Free Republic

The U.S. Army in the coming years will build hundreds of new mobile howitzers, and largely, the project has been a success. Except there will be a problem if the self-propelled howitzers catch on fire. The Paladin M109A7 PIM — the latest in America’s line of tracked artillery pieces — has an automated fire-suppression system known as an AFES. But during survivability tests, the AFES “did not protect the entire crew compartment” and that “howitzer crews are at increased fire risk” according to a report by the Pentagon’s Inspector General released in August. Oil, lubricants and the heating system inside the Paladins are all...

South Korea recently sold a hundred of its locally designed and made K9 155mm self-propelled howitzers to India for about $7.5 million each. South Korea has already sold 350 K9s to Turkey and 120 to Poland. While superficially similar to the American M109 the K9 is a heaver (46 tons versus 28 for the M109), carries more ammo and has twice the range (up to 56 kilometers in part because of a barrel that is a third longer). There is more automation on the K9, so it has a crew of five versus six on the M-109. South Korea thus...

Explanation: Beautiful barred spiral galaxy M109, 109th entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog of bright Nebulae and Star Clusters, is found just below the Big Dipper's bowl in the northern constellation Ursa Major. In telescopic views, its striking central bar gives the galaxy the appearance of the Greek letter "theta", θ, a common mathematical symbol representing an angle. Of course M109 spans a very small angle in planet Earth's sky, about 7 arcminutes or 0.12 degrees. But that small angle corresponds to an enormous 120,000 light-year diameter at the galaxy's estimated 60 million light-year distance. The brightest member of the...