UOR's will be their bandaids and the average voter does not understand how dilapidated our Reserve artillery is.
Agreed on both but, don't forget, even UORs need funding and approval at the government level. It's just a bit easier to talk in small amounts and immediate needs. UORs greatly complicate the in-service support of the system which is tied to the project and not to the life cycle maintenance and manning of the weapon system involved. It creates major second and third order effects on the system beyond maintenance but including manning and training for them which are generally not programmed in but sliced out of existing resources.
We'll never get the voters interested until a public education program is put in place - preferably through massive and pointed recruit advertising. I'm not sure if dead gun dets will do it albeit that seemed to work on Iltis and various pieces of Brit equipment.
So anyways I like the m109A* but I wonder how that would work for some far flung armouries. Is that an argument in favour of wheeled systems or is it an obstacle that we can overcome via simulators?
I'm kind of on the M109 side myself - and not just because of nostalgia but because of the continental access to parts and factory level support. The L52 barrel bugs me and I think will be the modification requirement that will forever be dropped down on the army's priority list because - we're not at war right now. There may be an M109-52 available at BAE but my guess is it will cost twice or more as much as a refurbished M109A6 out of US war stocks.
As for ResF units. As you know, I'm a hybrid fan. I think that you can easily get by with concentrating the live-fire guns at Meaford and Shilo. Invest in a turret simulator or two on each armoury's floor to run through all the drills. Invest in a good computerized driving simulator (and if necessary several turretless chassis (maybe six complete guns broken into six turret simulators and six driver chassis.)) Place those chassis in Meaford and Shilo as well. Invest in a low-cost, short range 155 mm practice shell and fuze and a few dozen dummy training shells and charge bags that can be manipulated and loaded like the real thing but won't rammed all the way so that they can be easily "unloaded." That just leaves CPs and other vehicles (except LAV OPVs) like ACSV CPs and maybe TAPVs for BKs, BSMs, Recce and TSMs and Bob's your uncle.
I'll go a step further. I think any armoured brigade (or a mech brigade with some armour) needs a HET company in its Svc bn or as an available div sustainment asset. HETs are something easily run by mostly ResF pers. That would let you station a pair of SP guns at each of say Edmonton or Downsview and CFB London for Toronto, Brantford and Guelph based batteries. They don't need to go on the armory's floor - just in a proper storage shed outside. Then use the HETs to transport them to a range and back once or twice per year for live fire.
For me the question of wheeled or tracked has to do with how we intend to use them tactically in the framework of the overall brigade structure. The issue of how you train reservists on them is simply an administrative problem that can easily be solved if the will is there. Unfortunately I find that too few people have the will and instead too many people see this problem as an insurmountable one and dismiss the concept out of hand. IMHO, those people should not be in a leadership role as this attitude prevents the overall optimization of the army as a whole.
I keep saying, if the ARNG can run M109A7 battalions and HIMARS battalions then we can do it if we simply grow a pair. Can you imagine what it would do for recruiting if we but four ResF M109A6 or A7 batteries into Southern Ontario. Or four ResF M777 batteries into southern Quebec. We'd have to beat them off with a stick.