They may not be really sophisticated but I wouldn't want to be on the recieving end of a Katyushu battery. Oh, there's no such thing as "one" Katyusha battery; they usually show in groups of about 5 - 50+. How annoying.

Ugh, typical 'we did it first' ego tosh. For your information: the 220mm Urugan MRL was first *seen* in 1977 and is the world's first modern fin and spin-stabilized heavy rocket system. It entirely replaced the Grad in the rocket launcher brigade in front-level artillery divisions and the rocket launcher regiment at army level. It has a ton of special warhead options that continues to be upgraded, just like MLRS.

I call Troll

If the Katyushas are in mass formation, they are an easy target for a fighter jet or counterbattery fire. A single bomb or large shell(155mm+) could wipe out most of them due to secondary explosions. Thats why you rarely see mass rocket attacks in Afghanistan or in Lebanon(Hezbollah)

You rarely see mass Grad attacks in Afghanistan or Lebanon because they don't have that many.

Today with GPS and INS systems (yeas even the russians have it) it won't be neccessary to deploy the battery at one point. You can just mark the target and all vehicles calculate the neccessary angles individually. One of the big reasons why artillery was always standing close to each other in large batteries was the problem of calculating flight paths. You only had to calculate it once and all guns (or launcher9 would use the same angle. Artillery will be deployed in groups of 3-5 with a supply vehicle and a personal carrier for defence but they will be able to coordinate and concentrate their fire in a moments notice.

It´s also due logistical factors- ammo supply, communication, accommodation and field entrenchments require much more work when the unit is spread all around. There´s also defensive factors- air-defence, ground troops, radar and other equipment much be spread also if the artillery unit is spread. But in modern fast moving war without real front-lines etc those factors don´t have so much weight as they used to. But in any case.- those factors cannot be ignored and that´s why certain kind of concentration is still needed. GPS is just one factor in this case.

In Desert Storm we found the battlefield was frequently so congested the cannon & MRLS could not be dispersed as we had trained. Spreading a battery out as per the book caused one wing to be intermingled with a tank column, the other wing to park inbetween fuel tank trucks, and the battery train would end up colocated with the messkit repair company. Dispersion was just one of the many little assumptions that did not work that week. As the battle spread north the crowding was relived somewhat. Fortunatly Iraq had no airpower, and ineffective artillery.

MLRS & HIMARS (uh-oh, another Army-Technology promotion!) http://www.army-technology.com/projects/mlrs/ http://www.army-technology.com/projects/himars/ Probably the better of the two Russian counterparts is the Smerch http://www.army-technology.com/projects/smerch/ with the other mentionable system being the Uragan http://www.army-technology.com/projects/uragan/ The full family of Brazil's AVIBRAS' ASTROS systems shouldn't be under-rated, either, even if they have minimal customers compared to the other systems. http://www.army-technology.com/projects/astros/ Poland has recently been developing a modular rocket system, which supposedly can be configured with large numbers of different pods, both the US/NATO standard MLRS, and various Russian systems. Nice thing about being a former Warsaw Pact nation: nowadays you can get the best of both worlds.

While you're at it, do a google around for LIMAWS(R) LIghtweight Mobile Artillery Weapons System (Rocket)