Posted on 05/13/2013 3:42:25 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Scoot and Shoot “à la Française:” Caesar SP Gun Transforms French Artillery
(Source: defense-aerospace.com; published May 7, 2013)
By Giovanni de Briganti
DRAGUIGNAN, France --- The French army has almost completed the wholesale transformation of its artillery, a process which has seen the merger of its air-defense and field artillery units and the gradual replacement of its towed (TRF1) and self-propelled (AUF1) 155mm howitzers by the Caesar truck-mounted, air-transportable gun of the same caliber but with substantially longer range.
In terms of units, the reorganization will be completed this summer with the disbandment of the 8th Artillery Regiment, the fourth to be disbanded since 2008 in a process which also saw the number of artillery officers reduced by 28%.
Despite having fewer units, the artillery’s overall firepower will in fact be enhanced because the truck-mounted Caesar, fitted with a 52-caliber tube, is able not only to attain ranges of the order of 40 kilometers, but also to deliver fire support over an area 45% greater than with a 39-caliber tube, which has a range of less than 30 km. Caesar is the acronym of CAmion Equipé d’un Système d’ARtillerie, or truck equipped with an artillery system.
The goal of the transformation is to be able to provide each of the army’s future maneuver units with an integral fire support unit comprising heavy and medium fire-support, as well as air-defense cover with Mistral truck-mounted surface-to-air missiles and 20mm automatic cannon. In parallel, the French army has also adopted the “joint fires” concept, with Fire Support Teams to maximize the return on firepower. These teams are designated “Détachement de Liaison, d’ Observation et de Coordination” (DLOC) by the French army.
In all, the French army plans to ultimately field 141 Caesars, 128 towed 120mm mortars, 186 Mistral missile launchers and 60 VAB wheeled vehicles armed with a 20mm dual-purpose gun. It also operates 24 Guided MLRS launchers, half of which will be retired by the end of this year.
Once the older 155mm weapons are retired – the process will be entirely completed by 2019 – all of the French army’s field artillery -- Caesar and 120mm rifled mortar – will be air-transportable by C-130H Hercules, thereby improving not only tactical but also strategic mobility, Lt Col Cyril Mathias, head of the French artillery capability branch, told reporters here April 22. He and other officers spoke during a media event organized by the Versailles, France-based Nexter Group, maker of the Caesar and its Bonus smart munition, and the French army's artillery school, based in this town in south-eastern France.
Caesar’s mobility was most recently illustrated in Mali, when the French army deployed four Caesars and four 120mm mortars in support of Operation Serval. Few details have as yet been released about their performance there, but the simple fact that they were deployed in a matter of days by standard military transport provided ground troops with a level of support that would have proved impossible with older self-propelled or towed 155mm guns.
Halving the size of the artillery branch while increasing available firepower was only made possible by Caesar, a novel 52-calibre cannon mounted on a six-wheeled medium truck and whose all-up weight does not exceed 18 metric tonnes. The only comparable artillery vehicle is the BAE Systems Archer, co-developed for Norway and Sweden, but at 30 metric tonnes it weighs half as much again, says Gen. Jacques Grenier, (ret’d), artillery adviser to Nexter Group. A conventional 155mm tracked self-propelled howitzer, like the German army’s PzH 2000, weighs 55 metric tonnes, mostly due to its armor protection, tracked running gear and rotating turret.
Nexter, then known as GIAT Industries, originally developed Caesar as a private venture in the 1990s, and won the first French army order thanks to the unexpected support of then Defense Minister Alain Richard, who overruled opposition by the army staff, which disliked the idea of a gun on a truck. This led some wags to say Caesar really stands for “CAnon à Effet de Surprise d’Alain Richard,” or Alain Richard’s surprise effect gun.
The minister’s support led to an initial order for five guns in 2002, followed in 2004 by another for 72. The army staff now thinks so highly of the weapon that it plans to order an additional 64 for delivery between 2015 and 2019.
Export orders have slowly mounted up, especially after Caesar was deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 – barely 12 months after it entered French service in December 2008. As of late April, Grenier said, the company had delivered 183 guns out of 252 ordered by France (77), Indonesia (32), Thailand (7) and an unidentified Middle-Eastern country that Nexter will not name but which is widely known to be Saudi Arabia (132).
