Military Ground Vehicles of Your Nation Mk X

[Allanea]

"And it might still kill you."

Might.

HE-F has torn off the tracks of tanks before, broken turret roofs, etc.

The main reason it hasn't done this to Abrams tanks is that there's few recorded instances where they've been shot at by HE-F 152mm.

Abrams has primarily avoided being violently killed in combat by virtue of being used by competent crews in a context of full-spectrum overmatch over the Iraqi Army, and in police actions. Abrams tanks in the hands of Saudis and Iraqis get penetrated, shot up, and burned down with primitive munitions all the time. RPG-7s have disabled Abrams tanks. Konkurs has killed Abrams tanks.

t, a self-propelled howitzer lacks the optronics and fire control system necessary for accurate engagement of a moving tank.

SPH and towed howitzer crews IRL train to engage moving tanks in emergencies regularly. [In the USSR, this was done with moving remote-control targets, even.]

Today optronics are better, and we don't know what optronics this NS 210mm gun has.

[Gallia-]

"And it might still kill you."

Might.

HE-F has torn off the tracks of tanks before, broken turret roofs, etc.

And more commonly has never done any of these things.

The main reason it hasn't done this to Abrams tanks is that there's few recorded instances where they've been shot at by HE-F 152mm.

Nothing to do with the historical fact that HE-F rounds are not particularly useful at stopping mobile armour? Nope, not at all.

Otherwise you'd just fire a few tens of HE-F rounds instead of making special, sensor munitions firing self-forging fragments at top armour. Or maybe make HE-F rounds with IR seekers in the nose instead of hollow charges? No one has done any of these things, which indicates that your confidence in HE-F is both misplaced and recognizably so.

Were it not for buildings and such existing, I'm pretty sure HE-F would have gone extinct years ago, on account of simply being inferior to cargo shells against things lacking overhead cover.

Abrams has primarily avoided being violently killed in combat by virtue of being used by competent crews in a context of full-spectrum overmatch over the Iraqi Army, and in police actions. Abrams tanks in the hands of Saudis and Iraqis get penetrated, shot up, and burned down with primitive munitions all the time. RPG-7s have disabled Abrams tanks. Konkurs has killed Abrams tanks.

Yes, no doubt it would penetrate the side of such things with hollow charge ammunition.

No one is talking about hollow charge ammo. We are talking about HE-F.

t, a self-propelled howitzer lacks the optronics and fire control system necessary for accurate engagement of a moving tank.

SPH and towed howitzer crews IRL train to engage moving tanks in emergencies regularly. [In the USSR, this was done with moving remote-control targets, even.]

And did they achieve >90% probabilities of hit?

Today optronics are better, and we don't know what optronics this NS 210mm gun has.

This is true.

But why you would give a howitzer any direct optics beyond a basic periscope is beyond me. It's such a niche role that there isn't really a reason for it.

[Allanea]

Nothing to do with the historical fact that HE-F rounds are not particularly useful at stopping mobile armour? Nope, not at all.

Otherwise you'd just fire a few tens of HE-F rounds instead of making special, sensor munitions firing self-forging fragments at top armour. Or maybe make HE-F rounds with IR seekers in the nose instead of hollow charges? No one has done any of these things, which indicates that your confidence in HE-F is both misplaced and recognizably so.

What is this 'non particularly useful' thing?

The mathematics are simple. In indirect fire, an artillery barrage can take out a tank battalion if you have X shells per Y tanks. SADARM will kill (in a mathmeatical, hypothetical reality, actual numbers are slightly different), 1 tank for two shells fired. It's obviously massively better. But the difficulty is not because the HE-F can't damage the tank, it's because it's actually pretty hard to hit the tank with precision over the horizon.

[Here's a relevant tale if Google translate can help.]
http://ru-artillery.livejournal.com/60992.html

No, HE-F isn't a good anti-tank weapon. It's a passable emergency anti-tank weapon if HEAP and ATGM aren't available.

[Allanea]

Note that in the real world, 203mm gun crews train to use their guns in direct-fire in emergencies.

[Gallia-]

The mathematics are simple.

