I wish I could buy one. Or two. Wouldn’t that be fun? A competition!
I’d get bigfoot, no problem.
No, all South Korea has to do is pump these out of the factory and point them north. We have to ship our wherever we need them around the world. Also, our long range artillery is covered by rockets. While we might need an updated system, it still needs to be light and we don’t need the range.
We have had a couple replacement gun systems cancelled in recent years.
This is an impressive howitzer. Too bad the US can’t seem to get some made for our military. That’s what happens when we go to boutique brigades instead of concentrating on Divisions and Armies. The Chinese are developing large forces for some reason and we have nothing to defend ourselves or our allies. Thank god the Koreans have a little common sense.
Arty is so 80’s. F-35 is better. /s
We had two programs that were close to replacing the M109A6. The first one was the Crusader program run by United Defense who was bought by BAE Systems. Crusader had automated magazine, loader, rammer, and breach systems. It also had laser ignition system. Rumsfeld killed the program saying Crusader was too heavy. BAE Systems leveraged the automated technology and used it on it’s NLOS Cannon program. NLOS was folded into the Army’s Future Combat Systems pipe dream with in the end doomed the NLOS program. BAE Systems has incorporated the auto rammer and breach systems into it’s PIIM program that has taken the M109 and uupgraded it with the Bradley chassis.
I may be a little biased here due to working as part of BAE’s test team on NLOS, but that was a great gun. We were under budget, and ahead of schedule. We were 5 months away from going into production when Obama cancelled the FCS program.
2 very viable programs were killed off for political reasons. Either of the two guns would have been significant upgrades to the Paladin. The cancellations of Crusader and NLOS were a huge waste of tax payer dollars, and in the end the Army has nothing to show for it.
Well, let me address this article. The statements made here are dependant on which M109 you are talking about.
The newer M109A7 which the US military now uses compares very favorably to the new Korean K9. Many of the specs this article uses, compare the new K9 to older M109 variants...and the author knows it.
The M109A7 weighs 39 tons, not the 26 spoken of here.
It can maintain a speed of 38 mph, and has a very modern fire control system second to none.
The fact is, the US military and industry has a history of producing excellent quality mobile artillery, which can be maintained in the field and are long lasting and battle proven.
The Koreans themselves took the M109 A2 and upgraded them to the A4/A5 standard and called it the K55/K55A1 and operate over 1,000 of them. The K9 is slated to replace many of those and the K9 is a very good self propelled howitzer.
As to range, this article compares apples to oranges. It compares the normal, HE explosive rounds of the US A4/A5 weapons, to the Rocket Assisted projectiles of the K9.
But when you do an Apples to Apples comparison, firing normal, non-assisted projectiles (which the vast majority of shots will be), the M1909A7 has a 28 km range, while the K9 has a range of 30 km.
The RAP (Rocket Assisted Projectiles) munitions do add more range, and the longer barrel of the K9 does assist. US RAP projectiles will get out to 35 km, while the K9 does get to 56 km.
As to who uses what...yes, the K9 is winning some orders. but the M109A7 is out there in far larger numbers with a lot more countries. That’s because the cost of an upgrade to M109 is cheaper than a new K9. Later model M109s are currently operated by
US: 1,000
Austria: 80
Taiwan: 225
Morocco: 70
Brazil: 75
Chile: 48
Egypt: 201
Iraq: 24
Israel: 600
Pakistan: 115
Portugal: 18
Thailand: 20
Greece: 12
Spain: 96
Saudi Arabia: 400
K55/K44A1: 1,040 (S. Korean M109)
That’s a total of over 4,000 M109s currently in use.
The K9 is currently being used (or has been sold to) the following countries to be built to the indicated numbers:
S. Korea: Will build over 1,100
Turkey: Will get 350
Poland: Will Get 120
India: Will get 100
That’s 1,1670 weapons,
As I say, the K9 is a good weapon, and I am glad S. Korea and some of our allies have it. But the M109A7 is the most prolific and most battle tested weapon out there.
So, all in all, this article is simple a Korean K9 marketing article, but the whole truth is in the details.