Nexter is very upbeat about the gun’s prospects, thanks to what it believes is a unique mix of long-distance firepower, light weight and low acquisition and ownership costs.
Caesar’s remarkably short reaction times multiply its effects. When it stops to fire, for example, its tube is already pointed towards its target, and fine laying is done in a matter of seconds. Each gun can fire 6 rounds per minute, and 1 minute and 40 seconds after having stopped, Caesar is ready to move on, thus avoiding counter-battery fire. Its five-man crew and some ammunition are carried on board, and it is fitted with semi-automatic loading, automatic laying and has a hydraulically-operated firing ramp.
Caesar's 40 km range with standard high-explosive shells can be extended to 42 km using Extended-Range Full Bore (ERFB) rounds, and even to over 55 km with additional propulsion. Accuracy is also quite good, with six rounds fired at a range of 37 km having a dispersion of less than 150 meters, according to French army range officers.
Nexter believes that thanks to these features, Caesar can become the natural replacement for the ubiquitous NATO-standard M-109 self-propelled gun, of which over 2,000 units were sold worldwide. One likely new customer is Denmark, which had to drop its original plan to buy the BAE Archer because of budget restrictions, and which is now expected to instead opt for Caesar.
Nexter's ability to provide “smart” munitions as well as a high-performance gun should prove a significant competitive advantage, Grenier says. Nexter demonstrated the Bonus anti-tank round it developed together with Sweden’s Bofors (now part of BAE Systems); Switzerland, originally a program member, pulled out before full-scale development.
Bonus is a cargo shell which carries two sub-munitions which are ejected at an altitude of about 200 meters above the target area, and which scan the ground as they fall to earth. Their explosively-formed penetrator warheads attack any armored vehicles they detect. The French army demonstrated two Bonus salvoes on April 22: the first two rounds hit three out of four targets (rusty tank hulls heated by petrol fires at a range of 30 km), but two of the four sub-munitions of the second salvo missed their targets, one of them impacting a target already hit.
Neither Grenier nor other French officers would be drawn about Bonus’ unit price, but one observed that, whatever the price, it will always be the least expensive way of delivering a high-explosive warhead on target at a range of 40 km – in all weathers, by day and night. Aircraft-launched weapons, he noted, are far more expensive and require that the aircraft be able to take off, something that weather and local conditions sometimes limit or preclude, but which do not affect artillery.
Article history: -- May 12: updated with minor editing changes. -- May 13: corrected date of April 22 firing demonstration.
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A battery of French army Caesar truck-mounted 155mm guns during the April 22 firing demonstration at Canjuers training area. Note how the rear of the truck is raised by the hydraulic jack, and rests only on the rear ramp during firing. (D-A.com photo)
This is really quite a brilliant response to the fact of radar-guided counter-artillery fire. I’m impressed.
Caesar, fitted with a 52-caliber tube, is able not only to attain ranges of the order of 40 kilometers, but also to deliver fire support over an area 45% greater than with a 39-caliber tube,
I think they mean 52-calibers and 39-calibers respectively.
(That is to say: 52 and 39 times as long as the bore diameter)
I assume you mean the mobility?
They would have to move often...zero armor protection.
I assume the rounds are also carried on an unarmored truck? Oh my.
An interesting gun. I wish The US forces had such a gun. Tracks are so heavy on maintenance requirements.
CAESAR has some nice features like enhanced range, but here is *why* the Army Staff dislikes truck-mounted artillery:
1. Prolonged use of the cannon on board jars loose fuel lines, transmission hoses, axle bearings, and driveshafts of the truck.
2. Loose fuel lines and transmission hoses spew flammable liquids in a combat environment.
3. Weakened axle bearings and loose driveshafts increase mechanical breakdowns in combat maneuvering.
4. Vehicle fires result in loss of vehicle and cannon.
5. Vehicle breakdowns require towing BOTH vehicle +cannon for further combat maneuvering.
SUMMARY: Towed artillery is superior for extended combat; vehicle mounted cannons are acceptable for limited combat.
