Why would you need to take it off road? Another thing about vertical cannons is that they're actually somewhat more lightweight than conventional cannons, due to having less moving parts in general. The SRBMs and LRSAMs of the world seem to do fine being road vehicles.
Because having a big bloody cannon sitting on the tarmac is just waving a great big neon sign to the enemy airforce saying "shoot me please"? Or that blowing up a road means stranding the cannon in the middle of nowhere ? And what kind of vertical cannons are you talking about ? If you are talking about mortars then these weapons will have even lesser range then conventional howitzers due to their build and make, which negates the range advantage touted. And if you have been looking at pictures of any worthwhile military force, you can see that their SRBMs and LRSAMs have all practiced drills on rocky, soft and other variety of terrains. Not just hard tarmac.
The Rocket Force certainly thinks they do, especially in the mountainous terrain of Fujian, Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces.
2 problems with this assertion of yours
1) The Rocket Force still practices off road drills so that disproves your assertion that they have such expectations
2) Certain kinds of rockets they operate are strategic assets with intercontinental range, so they can be deployed deep inland with infrastructure, now before you jump on this fact let us consider that even the biggest kind of their ICBMS are still capable of offroad terrain as they need to escape an enemy decapitation of counter strike, something that your cannon cannot even hope to achieve if it wants to reach even half their range. And secondly these missiles are strategic assets meaning that they will only be deployed in the most extreme of situations. Tactical missiles like the DF-16 are deployed much closer to the frontlines with much less expectations of sound infrastructure.
It can if the designers wants it to be so. There are multiple 20mm caliber shells out there, but not all of them have the same length in cartridge to store propellant, as a result some of them have longer rangers than even larger caliber cannons. Take the WW2 Japanese Type 99 and the German's MG 151, both have different sizes in catridge, and both have drastically different range performances.
Same thing goes with larger caliber howitzers. A 155mm shell designed to have as much propellant as a 203mm shell will assuredly fly longer then the latter.
[/QUOTE]
Not much more work than what you'd have to put into a DF-16 launch units (a ramjet vertical cannon would likely have the same range), which has its own decently sized logistics tail, and seems to be reasonably mobile (these are corps level assets, at the very least, they don't need to be more mobile than a HQ-9 battery).
[/QUOTE]
First off, stop. Just stop. A DF-16 has a maximum stated range of 1000 km .There is no way, no way on earth that a supergun hoping to match that kind of range will come in at any level of usable mobility.
The closest example would be the ramjet shell by Nammo, stated to have a max range of 96km for a 155m caliber. To scale that up to the DF-16's range it will have to be by a crude estimate a 1550mm shell. Now trying picturing a gun big enough to fire that, not so mobile now is it ? And you are mistaken to think that a HQ-9 battery is any less mobile being a corps level asset. Most units are capable of moving out in less then 10 minutes of firing.
By that logic, the PLA should have phased out all its 122mm howitzers in favor of more 122mm MRLS. Rocket and tube artillery are complementary (rockets can provide shock through a burst of fire, tube provides for sustained rates of fire. Vertical guns would be used to provide continual harrassment of transportation nodes (i.e. airports and ports, to prevent traffic (especially civilian) and disrupt attempts to repair them), as well as other fixed sites. Rocket artillery would be used to run the day of concentrations of enemy forces, like armor battalions and air/missile defense sites.
Of course I am not suggesting that the PLA should drop all its gun based artillery. Did you ever see me making such a post here ? But the idea of a supergun is ludicrous as they come because of the simple reason of cost, mobility and logistics they would have to have to match the capabilities of ballistic missiles. Firing a ballistic missiles loaded with cluster bombs/mines once every so often at an airfield is a far more affordable method that lugging an apartment sized gun around.
Come to think of it some more, a vertical gun is more of a cheap way to launch large volumes of smallish ramjet/scramjet shells.
Yeah right, so can you try to tally a bill on how much it will take to built a gun of more than 300mm caliber in size ? As well as to calculate the cost need to effeciently transport it without breaking up tarmac roads and whatnots ? Expecting something to be cheap does not make it actually cheap.
Wait a moment now, since when does a 155mm shell and 203mm shell (powered or not) share the same amount of propellant mass?
It's pretty much impossible to do so with a ramjet shell, since the 203mm shell itself could have at least double the mass of the 155mm shell. I don't think any munitions engineer (at least the sane ones) in the world assume that a larger diameter shell for the same cannon type would not by definition have a larger powder charge, and thus more range.
It can if the designers wants it to be so. There are multiple 20mm caliber shells out there, but not all of them have the same length in cartridge to store propellant, as a result some of them have longer rangers than even larger caliber cannons. Take the WW2 Japanese Type 99 and the German's MG 151, both have different sizes in catridge, and both have drastically different range performances.
Same thing goes with larger caliber howitzers. A 155mm shell designed to have as much propellant as a 203mm shell will assuredly fly longer then the latter.
