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Posted on 08/26/2005 10:14:46 PM PDT by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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  Towed guns are, as the name implies, artillery pieces that must be towed by another vehicle. They are more powerful than mortars, and they have greater range. The M198 155mm howitzer, for example, can hurl a wide variety of 155mm projectiles as far as 18 km (33 km with rocket assist). It can also be used for multiple simultaneous strikes, and it can fire high explosive shells, anti-personnel or anti-armour mine-laying systems, tactical nuclear warheads, chemical weapons, smoke projectiles, communications jamming devices, remote sensors, illuminating projectiles, and even special guided projectiles. It is more than capable of destroying infantry, buildings, or armoured vehicles, so it is used to hit "deep targets" well behind the front lines. This can include armoured columns moving to the front, enemy artillery, etc. Towed guns can even be small enough to be highly portable. For example, the British Army has a 105mm light gun which is air portable, yet has a maximum range of more than 17 km. The example pictured at right is equipped with a Marconi LINAPS automatic aiming system. However, the towed gun's primary weakness is its lack of mobility. Since a towed gun can be targeted from the flight path of its projectile, it is an obvious target for enemy counter-attack. It also has difficulty keeping up with rapidly moving mobile forces, since the number of available tractors is generally smaller than the number of guns. Therefore, the towed gun has been largely supplanted by the self-propelled gun in modern armies. However, the towed gun is much less expensive than the self-propelled gun, and in today's complex global environment, the enemy need not be a large, well-armed national military force. It could be anything from terrorists to criminal organizations, and in many cases, these enemies are poorly equipped, lacking effective field artillery or projectile tracking systems. Against such an enemy, a towed artillery piece can be a lethal and virtually untouchable implement of war.  Mobile warfare is hampered by immobile artillery support, so a full-scale conventional warfare scenario requires self-propelled artillery pieces such as the American M110A1. This is a self-propelled 203mm howitzer. It has been in service for decades, and can be found in the armies of numerous countries around the world. It can fire an 8-inch diameter, 92.5 kg high explosive projectile to a maximum range of 21.3 km, and a rocket-assisted projectile to a maximum range of 29.1 km. It can also fire a variety of other projectiles if necessary, like the towed M198 mentioned above, but unlike the M198, it can travel at nearly 60 km/h under its own power. It also has a shovel-like attachment which digs into the ground to stabilize the platform against the prodigious force of recoil from its massive gun. It should be noted that this gun provides no protection whatsoever for its crew, and that this sort of self-propelled gun is actually the exception rather than the rule. Most self-propelled guns have an enclosed crew cab for protection as well as greater ammo storage. The doctrine of self-propelled gun deployment calls for large numbers of independent units to situate themselves around the countryside and move with the infantry and armour units. When a target is identified by the spotters, all of these artillery pieces will simultaneously open fire and shower it with shells, before pulling up stakes and changing positions in order to avoid the inevitable enemy artillery counter-attack (the slang term is "shoot and scoot". In this way, mobile artillery units achieve the dangerous combination of mobility, dispersion, and firepower concentration. sym·po·sium : a social gathering at which there is free interchange of ideas So now let's get on with the discussion. Special thanks to USMCBOMBGUY for today's subject. His question was "Towed or self propelled artillery? Which will be more successful in the future?" I took the liberty of narrowing the subject down to guns rather than all artillery. Pull up a chair or grab a spot on the floor around the virtual Foxhole Cabin and let's chat.      |
That is a nice looking piece of self-propelled artillery.
Enjoy your dinner, we've got a chance of rain tomorrow.
Great pic! :-)
A flying tank!
Good afternoon sugar.
Amen!
Artillery is here to stay. It is a cheap and accurate way to engage the enemy from a distance, what more could the military want? Since the advent of slingers, catapults and arrows, artillery has played a crucial role in battle and will continue too until something better comes along.
Hope you don't mind but instead of crossing my fingers, I said a little prayer that your house closing is successful. God wants Marines to have a solid foundation under them and a good roof above them. IMHO.
Snippy made a bad remark about yardwork. If you're like me (God help you) yardwork relieves the stress of the 9 to 5 job. Like shaving, you will discover the answers to life's biggest challenges simply by mowing the yard! Also, yardwork builds a stronger marriage. My wife points and says, "dig there, I want to plant a rosebush" and I grunt, dig and plant while she watches and offers technical advise. It's true love!
An argument, on FreeRepublic? I find that hard to believe.
XOXOX
Thanks big man!
Really? Try this. I refer to post #16. The greatest song in the history of music was Captain and Tennille's "Muskrat Love". It replaced the now second greatest song, Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made For Walking".
Flame away!
Truer words! At least for now it's not approved by activist judges.
For about half that payment ya could get twice the house on a lot about 125'x150'
As an added bonus no earthquakes but there is the ocassional twister
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
For some reason the pic ain't showin either at work or at home. Oh well I have probably seen it, maybe.
Some of them commercials may not be quite the thing for the spiderboy to view. However off hand I think that the nailgun, the summo wrestler and the the two JAPP commercials wouold be spiderboy safe.
At work so I don't have the list with me and I don't think I had any bad NSFW clips on there.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Cool! ;-)
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