M777 challenges

[rojo]

What CF aircraft are capable of lifting M777's?  Also, would the HLVW's be the primary vehicle transportation?

 

[jeffb]

I assume you mean helicopters? If so, then the Chinook is capable of transporting a gun with a limited supply of ammo. An HLVW can serve as a gun tractor although the MSVS is the slated replacement for the MLVW as a gun tractor in the near term.

 

[Gunner98]

From http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/70973/post-676592.html

Merx: 
http://www.merx.com/English/Supplier_Menu.Asp?WCE=Show&TAB=1&PORTAL=MERX&State=7&id=PW-%24%24RA-002-16420&FED_ONLY=0&hcode=KRy%2fiKOJc%2fNlBKnEPpDdVg%3d%3d

2.10.    Mobility
The LWTH must be fully deployable by land, air and sea. Once
located in the area of operations, tactical movement will be
achieved by one of two means: towed or air. On the ground a
wheeled gun tractor will tow the howitzer (such as the in
service CF Heavy Logistics Vehicle Wheeled (HLVW)). Other
vehicles with similar mobility may transport the crew and
ammunition; this completes a gun detachment. Gun detachments
normally operate in pairs (a troop), with three troops
comprising a battery. Command posts within the battery and
troop will normally relay fire control orders to the
detachments. However, the LWTH must be employable in a myriad
of structural organizations.
Requirement: the LWTH must be towable by an in service CF
wheeled 6X6 or 8X8 vehicle.
Requirement: traveling on a primary paved road, the LWTH must be
able to sustain a minimum towed speed of at least 85 kilometres
per hour (kph).
Requirement: a fully functional howitzer shall be externally
transportable, and remain aerodynamically stable, by CH47D.1

 

[Colin Parkinson]

US Marines wear out their M777's

https://www.navytimes.com/flashpoints/2017/11/02/marine-artillery-barrage-of-raqqa-was-so-intense-two-howitzers-burned-out/



WASHINGTON — Marines providing artillery support to U.S.-backed Syrian fighters in Raqqa fired so many consecutive rounds they burned out the barrels of two M777 155 mm howitzers.

The story was told directly to Army Sergeant Major John Wayne Troxell, the senior enlisted adviser to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, by a Marine Corps battery commander.

“Every minute of every hour we were putting some kind of fire on ISIS in Raqqa, whether it was mortars, artillery, rockets, [High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems], Hellfires, armed drones, you name it,” Troxell told reporters on Monday. Troxell had visited Raqqa a couple weeks ago for a period of four hours.

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Flashpoints
Marine artillery barrage of Raqqa was so intense two howitzers burned out
By: Shawn Snow   1 day ago
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A U.S. Marine fires an M777-A2 Howitzer in Syria, June 1, 2017. (Sgt. Matthew Callahan/Marine Corps)

WASHINGTON — Marines providing artillery support to U.S.-backed Syrian fighters in Raqqa fired so many consecutive rounds they burned out the barrels of two M777 155 mm howitzers.

The story was told directly to Army Sergeant Major John Wayne Troxell, the senior enlisted adviser to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, by a Marine Corps battery commander.

“Every minute of every hour we were putting some kind of fire on ISIS in Raqqa, whether it was mortars, artillery, rockets, [High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems], Hellfires, armed drones, you name it,” Troxell told reporters on Monday. Troxell had visited Raqqa a couple weeks ago for a period of four hours.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, commander for the Raqqa campaign, Gen. Rojda Felat, knew she had to aggressively keep pressure on ISIS in Raqqa, which meant coalition support in terms of ISR, drones and artillery also had to be aggressive, Troxell explained to reporters.
What we have seen is the minute we take the pressure off of ISIS they regenerate and come back in a hurry,” Troxell said. “They are a very resilient enemy.”

SDF forces backed by coalition air and artillery support liberated Raqqa after four-plus months of fighting. However that liberation has come at a steep cost. Much of Raqqa has been destroyed by the intense urban street to street battling and the thousands of air and artillery strikes.

Despite ISIS’ loss of its self-proclaimed capital, the group has not been defeated and complete annihilation of the group is unlikely.