Indeed. The mathematics are that a 152mm OF-29 HE-F shell delivers 15 kN when hitting the turret of a "tank". For an M1, this translates to less than 250 N:tonne. Which is comparable to the main gun firing.

It's a passable emergency anti-tank weapon if HEAP and ATGM aren't available.

It's not even that.

It's just the only emergency weapon.

A better solution is to fire smoke grenades and flee quickly.

Note that in the real world, 203mm gun crews train to use their guns in direct-fire in emergencies.

And it is probably futile in the real world, too.

203mm guns (2S7, 2S7M, M110, etc.) tend to be unarmored and unprotected. You don't even need the main gun working to kill them, and their direct fire sights are generally extremely primitive.

[The Akasha Colony]

But why you would give a howitzer any direct optics beyond a basic periscope is beyond me. It's such a niche role that there isn't really a reason for it.

Oddly enough, Nexter has given their 8x8 CAESAR variant a gun-mounted thermal imaging system for use in direct-fire engagements. But this is probably just to milk some extra money out of customers.

[Allanea]

Indeed. The mathematics are that a 152mm OF-29 HE-F shell delivers 15 kN when hitting the turret of a "tank". For an M1, this translates to less than 250 N:tonne. Which is comparable to the main gun firing.

About as relevant to real armored combat as disposable paper G-strings are to mechanized infantry uniforms.

203mm guns (2S7, 2S7M, M110, etc.) tend to be unarmored and unprotected. You don't even need the main gun working to kill them, and their direct fire sights are generally extremely primitive.

A 203mm shell doesn't even need to hit a modern tank to disable it. Landing within 10 meters of it will disable it.

[Allanea]

I can't believe I am calculating this number, but the muzzle energy of a 203mm is about 50 megajoules.

[The Akasha Colony]

I can't believe I am calculating this number, but the muzzle energy of a 203mm is about 50 megajoules.

It's not a relevant number though.

The relevant number is impulse. A 960 m/s 94 kg projectile generates an impulse of 90,240 newton seconds. The ability of a vehicle to withstand an impulse is related to its weight, which is why people have been talking in ratios of newton seconds per ton. That same 90,240 N·s impulse generates over 2,000N·s/ton against a 45-ton tank like an early-model T-72, but only 1,290 N·s/ton against a heavy 70-ton Western tank like Abrams. Obviously not every vehicle is the same and some may have weaker turret rings than others or some such, but generally weight tends to correlate with robustness of construction since better construction usually results in greater weights.

This leaves aside the issue of what "a 203 mm" is, since the 203 mm M110 is a far cry from the 203 mm 2S7 Pion. Although I assume you're referring to a gun, rather than a howitzer.

A 203mm shell doesn't even need to hit a modern tank to disable it. Landing within 10 meters of it will disable it.

This seems questionable because there doesn't seem to be any sort of kill mechanism that could accomplish this from a HE-F shell.

The shell fragments would not accomplish this, because they would have no means of penetrating even the tank's more lightly protected aspects. The running gear too would be protected against such effects even without a substantial armored skirt. And the blast effect would not be sufficient, since tanks are extremely hardened against blasts and a 10 meter gap would be sufficient to reduce the blast damage significantly anyway.

This is the reason why people talk about hitting tanks with HE-F directly in the first place, because the blast and fragmentation effects themselves aren't very reliable kill mechanisms. So the only thing that's left is sheer KE from the impact, but that's not great either unless you hit them with a railroad gun or something. Being able to disable a tank by landing a shell within 10 meters of it would make disabling tanks an extremely easy task for artillery and would largely eliminate the need for sensor-fuzed munitions.

Anyway basically the point is I'm not sure that even a Megagun would really kill a tank with HE rounds. >2 kN/ton seems about right for actual damage to occur in a turret drive, I guess.

Best to have an absurdly large hollow charge instead.

I've never aimed to kill a tank with HE-F. Ford asked if it could shoot at tanks and the answer is yes, it is capable of direct fire. Hitting a tank with a 110 kg shell would definitely be something the tank crew would notice, and it would definitely be uncomfortable, but not likely to kill them or the tank. "They'd notice" is all I was arguing. Which is fine anyway of course since as a corps gun with extreme range it's supposed to be even less likely to encounter enemy tanks than the division and brigade guns.

