You stupid man!!!!! Nothing worse than a wide awake drunk!!!!

I definitely wasnt feeling very clever this morning. I consider it a "valuable learning experience", which unfortunatley never sinks in and has to be repeated on a reqular basis!!!!!

Those are way better ranges that I had to work with ten years ago. If they will cover the corps area of operations that will do for now. : ) Individually the MLRS had a slow reload time. Was it five minutes? The practice of seperating the reload site from the wait site from the firng position increased fire mission times a few more minutes. Coversely a volley from a single launcher was roughly equivalent to a howitzer battery.

Carl, M549A1 DPICM projo had 180 M42 submunitions. We went to eighteen gun battalions about the same time that we jumped to 24 gun M109A2/A3 D.S. Battalions. A battalion fire order, 1 rd. DPICM mission will put 3240 submunitions on target. A single M270 launcher rippling its full pod of twelve will put 7728 M77 DPICM submunitios on target. About two and one-half times the steel. Moreover, don't know the qualitative difference between the M42 and the M77, which could enhance target effect even more. Imagine, initially each DIVARTY had a btry. of M270 as part of it's 8" G.S. battalion. Each Corps ARTY had one battalion (I was in III Corps ARTY at the time that, I believe, 1-12 FA transitioned from Lance to MLRS. 27 launchers, my man.

Seemed to me there were dispersion issues or something with the MLRS beaten zone. Reducing effect compared to a battery. But we cant talk about effects. Still secret right? ; ) Also I was thinking a Battery 4 for some reason. Anyway my memory is dim. I was remembering the MLRS bn as nine launchers, but perhaps that was from a Ft Sill school days TO/TE. Or perhaps that was the size group the US Army would have loaned the Marines. III Corps arty was @ Sill?

Some of us (myself, Weasel, fitz, a few others) have been "debating" the merits of naval gunfire calibers over there on the Surface Forces threads, and much of the recent discussion is about where we are here: is 8" better than MLRS rockets better than 155mm artillery? One thing I discovered about US doctrine with submunitions (DPICMs and the like), is that they generally have an ungodly dud rate, some cluster bomblets having as much as a 17% dud rate, which wreaks havoc over the several acres cluster rounds are covering: someone at some point has to go "police up" those duds (EOD guys) to make certain non-combs, livestock, and other concerns are not harmed (by dud rate, I mean those that didn't detonate or self-destruct). There was a post here a while back on the SP front page about the US going to solely G-MLRS rounds (no more unguided rockets). Depending where one looks for information, I've seen range quotes from 60-80km, but all generally agree on the 90kg unitary (HE) warhead. Assuming CEP is in the area of 5m or less, that ain't bad, as it outranges every tube artillery in service. Cluster munitions work fine for things like counter-battery fire and assaulting motor pools, airfields, troop contonements, and other stockpiles of war-fighting material. But nowadays we still seem to be heading more towards precision plinking rather than area-effect strikes (perhaps because we haven't yet faced anyone who can competently field and employ effective artillery formations (lucky for us, especially when our tubes are out-ranged). Yeah, M270s are nice if one needs volley fire, but they are too logistically burdensome to re-supply with large rocket magazines all day. Had Afghanistan mountain ops followed similarities to VietNam jungle fighting, would we have had enough capable artillery support to be there at a moment's notice 24-7 for patrols? Tube artillery is nice just for the fact you can create fire bases to support a given area of operation: when your cannon get even an extra 5 or 6km in range, that considerably increases the outermost perimeter to which your artillery can support (larger area of coverage). I'm not the math genius I used to be in high school, so I have no idea which would be more ideal for fire base missions: -MLRS with its 12 ready rounds and longer reload time (with rocket crates that take up considerable volume)? -or tube artillery that can sustain a given rate so long as ammo is available? Currently, the G-MLRS takes it in range. And the "12 round burst" could be a useful asset. But what happens after an extended fire mission empties all your M270s and they're all in the process of reloading when a fire mission is called in? Normally, tubes only go down when they overheat, hangfire, or need maintenance. I raised the concern over on the naval gunfire discussion about the LRLAP Long Range Land Attack Projectile planned for the AGS, supposedly having 180km range (not even tested yet). I raised the question if it was thought the LRLAP would be cleared for M777, NLOS-C, and perhaps even Paladin use, as the additional range it offered would be a blessing, even though the shorter tubes of the land weapons wouldn't allow for the same 180km range. I also brought up the issue of cost per round (and I thank you, ArtyEngineer for all your insight re Excalibur), and if Excalibur cannot yet even reach a reasonable price per round (wasn't Copperhead nixxed because it was too costly, also?), what chance then is there that the even bigger LRLAP (it will have to be longer to incorporate a larger sustainer flight motor) will be cheap enough to purchase in bulk (by the tens of thousands, if we procure minimally the 8 planned DDX with two guns totalling 1500rounds between two magazines per each ship)? And maybe more importantly, where will the LRLAP price fall in comparison to MLRS variants (G-MLRS, even POLAR, which may be re-awakened if LRLAP doesn't prove its merit), and also the Netfires munitions? Here's another suggestion: if the AGS barrel can get its munitions to 180km, can we adopt it for land platforms? Oh wait: we already tried something similar for ground forces, and the bigwigs decided the Crusader was too heavy...even though a combat-ready NLOS-C will require C-17s also. I know the Netfires is generally considered a stand-alone system. But I wonder if anyone will consider a vehicle-mounted system, effectively a mobile version, perhaps carrying half a dozen 15-round launchers. http://www.missilesandfirecontrol.com/index.html look under Our Products, Strike Weapons & Tactical Missiles

