Posted on 05/13/2013 3:42:25 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
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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