Anything to reduce vulnerability to counter-battery fire.
Well - it only takes a week for the French to surrender anyway. So I think they’ve aligned their procurement with strategy quite well.
How did you learn so much about this sort of thing? :)
I spent a number of years working on a fully-automated 120mm mortar and later developing a precision fire on the move capability for that weapon on an LAV. No luck with anyone getting interested in that either.
The artillery community seems to believe in self-obsolescence, so who are we to get in their way..?
The way the truck's drive axles are lifted off the ground by this system, with the gun's weight and recoil being absorbed by the ground... the French may have actually overcome many of those problems.
I think that China may challenge us in many ways in the future as we have seen in naval forces, and we’ll soon discard our transformational boutique brigades and low artillery profiles of the early 21st century and resume traditional larger force elements to counter the PLA threat. This gun could be an essential element of that force.
That really sounds very uneducated. More French died in WWI than Brits. They lead the casualty counts, and pretty much held the Germans into a 60 mile zone in the east of France for most of the war.
They fought to absolute destruction. Their soldiers, like British soldiers suffered under Generals of as low quality as the world has ever seen.
In WWII, they held the south, and the Brits held the north of the German invasion route. As the defense crumbled in front of the Blitzkrieg the British RAN AWAY at Dunkirk.
Yet, we curiously never hear about British cowardice for not fighting to the death.
They are properly seen as withdrawing to safety and regrouping to fight again in the future.
Yet, when the British ran away, they left the French army hopelessly exposed on its north flank. So yes, after a month and 12 days, The Nazis rolled into Paris.
And in that 6 weeks, the French Army had 360,000 killed or wounded. They inflicted 157,000 casualties on the invading Germans.
That’s not exactly cowardice. That slander always manages to pop up, but the French soldier has never demonstrated cowardice or a willingness to surrender.
And oddly, we never hear the British slandered as surrender monkeys, despite at Yorktown surrendering to a bunch of Colonists, at Dunkirk, Singapore, Crete, or the Royal Navy when confronted by Iraninan motorboats WITHIN SIGHT of a RN warship, etc. Propaganda is funny that way.
I would add lack of redundancy to that,no manual backup abilities would automatically disqualify it.
I wonder how it compares to the Czech 152mm gun “Dana,” also on an 8x8 Tatra truck chassis for Southack’s points?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/152mm_SpGH_DANA
The Stryker looks sort of like the Czech gun. Looks like another maintenance nightmare.
You can use tracks instead of wheels to minimize axle-bearing failures related to giant cannons pounding out shells.
You can use manual transmissions instead of automatic trannies to eliminate transmission-cooling hoses to reduce tranny-fluid-related fires.
You can use rockets (e.g. Katyushas) instead of cannons to minimize damage from blast-firing vibrations.
...but even doing all of that, self-propelled artillery has fatal weaknesses compared to towed artillery.
Towed artillery was and remains cheaper to build and maintain.
Towed artillery is also lighter and can be taken to places that self-propelled guns cannot reach. Since the Vietnam war, heavy transport helicopters have also been used for rapid artillery deployment.
You can do that with cannons. A helicopter can carry a howitzer.
Not really the case for 55 ton SPA’s, though.
What’s faster for “rapid deployment,” a helicopter carrying a howitzer landing on a hill in Afghanistan, or a self-propelled cannon driving there?
So in speed, cost, and durability, the towed artillery always beats self-propelled artillery. Helicopters are simply faster than trucks.
We tried the "make one howitzer do everything" silliness with 155s and that's just stupid. The beasts are large, bulky, heavy, and hard to find enough geography to deploy and the ammo piece is 90% of the logistic load for a division. Our bean-counters have tried for years to show that making one gun do all save us money and fights all enemies in all situations handily but that has always been poppycock.
We still need and 105/120 medium-caliber expeditionary high rate of fire direct support howitzer for mobility and responsiveness and we will still need mass and reach and flexibility in our GS weapons.
Only the non-serving chatterers out there have negative things to say about our French allies.
I see no compelling advantages for SP artillery.
Put me in the “Towed Artillery is lighter, cheaper, faster, and more durable” column.
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