[Allanea]

1. I'm going to go with actual tactics manuals for the Pion until I study this issue closer.

2. Doesn't your gun also have HEAT and ATGM weapons? I'm sure THOSE could negotiate their way through most tanks.

[The Akasha Colony]

2. Doesn't your gun also have HEAT and ATGM weapons? I'm sure THOSE could negotiate their way through most tanks.

Why would it?

It's a corps artillery piece. It has no need for either ATGMs or HEAT rounds. It is not expected to be killing tanks in direct-fire engagements, but instead with SADARMs at 50+ km.

The M712 Copperhead clone that had previously been featured was a HEAT weapon, but required laser designation by a ground team to engage a target and was rendered obsolete by sensor-fuzed munitions like SADARM.

[Allanea]

I am sorry, I may have read the previous chart wrong.

[Gallia-]

Indeed. The mathematics are that a 152mm OF-29 HE-F shell delivers 15 kN when hitting the turret of a "tank". For an M1, this translates to less than 250 N:tonne. Which is comparable to the main gun firing.

About as relevant to real armored combat as disposable paper G-strings are to mechanized infantry uniforms.

lmao that's why the ussr literally used it as a metric for how much damage a HE round does to armor rite? just a bunch of buffoons!

http://tankarchives.blogspot.ca/2014/12 ... rmour.html

unfortunately he never links the paper nor does he provide any explanation of the mathematics used, but he does summarize the findings

against modern special armor arrays it's almost useless and most side skirts are sufficiently tough to stop the bulk majority of artillery splinter

203mm guns (2S7, 2S7M, M110, etc.) tend to be unarmored and unprotected. You don't even need the main gun working to kill them, and their direct fire sights are generally extremely primitive.

A 203mm shell doesn't even need to hit a modern tank to disable it. Landing within 10 meters of it will disable it.

yeah sure

"ww2" or even "t-72" isnt "modern"

i dont disagree that a 203mm gun could wreck a T-72, or a T-62, but targeting norms have been needing to be updated in the face of heavy Western armor since the 1980s due to the massive increase in protection over things like Leopard 1/T-62/M60 you see with M1/Leopard 2

which was never really done afaik because the ussr was pursuing sensor fused weapons and ICMs at the time

This is the reason why people talk about hitting tanks with HE-F directly in the first place, because the blast and fragmentation effects themselves aren't very reliable kill mechanisms. So the only thing that's left is sheer KE from the impact,

Impulse includes the explosive filler. It's not just KE.

While I'm sure it could be modeled mathematically, I don't know the equation to model it, but when the USSR was researching the effects of heavy guns and field artillery on armour (possibly the '70s?) they used a destructive experimental method where they exposed armor plates with sensors behind them to HE shells of various calibers and makes.

It's not necessarily as simple as the firing/recoil impulse. It will be higher than that since you to account for the detonation of the filler, but the drop in muzzle velocity might make it close?

It is definitely an intriguing line of research and I wish more Western scientists studied this sort of stuff, even mathematically.

Thankfully this is NS and Galla has an entire supercomputer complex devoted to modelling the effects of high powered weapons on tank armour.

[Austrasien]

When conducting a hasty or prepared anti-tank defence Austrasian artillery is instructed to use HE-F shells set to contact or anti-concrete shells and fire by battery using semi-indirect fire. Though a single shell is not considered very effective, 12-18 shells fired at a single tank generally will do something. HE-F shells with low-angle (laser) proximity fuzes are also considered effective though this is a fairly rare fuze. In steppe/desert terrain concentrated semi-indirect fire is also a standard offensive tactic against entrenched enemy armour/antiarmour provided engagements are possible at ranges over 4000 meters.

Direct fire by an individual gun is reserved for emergency anti-tank defence. Crews are cautioned against opening an engagement with a tank beyond 1000 meters unless they are already under fire because of the very low chance of success at longer range. HE-F with the base fuze (delay) inserted or anti-concrete shells are the first choice. HE-F with the nose fuze inserted and set to contact are the second choice. HE-F with the nose fuze set to proximity is not recommended.

