Artillery regiment questions

The motorized divisions and brigades will not exist in the future. US use SP artilleries for light infanties, China will do the same. But those are not counted in field army. The light infantries are airbone corps, border guards, mountain troops, SOFs, etc. The 18 army corps are field army and they will be fully mechanized.

szbd said:

The motorized divisions and brigades will not exist in the future. US use SP artilleries for light infanties, China will do the same. But those are not counted in field army. The light infantries are airbone corps, border guards, mountain troops, SOFs, etc. The 18 army corps are field army and they will be fully mechanized.

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China will only have mechanized armies? That's very surprising and nice to know. Then the towed artilliers will be relegated to reserve and militia.

I think most of the towed artilleries will just gone. There won't be many reserve artillery units and the current trend of militia is concerntrated in logistics, like repairing and transportation.

going all SP is waste of money, becouse the tracked tincans arent that marvelous of superior whehicles. China has shown lots of sings of creating motorised units with wheeled APCs and fitting those units with tracked SP, would be simply stubid act and hampersh all of the tactical usefullnes of such units.
Many people forget that modern Towed artillery with APU are in fact almoust as flexible and manouvrable in short distance tactical motion as are the tracked SP systems, but lot cheaper. Also they present a superior long range and "strategical" mobility and while not fixed to the chasis itself, they are lot more proven and flexible when it comes to really rabidly changing enverioment.

Lets look for example situation where a SP system's engine suddenly maulfunctions and similar case where a towed guns truck does the same.
Lots of people usually forget this, but motorised brigades mobility isent coming from its APCs that its frontline infantry uses in assault, but from the trucks that its rear services uses. Every brigade has sort of "truck" pool and amoust every one of those trucks can be called for artillery tractor. So in towed battery, a brakedown of one of the elements that transports can be fixed by simply giving the towing duty one of the plentitude of trucks that the artillery battalion has.
SP unit is completely knock out from the battle until the repair unit can move the system (and if this happens in a fire position under quick rotation, the system is doomed to be lost) and reapair it and the time the system needs to return to the battery.
And take notice that SP artillery battery has usually only two systems per platoon eg. four units in battery in place of 6 in towed one. If one is out for repair, the battery will suddenly lose 25% of its firepower, while the worst thing that happens to the towed unit is that some of its HQ bunch needs to travel little bit tighlty packed....

No, each SP artillery company also has 6 guns. A towed artillery with auto loader, computerized fire control and APU is hard to be developed. The APU 155mm version weights >10 ton and can not be towed by normal truck. There are rescue and repair vehecle in each SP artillery company.

Anyway, I think SP artillery is overall better than towed ones, that's for sure. And it seems China doesn't worry about money too much.

In the wheeled mechanized units, I think they will use wheeled SP artilleries, may be truck mounted ones as well.

Recent TV news shows in 123 mechanized division, they have type 83 152mm (I'm a little confused by this since this division is supposed to take part in amphibious assualt, so why don't they use type 89 122mm which has amphibious ability), wheeled 100mm gun and type 89 122mm MRLS. They also have ZBD97 IFV, type 96 tank, type 85 APC and type 95 SP AA gun. Each new mechanized unit displayed in TV is similar with this division, just some different models of weapons.



This is a very nice blog btw.

No SP battery consists of 4 guns. Also over 10 ton APU fitted gun isen't any obstacle, the PLL01 (The GNH-45 copy) already weights that much and the standart 3-axel cross-country truck has no limitations to haul such a gun.

Tracked SP guns are good choise for armoured divisions but not to lighlty amoured and mechanised units. China with the largest landforces in the world cannot and should not try to have entirely tracked based divisions. Its forced to have its main bulk of forces made from smei-mechanised/motorised divisions which mainly travel with trucks or Wheeled ACPs. In fact this is what has happened.