ISIS has lost considerable combat power and its ability to launch external attacks outside Syria has been greatly diminished but the group and its threat can only be neutralized, Troxell explained.

ISIS fighters may look to export its fighters and ideology to East and West Africa, Troxell said.

Nevertheless, the burnout of two M777 howitzers highlights the amount of artillery shells that rained down upon ISIS and Raqqa.

“I’ve never heard of it ― normally your gun goes back to depot for full reset well before that happens,” a former Army artillery officer told Military Times on condition of anonymity. “That’s a shitload of rounds though,”

The rounds it would take to burn out a barrel is dependent on the level of charge and the range to the target, he said.

The level of charge of the round is also a function of the weight of the shell being used and the distance to the target.

“If you have an average-weight shell, the further you want to shoot the more charge you put in,” he said. “If that shell is heavier, you need to add even more charge.”

“So if they were shooting closer to the target, the tube life might actually be extended some.”

Marines have been providing artillery support to the SDF since March.

Military Times’ Pentagon Bureau Chief Tara Copp contributed to this story.

 

[Old Sweat]

Any barrel for any weapon has a finited life based on the number of rounds fired and the intensity of the burning of the propelling charge. The wear on the barrel eventually can increase the calibre so that a round can no longer be fired accurately. This can range from a few hundred rounds for extreme velocity rounds, which implies a very hot burring propellant, to many thousand rounds (expressed as equivalent full charges or EFCs) for howitzers. Our expanded knowledge of metal fatigue over the past fifty years had resulted in a decrease in theoretical barrel life for certain artillery equipments. For example, we believed that it was virtually impossible to wear out the barrel of the 105mm C1 howitzer as its life was 20,000 EFCs, but this was radically revised downward to a fraction of that because of metal fatigue. Circa 1976 we actually "shot out" the barrels of our 105 C1s at the School of Artillery in Gagetown and had to replace them. More recently, it was determined that the barrel life of the 105mm LG1s being considered for use at Kandahar in 2006 was only about 600 rounds using High Explosive Extended Range ammunition. This was clearly a non-starter and led to the M777 procurement.

 

[FJAG]

Not sure if my memory is serving me correctly but I seem to recall the M109's having a barrel life of 5,000 EFCs. My understanding is that the M777s have slightly more than half of that at 2,650 EFCs. I guess that's why it's a "light weight" towed howitzer.

I still miss the 109s. I'll never forgive our "senior" gunners for turning them to scrap and memorials.  :tempertantrum: By my quick rough calculation from Wikipedia there are some 7,000 of them in various versions still in service in the world.

:cheers:

 

[Bird_Gunner45]

Not sure if my memory is serving me correctly but I seem to recall the M109's having a barrel life of 5,000 EFCs. My understanding is that the M777s have slightly more than half of that at 2,650 EFCs. I guess that's why it's a "light weight" towed howitzer.

I still miss the 109s. I'll never forgive our "senior" gunners for turning them to scrap and memorials.  :tempertantrum: By my quick rough calculation from Wikipedia there are some 7,000 of them in various versions still in service in the world.

:cheers:

The M109 wasn't a bad gun, but had limitations that were too ponderous.

The first was the maintenance required to keep the systems going. Tracked vehicles are always expensive, and the M109 fleet wasn't in especially good shape when they were retired. Towed howitzers tend to be less maintenance heavy, so with the restraints on budget, it made sense.

The second was that the system was too heavy for the type of warfare that the CAF expected to fight. At the time, the thought was that systems needed to be lighter and more mobile to fight a faster and more dispersed style of war. The M777 was selected over a tracked system as it could be airmobiled and was thus more flexible for operations. This was also at a time that the entire fleet was to be wheeled, if anyone remembers the Direct Fire Squadron concept.

Personally, I think the decision to move from the M109 to the M777 (though admittedly indirectly) was beneficial. The maintenance cost alone would have forced restraints on employment, particularly through Afghanistan. They were too heavy to be quickly moved, which is a requirement. They were good for their time.

