You've got to be kidding me about the Paladin firing 3 rounds in 15 seconds. I searched but couldn't find the video of them firing side by side....I remember crusader outfired it (rate of fire) about 3-4 to 1... I won't even mention Crusader saving on cost of personnel (less operators) and how fun ambush by arty would be when you're able to land 4 shells in the same instant from ONE crusader via different gun angles/charges......I won't mention that...

No offcourse not. They should have bought the pzh 2000 for a hard-bargain price. With the numbers the USA need that would have been easy. Politics, Patriotism, Penny wise and Pound foolish!

I always thought there were some dodgy assumptions underpinning Crusader. Starting with manpower savings, 3 men in the gun and 3 in the ammo veh, but arty is a 24 x 7 system and is always manned that way (hence the size of gun dets and reduced det procedures), that looks like 12 men to me and another vehicle to carry half of them. Then there's the double handling of ammo, first load the ammo veh then transfer to the gun, at least the latter was automated. Not clear what modern US ammo packaging is like but removing stiff plugs and putting in fuzes in the rain at night was always lots of fun (particularly if near freezing as well), but at least you had the full det to do the job. If the packaging is unchanged then there's just 3 men unless the other crew shift is available. Then there's flexibility, given the ever increasing variety of proj, you need plan B when there's a surge of demand for one nature, re-filling ammo veh then transferring to gun isn't exactly the most efficient process. As for MRSI, well whooppy. Actually it has little to do with the gun mostly its having a tech FC system that computes the different sets of firing data, presents them to the gun in the right order and tells the det when to fire. Given this any modern gun capable of 5 - 8 rds per min can do it in a reasonable chunk of its range. Tactically it has limited value, basically only against 'troops in open' type targets where the target has somewhere with overhead protection to jump into in a couple of seconds. No OHP and VT will do the job in its own time. Actually MRSI is a variable term, the French seem to interpret it as rounds arriving within a 14 sec window, interesting time given AUF2's burst rate of fire 3 rds in 15 secs. On the other hand PzH2000 and AS90 should be able to drop 4 rds onto the tgt at any range without changing elevation in 14 secs. Actually, the underlying reason for these 2 to fire 3 in 10 secs is that more generally the react and shelter time by the target is usually thought to be about 10 secs.

If you put a 52 cal on the Paladin the muzzle will jam in to the ground when you move on rough terrain. It would be an extremely difficult engineering task. Not to mention you would have to add weight which would coincide with the lightweight strategy being emphasized these days.

If you put a 52 cal on the Paladin the muzzle will jam in to the ground when you move on rough terrain. It would be an extremely difficult engineering task. Not to mention you would have to add weight which would notcoincide with the lightweight strategy being emphasized these days.

Yes and no. Yes because it could do things no other piece or two for that matter couls do. The intregal-midwall-cooled tube for instance could fire more rounds than an entire battery in an hour. The Frenche idea of three rounds in 14 sec is clearly because they are to cheep to by tacfire or any of it's more recent clones. If you have ever watched film of the differance you will be astounded! Crusader could put SIX rounds on target within ONE second over 80% of it's total range. I think that if I was missed by the first shell I could find some place to hide before the second shell got there 7 seconds later. The average troop can run about 50 meters in that time. But if all 48 rounds landed within one second, who would be left to run? I recomend reading the last Janes ARMOR and ARTY that has the crusader listed to find out just how good it was. Politics killed it not it's worth or lack of same.

But is MRSI worth $10B? You can achieve the same effect by concentrating the fire of several guns. Furthermore simultaneous impact is really only useful against soldiers that have the option of getting under protection very quickly, generally assumed to mean several seconds. If soldiers cannot get under protection then simultaneous impact has not great value because all HE is fitted with VT fuzes (at least in most western armies) so open slit trenches or hitting the deck offer little or no protection. $10B is a heck of a price for a capability that is only useful against a limited number of targets and can be achieved by other means.

If you are a Crusader fan and appears one or two of you were enamored with fewer operators, etc. or was it tongue in cheek? IIRC, the straw that broke the camel's back was out of control weight growth that threatened to make the Crusader too heavy for C-17 or C-5 airlift. If I do remember that correctly, that was enough to get OSD attention when they were looking for something to kill to make an example. And then there was Comanche begging for OSD attention as well. As to the simultaneous arrival option or ambush feature, the USMC thinks this is very important and made it a formal requirement for DDX support (trick was to make the two tube DDX have same simultaneous arrival of a 6 tube 155mm battery). It's either really important to them or they were just trying to remind the surface Navy who they really support with DDX. It got to the 3 star level for resolution, but contractor artfully figured out a solution with ERGM rounds.

simultaneous impact,a and it weighs 97,000 lbs. an Abrams weighs 140,000 lbs. A C-5 can carry a MAXIMUM WARTIME payload of 291,000 lbs. That would be 2 abrams and or 3 Crusaders. The C17 carry a MAXIMUM WARTIME payload 170,900 lbs. That would be 1 Abrams or 1 Crusader. If the warsaw pact were still intact (lol I made a pun) we would have moved the crusader right through all the phases and gotten it into the field. heres the link for the Crusader: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/crusader.htm heres the link for the C5: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/c-5.htm heres the link for the C17: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/c-17.htm

the R&D is gr8. FFS dont you know the things we learn in projects like this? The Crusader may not be fielded but you can bet your bottom dollar the integral midwall cooling system, the digital fuses, the Fire Control System, the research they did on liquid propellent and so many other components will be used in all sorts of other weapons. If we ever need it I'm sure they will start it up again. They have the whole system, all they need to do now is manufacture them.