I'll take the PzH 2000 thankyou very much, however I would like the US logistics chain behind it, suppllying lots of Denels VLAP munitions fitted with BAE's Course corrective Fuze (I'll also take the south african modular charge).  If we are fighting in the sandbox give me a few XM982 Excalibur rounds for high value targets of opportunity.

Merry chrismas arty!!!

like one says in france" acheter allemand c'est acheter confiant" what means "buy german it is buying to buy trustful"

"buy german it is to buy trustful" it's better

It appears that loading the charge is manual in the PZH 2000, while its automatic in the NLOS-C. Does this appeal to artillery people and does it make much of a difference? 

The manual loading of the charge has a negligible impact on the rate of fire achievable for the PzH2000 compared to the N-LOS (C).  Its the shell handling and ramming which greatly aids rates of fire. 

 

Pretty much any cannoneer I know also prefers to physically verify the charge goin into the chamber as a charge error is one sure way to shoot "Out of the Box" and inevitably hit the orphanage or old folks home!!!!!  Current SOP in the US is for the section chief to verify charge increments before loading.

 

Im sure in time confidence will be gained in a fully automatic system, but it doesnt exist yet.

"Having negated the primary advantage of one piece of equipment, which is best from a choice of two?"

PzH2000 would have a better range with dumb munitions. Smart munitions ought to be about similar for the two.

If you're firing Excalibure or similar, there's not much to choose between the two, really. Logistics considerations might still hurt the PzH2000 though, since it still masses 60t, which will hurt roads and need more fuel.

"Having negated the primary advantage of one piece of equipment, which is best from a choice of two?"

Besides, being as there are plenty of people still running about with towed, 38 calibre systems, the range handicap can't be that bad.

The elevating mass from 2 EMD M777 Howitzers were supplied to UDLP (Now BAE) to expedite the development of the NLOS (C) Concept Technology Demonstrator.  This is a 39 Cal tube.  The actual ordnance for the NLOS (C) will be a 38 Cal tube with a considerable weight reduction over that in the M777.  This tube is under developmental testing along with the entire system.  I do not know what this tube is designated.

ArtyEngineer is the one to accurately answer those questions, fk.

But fairly recent (past few months) discussions here with him have suggested that a 38 cal 155mm is what's being settled on for the NLOS-C, with the 39-cal M777 serving as a testbed/systems eval surrogate stand-in. As he seems to imply, the US is counting on extended ranges to be achieved with Excalibur PGMs (later, improved models might...might...be able to just barely respond), which, in a way, makes sense: accuracies tend to suffer more the farther you shoot, so no point in firing minimally-guided (or not at all) shells so far that their impact area is uselessly large.

 

But AE also suggested that, for the weights that current materials engineering can offer, there's little reason why a longer caliber, longer range capable barrel couldn't be installed, at minimal weight increases.

 

Shucks, the US has been behind on tube artillery ranges (favoring our long-loved 39-cals ever since we abandoned the M107 175mm and that 155mm Long Tom of WW2 fame) ever since Gerry Bull and Crew at SRC rolled out the 45-cal GC45 with its 38+km range (can we even do that now with our M109A6 Paladins?). And adding insult to injury, the US hasn't even adopted 45-cal barrels even as many other nations are opting for the even-longer-ranged 52-cal barrels (another thing that seems to get AE steamed), something that the Crusader would've remedied w/ its 40km range. He (AE) posted before (at least, I think it was him) some ballistics info that suggested the probable 38-cal barrel for the NLOS-C would struggle to get past 26km range...even in the midst of Denel of South Afrika announcing they pushed one of their VLAP shells from a G6/155/52 to a record-breaking 75km, and with fairly favorable accuracy for said range (I don't have the tables myself).

 

Point being, even aged ex-Soviet (Russian, chinese, and whoever else built) 122mm and 130mm tube- and rocket artillery pieces can meet or break 26km ranges (regardless of accuracies, they still would provide considerable harassment fire that, without guaranteed airpower, US artillery crews w/ NLOS-Cs would be hard-pressed to counter). Add that to the fact that, given a sudden turn of world events, any one of those nations buying 45- and 52-cal longer-ranged guns (with small UAV spotters) could one day be pointing them in our troops' direction, it gets rather upsetting to many of us who are enraged at these you-go-to-war-with-what-you-have,not-what-you-want politicos sounding like they couldn't really care less whether the troops had adequate counter weapons or not (can't be our weapons, they'd suggest: we pay top dollar. So the troops themselves must somehow be at fault!).

 

But hey, who am I, a wrench-turning electronics geek, to suggest our military should have the bestest and mostest, able to outshoot and outperform anything anyone else could point back at us?

(my personal opinion? So long as US defense contractors keep funneling money back to the politicians who voted in favor of their projects (campaign contributions? yeah, OK, sure, whatever), those politicians will accept the dc's marketing spiel as gospel, no matter how inaccurate, deceptive, and outright wrong their systems' capabilities' claims tend to be.)

Gee, guess I should've waited a few more minutes... Figured you'd eventually get in on it, Arty.

Re Denels modular charges, highlights an important point, barrel wear is not a happy story with the longer barrels and higher charges.  Denel's problem is that they seem unable to make them meet the insensitive munitions criteria (which is why the Brits have not popped the 52 cal barrel into AS90 having selected the Denel chgs).

 

The French upgrade to AUF has auto chg loading using modular charges.  They've also managed to fit a primer magazine to a screw breach, its the primer mag that gives good rate of fire with 155mm.  The main advantage of auto loading is not rate of fire but the ability to reduce the turret crew and either give a smaller vehicle or more ammo storage space or some combination of the two.  Of course induction fze setting (also used with PzH2k) also reduces turret crew.

 

There are indications (originating from the bottom of the food chain not the mfr or mil hierarchy - soldiers of differnet nations talk to each other) that PzH2000 may have reliability problems with its auto ammo handling system. 

 

A Brit general said it all in the early years of WW2 'in peace the cry is for mobility, in war for weight of fire'.  Seems to keep getting forgotten.