Your btry 4 rds. would approximate a battalion 1 rd. Six gun, 8" btry would put 24 M549A1s downrange x 180 submunitions=4320 on tgt. (or not, as the case may be). Still 3400 short of one launcher pod. The TOE for Division 86/Corps 86 specified a MLRS Bn. as three batteries of nine launchers, configured in three firing platoons, IIRC. Read somewhere where the battalion had nine firing batteries of three launchers. Damn sure that was wrong. The DIVARTY captured one MLRS btry as a component of its G.S. battalion. I just can't remember if it gave up an 8" btry in an exchange, or whether the MLRS btry was in addition to three 8" firing btry. "III Corps arty was @ Sill?" Oh yeah. III Corps ARTY Cdr and C.P. 218th, 212, and 75th F.A. Bdes. Five 155mm M109A1 (2-36FA kept the short tube M109 it seems for a good year before they converted to the A1s) battalions. Three 8" battalions. All eight concentrated in the 218th and 75th F.A. Bdes. Had one Pershing, two Lance, and one 105mm M102 How Bn. in 212th F.A., as I recall. I'm old enough to remember a battalion or two of 175mm in Germany, F.A. GROUPS, and short-tube M109s. Hell, when I entered in the spring of 1979, I think the armor guys still had a couple of M60A2 (Shilleleagh) battalions in Germany. I really like the M110A1/A2. I love it's accuracy and punch. Who in the Army or Marines wouldn't? But I think AR has it right. It's time has sorta, kinda come. Nothing like an 8" shooting a "destruction" mission, though. It's just a wee tab different than sprinkling the ground with DPICM.

"Yeah, M270s are nice if one needs volley fire, but they are too logistically burdensome to re-supply with large rocket magazines all day. Had Afghanistan mountain ops followed similarities to VietNam jungle fighting, would we have had enough capable artillery support to be there at a moment's notice 24-7 for patrols?" I'm certain that you're not suggesting that resupply issues w/ M270 would have a direct effect upon shooting FPFs and immediate suppression missions for patrols, light infantry, etc. who are in close contact. Pods available, or not, MLRS just wouldn't be a great choice-particularly given your (and everybody else's)concerns about duds and dispersion. "And the "12 round burst" could be a useful asset. But what happens after an extended fire mission empties all your M270s and they're all in the process of reloading when a fire mission is called in?" 27 launchers in a battalion is a lot of reason why that doctrinally shouldn't occur. Of course, I'd expect that whomever is engaged in one hellaciously epic fight. However, if both of your comments are an argument for the continuing necessity of high volume, accurate, responsive, cannon artillery fire support, I'd certainly agree.

I definitly was not thinking of MLRS type weapons as replacing the howitzers in the DS role. We never contemplated using them that in in the 1980s or 90s in our fire planning. (Cant speak for other div/corpps arty commands). They got the long range GS type missions. The dud rate was a burning question with us. We were able to confirm a high dud rate for the anti personnel type cannon submunition of the Viet nam era. For the amor piercing I never saw anything solid on dud rates. Just rumors & misidentification with the anti personnel type. With the effects were expecting from the MLRS it did not look like ammo supply was going to be strained. The missions we actually would execute with them in the exercises were not particularly frequent. We were assuming reconissance/intell product on the less favorable side. I did not catch any complaints in the Desert Storm AARs about straining MLRS ammo supply, but then I only caught a few key summarys. How did the ammo flow hold up in OIF ?

->"However, if both of your comments are an argument for the continuing necessity of high volume, accurate, responsive, cannon artillery fire support, I'd certainly agree. " Partially, yes. I think we are selling ourselves short (US Army) in not procuring tube artillery with greater range capability, allowing a better overlap with MLRS systems. Or maybe Army doctrine is focusing on tube artillery being used for everything under 30km, and MLRS for everything over 30km...? I think one of the things we should might be focusing on isn't so much as 80+km gun-fired PGMs, but giving some increased measure of accuracy for all the stuff we fire over shorter ranges. (Can we just create an unpowered PGM for closer-range bombardment for when guys 5-20km away need danger-close accurate support ASAP?) ------ ->"With the effects were expecting from the MLRS it did not look like ammo supply was going to be strained. The missions we actually would execute with them in the exercises were not particularly frequent." I'm just basing my arguments off the logistics train: I've seen those HEMTTs and PLS trucks carrying one or two pair of MLRS pods, and towing a trailer also carrying another pair. But for the same volume, we can carry far more artillery shells and their charges, giving us the ability to engage many more targets (in part, this was the argument over on the naval gunfire thread, suggesting 155mm artillery systems have more ammo available than an MLRS system, so that justifies why tube artillery is a better alternative in some people's minds). What confuses me is just what exact criteria decides one systems' merits outweigh the other, if they are both expected to engage pretty much the same targets at roughly the same ranges (although currently, the range advantage goes to the MLRS). And even moreso, the US Army employs a mix of both, figuring that both would be useful, yet in the USN's quest for land fire support, they are too proud to follow Army fire support doctrine and use both types of weapons. Why?