There is already prototypes of both APU fitted towed gun based on the PLL01 and truck-mounted SP gun as well. Sofar these systems are reportetly offered for export but I hope that in the future they will play a role in the huge task to modernizate the main divisional level artillery (remember all infantry divisions and brigades have at least artillery battalion) in china which sadly is still very obcolent state...

Towed artillery for large scale combat in a offensive and defensive posture is obsolete by todays standards and SPs are the common norm. Reasons being:

Towed artillery takes too long to set up.
Crew exposer to counter battery fire.
With modern technology that is out there it is important to shoot and scoot so that your opponent cannot lock on to you.
Modern SPs have a faster rate of fire.

well that is what most people thing, but the simple APU system roses the towed units into so near par with SP systems (expecially with the mobility issues) so the millions of dollar expence gab isent reasonable...

but lets take a closer look of those that you mention

Towed artillery takes too long to set up.

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Nope. What takes time to Artillery units to set up is the preparation of the fire positions. Thats equal to either one of the modes. it takes up to twenty five minutes to set up the battery to the fireposition, and most of this time is consumed by the survey task that makes the whole firing feasible. modern target accusition takes out of this proplem and those arent benefit of SP systems solely. In newest towed guns, like in Singaporean new one, its a matter of two to three minutes
In tactical requirments that artillery has, the leaving time counts more than the set up phase.

Crew exposer to counter battery fire.

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SP systems arent tanks. They cannot survive direct hit of artillery shell. In towed battery the crew has actually more better change to survive becouse they can retreat really fast into natural aircover. Everyone that has served in any ground forces knows how big emphasis is given to make the soldiers reaction time fast as possiple when there starts to "whistle" in the air...

SP can give the crew a cover against shnarbelz but a towed gun doesent go out of operations from snharbelz anymore than SP system.

With modern technology that is out there it is important to shoot and scoot so that your opponent cannot lock on to you.

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And thats why there is APU out there. The few minutes that APU loses to SP in retreating time are over emphasised by the ones that doesent really consider that artillery ammunition preparation isent something that you do in secconds, and that you cannot make ammunitions before you know where you are shooting. If the counter-battery units uses MRLS, it doesent matter wheter you are on SP or APU towed unit, the consequenses are never the less shame

Modern SPs have a faster rate of fire.

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PzH2000 has impressive rate of fire, it can do stable bit over 10 rounds per minute...compared to finnish 155K98 of which we can keep up 9 rounds per minute...and it has suprisingly poor loading devices....
for example chinese PLZ45 and russian 2S19 can fave 8 round/per minute bursts, but its sustained rate of fire is 2 rounds per minute....
so that is another claim that has little to do with todays reality.

For relatively small and rich western professional armies with 5 or so brigades, German Pzh2000 or something even better than that could be best choise as main artillery (along with truck-based airtransportable SP system)
But to anything bigger and poorer, its mindless to think that replacing artillery with SP systems alone. Despite what someone things becouse the high emphasis of technological revolution, artillery is still the back bone of any land army. Its the element that destroyes the enemy, a credit that too many are too eager to give to the infantry and armour. They manouvre, artillery destroys.

Gollevainen said:

well that is what most people thing, but the simple APU system roses the towed units into so near par with SP systems (expecially with the mobility issues) so the millions of dollar expence gab isent reasonable...

but lets take a closer look of those that you mention



Nope. What takes time to Artillery units to set up is the preparation of the fire positions. Thats equal to either one of the modes. it takes up to twenty five minutes to set up the battery to the fireposition, and most of this time is consumed by the survey task that makes the whole firing feasible. modern target accusition takes out of this proplem and those arent benefit of SP systems solely. In newest towed guns, like in Singaporean new one, its a matter of two to three minutes
In tactical requirments that artillery has, the leaving time counts more than the set up phase.



SP systems arent tanks. They cannot survive direct hit of artillery shell. In towed battery the crew has actually more better change to survive becouse they can retreat really fast into natural aircover. Everyone that has served in any ground forces knows how big emphasis is given to make the soldiers reaction time fast as possiple when there starts to "whistle" in the air...

