Posted on 09/29/2005 10:51:38 PM PDT by neverdem
Kinder, Gentler Artillery
by Nat Moffat
Posted Sep 29, 2005
By any historical standard, Americans at war are scrupulous to avoid inflicting collateral damage (which is why those brave Iranian mullahs dig their bunkers next to shrines and mosques).
Now even artillery fire is getting compassionate, which is amazing when you think about the physics involved:
Artillery hasn't been all that helpful in the Iraq counterinsurgency. Even in trained hands, heavy, indirect fire is pretty indiscriminate. Bystanders often get killed, while intended targets slip away.
Which is why the Army has been bankrolling "Excalibur," a Raytheon effort to build a 155mm artillery shell that's guided by GPS. Think of it as the howitzer's answer to smart bombs.
Our enemies' R & D efforts don't produce quite the same shock or awe. The Mahdi army thinks precision guidance means giving a guy with dynamite in his pants a map. Hezbollah, on the other hand, uses a spotter: The guy holding his ears yells at his uncle to point the Katyusha toward Israel, not their truck. Hey, if you can hit Israel 30% of the time by shooting at it over a fence, who needs someone with a map?
Reminds me of Saddams Scuds. Guidance consisted of shooting one in the general direction of Israel, then turning on CNN to see where it landed.
Thanks for the link.
ping
VT fuzes (proximity) have been in use for years. The question is why would you spend that kind of money on shells (especially with a 10%+/- dud rate) just to avoid collateral damage?
It is much cheaper, I suspect, to shell Al-Sh!thole with conventional munitions and rebuild all of the mud/concrete buildings afterwards.
Historically speaking, artillery was originally intended to 1) create breaches in the enemy’s fortifications. 2) Inflict a substantial amount of casualties in lines of infantry. Generally, artillery is only effective where your enemy is en mass.
As a former artillery forward observer (USA 1984-1988) I can tell you that they have been working on smart shells for arty for 30 years. Just took time to get it right. Laser guided, heat seeking and now GPS guided. Oh my!
What I got from the story is that GPS guidance (which, by the way, takes a LOT more electronics than a proximity fuze) can direct shells to targets with greater accuracy, and (reading between the lines) without a forward/airborne observer.
At least part of the effort is to achieve airbursts directly above targets by simply lobbing one over their heads. This allows you to hit something not on a parabelic path,(fireing over walls, over buildings, valleys) .
But the article specifically talkes about guidance, which is significantly more than simply a fuze mechanism. With terminal guidance you can hit reverse slopes, send shells into specific windows, cave mouths, or anything else you can get a good GPS fix for.
Old hat. South Africa produced the G6 with GPS fire control 10 years ago. But I guess the proud US won't purchase from others even if their tech is better.
You need to do a little more reading..."fire control" is the computer system used for aiming the tube (barrel) in the right direction - and the US has had GPS-assisted fire control and survey for more years than anyone else. The difference with the 155mm Excalibur round is that it has GPS terminal guidance in the round itself so that it can hit the target quite precisely.
The South Africans, among others, can wait in line for this kind of technology! They're still at the "fire it as far as it can go and see where it lands" stage...
As always, "Artillery lends dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl".
Actually, the benefit (the way I see it) is more accurate shells will kill more of the people who need killing, and will kill less of the people whose death will have political, social and military ramifications.
People won't necessarily make a lifelong enemy out of you if you destroy their house by accident, you apologize, and/or pay them money to rebuild.
If you kill their husband, wife, mother, daughter, son or father, then it is complicated and messy.
A lot easier now than in the 1960s when we launched suborbital shots from super-cannon.
I guess the inventor was feared by NASA, because the program was stopped, he was persecuted by the U.S. government, and eventually assassinated by the Israelis when he sold his ideas to Saddam.
great quote... and I guess I've lived long enough as well.
"How do you make electronics that can stand acceleration of
being launched from a cannon?"
We did that in WWII, with the VT (proximity) fuse for anti-aircraft shells.
With the electronics we have today, we ought to be able to put face-recogonition computers in a shell, so it will zero in on an individual!
Field Artillery/ Mortar Ping List
Smart ammo for the 155's.
Thanks for the ping!
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