The Inspector of Artillery has considered other options, HESH shells are used by gun-mortars for close range direct fire against buildings and have been fabricated in both 15cm and 21cm for artillery tests. Though they are not assessed as providing sufficient advantage over HE-F to merit adoption, they could be produced in a relatively short time should the need arise. A 15cm SACLOS/Beamrider ATGM originally developed for tank use was tested and found effective and the SACLOS design, in particular, was determined to be compatible with self-propelled gun-howitzers fire control systems with minimal modification. But no practical way of making them compatible with existing autoloaders was found and there were questions about using such expensive munitions for a secondary mission and the duplication of existing anti-tank capabilities. Direct fire sensor-fuzed munitions developed under a separate program for AT guns were test fired from 15cm gun-howitzers with specially designed sabots for proof of concept, but given the high cost per round and the lack of a long range, direct fire anti-tank requirement for artillery development did not proceed further.

As it has been noted that with the new shot-tracking radar self-propelled guns and howitzers can achieve second-round direct fire accuracy comparable to MBTs there is ongoing tactical research at the artillery school regarding the possible utility of long-range direct fire against tanks.

[Gallia-]

Brave Trianglemen attempting to decipher the mysteries of "putting sights on target".

Does Austrasien not have hollow charge shells for artillery self-defense?

[Austrasien]

They went out of production in the 70s. Developing a tandem charge warhead was not considered worth the cost after the appearance of ERA and Special Armour and the old unitary warheads are considered less effective than HE-F with the base fuze. All the remaining stockpiles were handed over to the Volkswher.

[Gallia-]

RIP in potatoes. Also RIP sabotted 155mm STAFF which seems like something Galla would do.

Galla still uses Dragons with a 2,000 meter range motor and a tandem charge warhead with standoff probe. 950mm RHAe after ERA. Come at me tanks.

*pop* *pop* *pop* *pop* *pop* *POP*

[Gallia-]

Tankjiu will be remove:

in descending order of capability

everything a growing light infantry battalion needs ;-;

[Allanea]

It's not necessarily as simple as the firing/recoil impulse. It will be higher than that since you to account for the detonation of the filler, but the drop in muzzle velocity might make it close?

Why, thank you.

[Gallia-]

IDK why you're thanking me when you have trouble comprehending ratios and the difference between muzzle energy and delivered impulse.

I literally said that firing impulse and delivered impulse are probably equivalent for HE-F.

[Austrasien]

Neither the TOW or Dragon really have a purpose when you have the LOSAT and Javelin tho

[Gallia-]

They're both cheaper than Javelin by literally an order of magnitude (in Dragon's case it's more like 2).

The TOW is used for defeating bunkers, though. The Dragon is the medium-range ATGW to supplement the mid-range between the Javelin and the SRAW. ICly it's like Super Dragon, with a bigger motor to push him out to 2 km, at a reasonable clip, and a tandem charge warhead to defeat ERA. It's LAW/MAW/HAW, with SRAW/Dragon/Javelin taking up the respective spots in the light infantry company. And TOW is sidelined to a glorified Carl Gustav or recoilless rifle for battalion assault platoons. LOSAT is also the battalion anti-tank weapon.

I guess there are two LAW/MAW/HAW dichotomies then? One for vehicles and one for dismounted troops.

RBS 56(???)/CKEM (or LOSAT)/LOSAT-ER for the former. SRAW (or AT-12)/Dragon/Javelin for the latter.

Out of control sperg go.

[Austrasien]

The Dragon isn't adding anything between the SRAW and Javelin. Both are more lethal, more accurate at their respective ranges, and fire-and-forget. Why would commanders even bother using the Dragon?

Also, it's the Dragon.

[Gallia-]

Yes I know that Javelin's minimum range is only about 100-200 meters.