SP can give the crew a cover against shnarbelz but a towed gun doesent go out of operations from snharbelz anymore than SP system.



And thats why there is APU out there. The few minutes that APU loses to SP in retreating time are over emphasised by the ones that doesent really consider that artillery ammunition preparation isent something that you do in secconds, and that you cannot make ammunitions before you know where you are shooting. If the counter-battery units uses MRLS, it doesent matter wheter you are on SP or APU towed unit, the consequenses are never the less shame



PzH2000 has impressive rate of fire, it can do stable bit over 10 rounds per minute...compared to finnish 155K98 of which we can keep up 9 rounds per minute...and it has suprisingly poor loading devices....
for example chinese PLZ45 and russian 2S19 can fave 8 round/per minute bursts, but its sustained rate of fire is 2 rounds per minute....
so that is another claim that has little to do with todays reality.

For relatively small and rich western professional armies with 5 or so brigades, German Pzh2000 or something even better than that could be best choise as main artillery (along with truck-based airtransportable SP system)
But to anything bigger and poorer, its mindless to think that replacing artillery with SP systems alone. Despite what someone things becouse the high emphasis of technological revolution, artillery is still the back bone of any land army. Its the element that destroyes the enemy, a credit that too many are too eager to give to the infantry and armour. They manouvre, artillery destroys.

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There is no way that a towed howitzer can be prepared to fire quicker that a current SP system that is out there, you said the magic word preparing a fire position.

Tanks are not even designed to take a direct hit from a artillery shell, what is the danger close of a basic 155mm HE round impact, 600 meters with alot of shrapnel bouncing around which a armored shell of a SP gun system will offer better protection over troops out in the open or dug in a trench line.
the best defense is a offensive poster, with SP systems you can shoot and move immediatley from that position. On the modern battlefield it is pure suicide to sit in one position after the first or second barrage that you launch because you will be locked on and become dead meat to a NATO MLRS launch for example. I think you are looking at small scale operations here instead of large scale, this is not WW2 and the gun systems with munitions are much more advanced. PZH2000 is not the only SP gun system that is good, Russia, U.S China and South korea and many other countries are building good systems. Using towed guns against a less capable oppenent yes, fighting a major modern equiped military no.

No my point is and has always been that modern Towed APU fitted guns are best choise for the vast masses of infantry divisions, such a masses that only countries like china can sustain. And every infantry division, even regiment needs its organic artillery. You cannot affoard to equipt every single division with modern expensive SP guns.

APU fitted towed gun means that it has auxiliary power unit, eg. tracktor engine fitted for it so it can drive by itself making it in effect a self-propelled gun. The APU unit gives power to hydraulics and enables sophisticated electronics onboard. None is saying that they are faster than SP guns, but APU fitted guns are still miles ahead of non-apu fitted towed units. With modern firecontroll/navigation systems a towed APU gun is as fast as old non-centralised fire control radar fitted SP guns (like the bulk of SP guns of PLA).

I don't know your experience with artillery but we managed to scoop out of fire positions in less than two minutes after firing with our 155K98 APU fitted gun/howitser. Also I feel Im experienced enough of ammunition preparation that I can assure, Even modern artillery rounds requires same procedures than its nessecirical. The modern ammunition migth be smart, but gunpower is as dumm as it has always been. Artillery charging isent simply putting a cartige into chamber like it is with rifles... we are speaking of weapon wich hits are determed by ballistics.

Using towed guns against a less capable oppenent yes, fighting a major modern equiped military no.

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No. Like I have explained to you, the tactical advantage that SP units have arent that far away from APU fitted towed ones. The thing that is the key in all artillery operations is the percission, knowing where to shoot, and that doesent outclude either one of the modes. The question is which unit uses wich mode. While claiming all SP, have you ever consider what sort of nigthmare tracked SP is for wheeled motorised brigade that is supposed to be fast one?? It not about the nature of conflict but a nature of the unit that is in question