 

[Ostrozac]

The M109 wasn't a bad gun, but had limitations that were too ponderous.

The first was the maintenance required to keep the systems going. Tracked vehicles are always expensive, and the M109 fleet wasn't in especially good shape when they were retired. Towed howitzers tend to be less maintenance heavy, so with the restraints on budget, it made sense.

The second was that the system was too heavy for the type of warfare that the CAF expected to fight. At the time, the thought was that systems needed to be lighter and more mobile to fight a faster and more dispersed style of war. The M777 was selected over a tracked system as it could be airmobiled and was thus more flexible for operations. This was also at a time that the entire fleet was to be wheeled, if anyone remembers the Direct Fire Squadron concept.

Personally, I think the decision to move from the M109 to the M777 (though admittedly indirectly) was beneficial. The maintenance cost alone would have forced restraints on employment, particularly through Afghanistan. They were too heavy to be quickly moved, which is a requirement. They were good for their time.

A towed howitzer that is capable of being airlifted is absolutely the best choice for a counter-insurgency/low-intensity conflict. It is not the best choice for any kind of force-on-force war where you are expecting to deal with counter battery fire. That is where self-propelled artillery (either tracked or wheeled) really shines. The M777 will be great in some wars -- if you want to put a battery of guns on a hilltop firebase and refight Vietnam 1965-72 it's clearly the best gun in the world. But if you use it against a conventional enemy that has self-propelled guns you're going to end up in second place.

Right now our 'medium-weight' army seems to have developed the worst of all compromises -- our brigades have the firepower of a light formation but the logistics tail of a heavy formation. It might be time to bite the bullet and admit that we are out of the heavy mechanized game entirely, and that we are a COIN/Low-Intensity-Conflict army pure and simple, but that would certainly be an awkward admission to NATO, given our commitment to supply conventionally equipped mechanized forces to the Baltics.

 

[MilEME09]

Right now our 'medium-weight' army seems to have developed the worst of all compromises -- our brigades have the firepower of a light formation but the logistics tail of a heavy formation. It might be time to bite the bullet and admit that we are out of the heavy mechanized game entirely, and that we are a COIN/Low-Intensity-Conflict army pure and simple, but that would certainly be an awkward admission to NATO, given our commitment to supply conventionally equipped mechanized forces to the Baltics.

I would argue we are much more a Motorized Army with light mechanized elements, we simply do not have enough heavy equipment to call our selves mechanized. Not enough tanks, SPArt, SPAA (or AA capability of any kind), heavy weapons like ATGMs (yes we just got TOW back, but that I fore see as limited). Not to mention we can't sustain a mechanized brigade in more then one theater of operation, not for long any way. We are very much out of the game, and it would take a lot of investment to get back in.

 

[FJAG]

There is no reason why forces and weapon systems can't be complementary. We've gravitated to a mixed force of some light elements and some mechanised elements for some time. Our mechanized forces these days are more capable then they were when we had "mechanized brigade groups". Today's leopards and Lavs are better mechanized fighting vehicles then anything that we had in the past. Where we're failing is numbers in some cases (tanks) and capabilities (towed v SP howitzers, and poor anti-tank and mortar capabilities) all of which are budget driven and not tactically phased out.

I was BK of a 109 battery for two years. I had a 14 man LMT section and we never had less than five of our six guns serviceable at any given time (which includes one spring practice camp in Shilo when the poplar fluff was playing havoc with the engines)

I've argued for years that you have to keep capabilities in the inventory (even if with the reserves or in war stocks) because when you finally decide that you're losing lives because you don't have it you can put it back into action relatively quickly--much more quickly than our procurement system can get something.

Our problem for some time with our regular force managers is that they expend the bulk of our defence budget on maintaining the bloated headquarters and policies that we have today rather than determining more innovative (to us) programs to ramp up personnel and in-inventory equipment when we need it. (I keep looking at the US National Guard and reserve systems and can never understand why can't go that way. The system may not be perfect but a less-than-perfect system is infinitely preferable to no system at all)

Our defence management style reminds me of people who go the cheap route on buying insurance in the hope that they will never need it. It's even worse with DND because not only are we not buying the insurance policy but we are convinced we will never have to use it because, well, if you don't have anything in your inventory then you can't use what you don't have anyway. This way they can honestly say to the government we can't do that--we don't have the capability. The trouble is that our civilian politicians don't have enough knowledge about defence matters that they don't realize that they are getting a major snowjob from the military. All they can do is wonder what it is we do with tons of money they give us and figure that it shouldn't cost as much to provide what we do.