Dragon is just cute though and can be carried by one person. Also cute. ):

I think I'm just not invested enough into the Cyberfuture(TM) to let go of old things like TOW, LAW, and Dragon, though. I'm trying to invent new and ever more arbitrary reasons to hang onto them. Mostly those reasons involve money, though. Javelin is like a quarter million a pop. SRAW is about as much as a Dragon with a third the range of one. Maybe make a fire & forget Dragon by giving it a bare-bones infrared seeker or something? That might be sort of ludicrous? Stick the computer in the back where the flare and wire spool are and slap a rudimentary IR seeker on it and try to keep the unit refit cost underneath $50,000? Dragon missile itself was about $7,000 at its worst so it would cost as much as a TOW in that case.

Retain the flight motor, guidance rockets, and main warhead with a new precursor. Have a little laser reflector thing to act as a standoff instead of a probe.

Sure at that point it's "Dragon in name only" but it retains some common components (warhead, motors) and the launcher, and it's made from already produced missiles that won't have to be mulched and dumped in a landfill somewhere. Turns from *pop* *pop* *pop* *dead crew* to a *pop* *pop* *pop* Spike-SR or something. Shave some weight by tossing the night sight using the IR seeker of the missile itself to find targets.

Which allows the infantry squad to use something with range comparable to Dragon (1,750 m? Call it 1,500 m to account for extra weight from the seeker and electronics?) while enjoying the benefits of a fire-and-forget missile. At that point I might replace Javelin in mechanized infantry platoons with F&F "Dragon".

Then Galla can pretend the 80s never ended. And outfit combat troops with a reasonably capable medium-range (>1 km) ATGW that doesn't cost a quarter million like Javelin with its stupid radar jammer.

Sound alright? Or am I underestimating the cost of F&F missiles? I can't find the cost of Spike-SR, but "around $50,000" sounds about right to me. Dragon wouldn't need moving fins or anything mechanized since it uses a gyroscope and rocket motors to turn, so that's pretty much taken care of, and I guess a retrofit would be mostly procuring a computer, the seeker, a new tandem charge, the laser and reflector for the warhead trigger, and an aeroshell to attach this all to the base weapon's nose.

Battery/coil whine is retained so the operator can experience tension.

[Gallia-]

At that point I guess that the "DINO" doesn't necessarily cover the dead space of anything, but mostly serves as a longer ranged but more expensive alternative to SRAW in the infantry squad, giving them tank killing out to a kilometer and change, while the platoon can kill out to "3.75 km" to match the TOW but really to conserve energy for hitting tanks that might be moving in angles relative to the missile team that isn't "straight towards you". Possibly "energy management" is why the US Army stipulates a 2.5 km effective range for Javelin?

That should give Dragon a bit more purpose than a SACLOS one would have.

So now it's more like SRAW/Spike-SR-but-Dragon/Javelin.

But now SRAW is the questionable one? Or maybe not since he is top attack and very speedy. Call it <8 seconds to 1,500 m for DINO (IRL, McDD had a real powerful sustainer motor for "Dragon II Plus" in the late 80s, which made Dragon go 2 km in <11 seconds, so it's nearly competitive with contemporary missiles) and <3 seconds for SRAW. That should be reasonable for both to engage modern armour, even with Dragon's antiquated rocket-gyro turning or whatever, at least from the side I guess...

e42: Now I'm contemplating Galla having turned Dragon into a top attack missile like RBS 56 in the late 80s, using TOW-2B's main charge and a 30-40mm precursor. ):

Or maybe ):<

But that would make the seeker thing problematic unless the missile were lengthened by a lot but that might need to happen to let the seeker see out of its tube.

The year is 2050 AD. The place is Gallia. RBS m/47L "Ultra Dragon IV" is tested in its counter-helicopter capability with a "variable aperture" solid rocket sustainer and high g-airframe that allows it to throttle its sustainer and "turn on a dime" to double back on slow-moving aerial targets (ostensibly to defeat APS predictive algorithms that might attack missiles on a direct low profile trajectory). The missile loops past the helicopter drone as planned, intending to lock its infrared seeker onto the exhaust of the aircraft, but spots a particularly warm staff car and goes for that instead. The officer whose automobile fell victim to the errant rocket was not amused.