am going to suggest that any one of those copters can see the AA guns shooting at them before they are in range of the guns themselves.
A swarm of those critters seem to me to be just as likely to keep the heads of the enemy down as a constant patter of 105s. Especially if some number of them are armed with one or two 60 mm mortar bombs at about 1.4 kg a piece.
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Unless you have good soft kill measures to go with the guns... They the swarm is just a bunch of wasted money, and the 105mm rounds would have actually landed on their intended targets.
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Depends on the AA system. 35x173mm can go a far distance. Larger systems even further.
These are, broadly speaking, known commodities and have been for more than a century. If you want, you can look up the 1918 British staff estimates for how many rounds it took to knock out a German gun emplacement, or how many pounds per hour of HE is required to suppress a given area. The costs aren't zero, but they are manageable.
That is, the cost-benefit relationship is well understood and has generally been considered acceptable and necessary.
Observation does not imply suppression or neutralization. Nor will a swarm of drones induce terror and confusion in the same way that massed fire can.
It is hard to fully appreciate the psychological effects of HE rounds impacting nearby, particularly when there is nothing you can do about it. This isn't something that can be easily replicated by other alternatives.
AAA is only one possible counter to drones. EW is another.
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Larger systems are more expensive and therefore will be fewer. Do you want to up your game to the Bofors 57 (8.5 km) or the Leonardo 76 (16 km) as used by the NATO navies? 35 mm is about 4 km.
Closing speed of a quad copter 200 km/h (???), 3 to 5 minutes reaction time. Multiple targets engaging from all quadrants and elevations.
How much discrimination with a cell phone camera at 4, 8 and 16 km? How inexpensive is it to drop a photograph into the memory of a drone and tell it to go there if it can see the target from 16 km away (ground level horizon)?
Those big guns are at best Brigade assets. Individual vehicles and packets are going to be relying on 12.7 to 30x113mm rounds and trying to make the kill on the final approach while being attacked on multiple vectors.
....
As to soft kills - soft kill systems don't seem to be stopping a steady attrition of systems on both sides.
Also - soft kills rely on radiating energy putting them at risk to SEAD capabilities, which can be mounted on loitering munitions in the swarm.
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Which makes it an excellent benchmark.
No it doesn't. But constant observation of the grid square by loitering munitions hovering out of range makes movement above ground a lot riskier.
I'll take your word for it. But I would like to hear from some Russian and Ukrainian squaddies on the subject as well.
The key element, I suggest, is that of being helpless, of not being in control and not being able to respond. The sound of buzzing and the prospect of a hand-delivered 60mm in your dugout, or down your hatch, seems to prompt both sides to change their behaviour.
As I noted above, EW is not a sinecure either. ECM emits radiation creating targets.
Harpy was effectively used in Azerbaijan
And, as noted, autonomous systems like that in service on the Brimstone missiles only require a horseshoe toss with INS to get them into the fight. They can find their own targets from there. GPS is not necessary.
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3-4km is still no joke, considering fragmenting warheads
You’re being overly generous with the speed.
But missing the fact that one’s guns aren’t at the front - and have layers between then and the front.
You are looking at this like you can swarm around positions, but ignoring everything from the gun line to the front.
You just made a 1/2M munition.
You keep missing layers.
Who’s SEAD? Directed Energy and other soft kill systems are focused emitting setups, they aren’t easy to target unless the drone focused has its own detection system.
Your drone swarm is a multi million dollar project based on the capabilities you are giving them.
That is still much slower than a fixed wing CAS aircraft, which AD platforms are able to deal with.
They won't get everything, but they introduce quite a bit of uncertainty and cause lots of drone losses. About this time last year, RUSI estimated that the Ukrainians were losing 10000 drones per month, mostly to Russian EW activities.
Drones can be Wild Weasels, but the AD systems have counters to that in the same way that they do for manned aircraft. Turning systems on or off, layering AD systems so that one method of AD serves as protection for others, etc.
No singular system of any kind can completely change warfare. Not even nuclear weapons did that.
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You get your accountants on it with your assumptions and I'll get mine with my assumptions.
The point is that the troops on the ground can take positive action when they know a drone is overhead. They can, for example, fire on it. This alone has a major psychological impact on how the threat is perceived.
There are no shortage of observations about this from WW2 - when air defences fired back at an air attack, the effects on morale were noticeable less pronounced.
With artillery, the people on the receiving end are essentially helpless.
INS is not cheap.
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Estonia and IAI sign one of the largest procurement deals in the country's history | Shephard
Isreal Aerospace Industries (IAI) has announced that Estonia has contracted it to provide loitering munitions in one of the most expensive defence procurement the Baltic nation has ever made.
www.shephardmedia.com
Harpy seems to be about 1 MUSD a piece. Octocopters with 60mm bombs are in the 100 KUSD range (or about the price of a single Javelin missile) and FPV are less than 1000 each.
A couple of Harpies tending a flock of Octocopters and FPVs will slow down the ECM response.
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Re the cost of INS -
Everything is relative.
geo-matching.com
Everything is relative.
Inertial Navigation Systems
Filter, select and comparInertial Navigation Systems are [Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs)] with additional navigation sensors to create a solution which enables accurate positioning. GNSS aided Inertial Navigation Systems use satellite signals as an extra source of data for land and air...
geo-matching.com
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Nobody is saying that any singular system is going to completely change warfare.
But low cost platforms with multiple capabilities will throw the emphasis on to a different syllable.
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INS by itself isn’t exceptional accurate.Re the cost of INS -
Everything is relative.
Inertial Navigation Systems
Filter, select and comparInertial Navigation Systems are [Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs)] with additional navigation sensors to create a solution which enables accurate positioning. GNSS aided Inertial Navigation Systems use satellite signals as an extra source of data for land and air...
Hence GPS and INS linked systems.
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Got that. But add one INS pathfinder in a swarm to a cluster of DAMASK type 1980s vintage seekers and you don't need GPS.
markppcli
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100k each?
Every asset you add to harden, make more precise, improve pay load, or increase range exponetionally increases price and production time lines. I see 24 drones carrying one 60mm each and I see a job a mortar team can do just as easily.
I really want you to listen to the podcast War on the Rocks, particularly the episode discussing drone operations, and given some time to Micheal Koffman’s analysis of drone warfare. The limitations and propaganda aspect are laid out pretty clearly. Even the Ukrainians don’t see it as an artillery replacement.
Colin Parkinson
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Well I found a solution to arming Reserve artillery within our expected budgets for the next ten years.
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Nothing is ever really obsolete....
FJAG
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Tell that to the people that cut up our M109s.
In answer to your question: No. I never will get over that.
