Would you really want to? You can get better results for range with guided shells, if you need it, and submunitions are pretty vicious these days, so you need fewer shells for the same effect. In fact, things like the Bonus and Smart submunitions mean that any enemy armour within 30km of your guns is in serious trouble. A single time-on-target salvo from existing guns (AS90, Paladin, PzH2000) can practically wipe out a tank company.

Would you really want to? You can get better results for range with guided shells, if you need it, and submunitions are pretty vicious these days, so you need fewer shells for the same effect. In fact, things like the Bonus and Smart submunitions mean that any enemy armour within 30km of your guns is in serious trouble. A single time-on-target salvo from existing guns (AS90, Paladin, PzH2000) can practically wipe out a tank company.

It's worth saying twice.

But wasn't Crusader in the same category (weight and capability) as the AS90 and PzH2000? Seems to me that, if they do go and release the weight restrictions of the FCS program to no longer be required to all weigh in at about 20 tons, the vehicles will increase in weight, and we could well see an NLOS-C FCS (the tech demonstrator weighed about 24 tons, IIRC) easily get close to thrity tons. By that time, the whole notion of C-130 deployability hype has gone out the window anyway, and the only aircraft that could carry it will be the C-5 and C-17 (doubtful USAF will buy A400M, unless Congress stuffs it down their throat), and these were the same two aircraft that would've carried Crusader and its automated reloading/resupply vehicle. Although the C-5 has enough floor length to carry three vehicles (FCS NLOS-C or Crusader-type), the C-17 can barely only accomodate two. So we end up with: a) a C-5 could carry 3 NLOS-C FCS with about 30 rounds a piece, or one or two Crusaders and two or one resupply vehicles, offering altogether roughly twice as many rounds. b) a C-17 with 2 NLOS-C FCS and 60 rounds between them (give or take, depends where they finally end up with the finished design), or one Crusader with resupply vehicle totaling over 100 rounds, or two Crusaders, again with at least 100 rounds between them. At about 40 tons each, the Crusader vehicles would total 120 tons app for C-5, no problem as they have carried two 60+ ton M1s many times. And a C-17 would be carrying about 80 tons for two vehicles (rather than at most 60 for two FCS NLOS-C). http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/c17/ "C-17 GLOBEMASTER III TACTICAL TRANSPORT AIRCRAFT, USA The Boeing C-17 Globemaster III military airlift aircraft is capable of carrying payloads up to 169,000lb..." It should be able to handle app 80 tons of a pair of Crusader vehicles. (although I do believe the payload of the C-17A+ was upped to 176,000 pounds.) But most likely, like we're going to have to contend with anyway, any AFVs will be expedited by naval transport, not massive air transport armadas. So the weight isn't really so much an issue to a ship as much as the physical volume the AFV occupies. Besides, Crusader's cannon with "standard" ammunition was 40km, PGMs could go more. The FCS NLOS-C has already been decided to carry a 38- or 39-caliber barrel, which cannot reach as far with standard ammo and can only get there with PGMs. So in the end, it all depends on how user-friendly the price of those PGMs will be. If they're a decent price, then the vehicle could be solely stocked with them rather than any standard arty ammo. But, like most other programs, if the cost blooms too high, then it will be too prohibitive to stock each FCS NLOS-C with 30 rounds of PGMs, not even including how expensive the resupply would be. I think the biggest problem with the whole FCS program: they skipped ahead over a generation or two, and most of the hoped-for tech just will not be mature enough for at least the next decade, by which time most M109 Paladins will be so long in the tooth, and then we'll have to wait even longer to replace them all with the new SP gun. Seems like these last couple decades of defense procurement have seen some really sad, sorry people working for the govt and making several piss-poor decisions about a good portion of the equipment our military did and didn't get. Unless the USAF is suddenly going to acquire several hundred new transports capable of hauling around all these new light vehicles, this whole everything-lighter-and-more-mobile idea is a joke. Our USAF doesn't want fleets of new transports. It wants massive squadrons of F/A-22s, JSFs, and UAVs and UCAVs. Maybe some of those Army idiots should've asked the USAF, "can you allot enough aircraft to haul our light brigades around?" before deciding that those were the kinds of vehicles our future Army will be composed of. Yeah, we're transforming, alright. Transforming into a kinder, gentler military fighting force that won't be able to take heavy punches any longer. Just like the Comanche, Crusader never should've been cancelled in the first place. But somewhere in the vast bureaucracy of defense procurement, too many people got either blind or stupid, or both, and didn't think sensibly enough before deciding what to trim and what to keep. In the end, they didn't trim the fat out. Instead, they cut away and discarded a prime cutlet called Crusader. If we can't get back the whole system itself, we at least need something with a much more capable gun than what is being offered (suggested) on the FCS NLOS-C. God forbid our troops are ever on the receiving end of any sizeable number of those guns that can outrange ours by several miles. We're only hoping that every adversary we'll ever face again will be as easy to walk all over like Iraq was.

[i]God forbid our troops are ever on the receiving end of any sizeable number of those guns that can outrange ours by several miles. We're only hoping that every adversary we'll ever face again will be as easy to walk all over like Iraq was.[/i] Well, he won't because it's already happened. In Iraq, coincidentally. In '91, GW2 for those who include the Iran-Iraq confrontation, Saddam's army had large quantities of long-range guns firing base-bleed ammuniton that outranged anything on the allied side by a considerable margin (like 10 km). It didn't matter, as they weren't flexible enought to use it, and the modern battlefield is a bit too fluid for it to matter that much.

Anyone care to specualte what the Iraqi artillery could have done, if their cmd & ctl had been competititve?

I dont get it. The Crusader was built and in testing... so technically, it was aborted before birth... such a shame. Also, wouldnt it cut down on Manpower overall? 2 Crusaders would have the firepower of 4 M109A6s i believe. So doesnt this overall make it a better buy? Also, the XM2002 reload vehicle also allows for longer sustained fire as well. Dammit Defense Department... way to screw up.

"Also, wouldnt it cut down on Manpower overall? 2 Crusaders would have the firepower of 4 M109A6s i believe. So doesnt this overall make it a better buy?" Perhaps, perhaps not. I dont know the specific maintinace requirements for the Crusader. Often automated combat equipment has required addtional mechanics, who must have more training and pay, to keep the item combat ready. There are also questions about rotating crew members off to rest when ops streatch out past 72 hours, pulling crew members off for battery security tasks, losses through illnesses or injurys. The M198 has a TO crew of ten or eleven, depending on which one uses. But It can be serviced by just six. Ufortunatly 100 hour ops, illnesses & injurys, other battery missions, all prevented a six man crew from remaining effective beyond 48-72 hours. I saw it attempted more than once & it dont work too well. Lose one or two men from a ten man crew & it can still function. Lose one or two from a five man crew and it becomes a much more interesting leadership challenge.

-"Dammit Defense Department... way to screw up. " Hell no, Skrip. That's just business as usual!

Um just to point out, Crusader wasn't cancelled by the Army (Shineski and his priors wanted this sucker big time), it was cancelled by the SecDef (Rumsfeld in this case) which then forced the Army's hand to formally declare cancellation of the project.