End of  ff topic: rant.

:cheers:

 

[MilEME09]

I've argued for years that you have to keep capabilities in the inventory (even if with the reserves or in war stocks) because when you finally decide that you're losing lives because you don't have it you can put it back into action relatively quickly--much more quickly than our procurement system can get something.

We did it back in the 50's and 60's, IMO it costs money but some capabilities/equipment should be pushed down to the PRes, buy new tanks, give the old ones to the PRes, same with AFV's and anything else feasible.

 

[FJAG]

We did it back in the 50's and 60's, IMO it costs money but some capabilities/equipment should be pushed down to the PRes, buy new tanks, give the old ones to the PRes, same with AFV's and anything else feasible.

You know that the US continues to overproduce M1s and has hundreds and hundreds of excess new Bradleys and M109's in storage. My guess is if you stopped trying to design everything from scratch nor "Canadize" it, you could get a lot of off the shelf stuff for firesale prices.

:cheers:

 

[MilEME09]

You know that the US continues to overproduce M1s and has hundreds and hundreds of excess new Bradleys and M109's in storage. My guess is if you stopped trying to design everything from scratch nor "Canadize" it, you could get a lot of off the shelf stuff for firesale prices.

:cheers:

Germans have a lot of Leopard 2's in war stocks, wonder how cheap we could get some of those, going german made any way why not get PzH 2000's, some parts commonality with the leo 2 family.

 

[larry Strong]

Germans have a lot of Leopard 2's in war stocks, wonder how cheap we could get some of those, going german made any way why not get PzH 2000's, some parts commonality with the leo 2 family.

Technically the Bundeswehr does not have any extra Leo's. As part of post-Cold War defense cuts, most of the tanks were sold back to the original manufacturers.

Germany has begun the process of upgrading 103 out-of-service Leopard 2A4 and 2A6 tanks to the latest model, the Leopard 2A7V—an upgrade that will cost the state the equivalent of 760 million euros ($833 million).

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/get-ready-russia-germany-expanding-its-tank-forces-by-40-20639

Cheers
Larry

 

[Colin Parkinson]

You know that the US continues to overproduce M1s and has hundreds and hundreds of excess new Bradleys and M109's in storage. My guess is if you stopped trying to design everything from scratch nor "Canadize" it, you could get a lot of off the shelf stuff for firesale prices.

:cheers:

The smart thing to do is to set up a armoured unit in Poland using some of those stockpiled vehicles. Then you set up a training unit in North America and one in Europe, where troops can train on that same equipment. In event of a crisis troops can fall onto the stockpiled vehicles that are maintained by a small support staff. NATO covers the cost of maintaining, the stockpile and training vehicles. NATO countries cover their own manning costs. The US can rotate those vehicles every few years through their mothball reserve allowing them to keep their tank factories busy. 

 

[Kirkhill]

Is the priority setting up more targets for the Russians to try and kill or is the priority the killing of Russian targets when they cross into our friends' backyards?

I think it is the latter which, in my opinion, means providing more anti-tank missiles, more large calibre anti-tank guns, more howitzers, more battlefield missiles, more sea-launched land attack missiles and more air-launched missiles.

And a similarly strong supply of anti-air missiles.

Must be my English ancestors but I will still back archers over cavalry.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Well I love a well rounded force myself, but a increase in size and ability of QRF in Eastern Europe will keep the Kremlin from being tempted. You also need good support from Intelligence Services, police and SF to ensure that they don't use other methods to undermine you smaller Eastern allies.

 

[RADOPSIGOPACCISOP]

A towed howitzer that is capable of being airlifted is absolutely the best choice for a counter-insurgency/low-intensity conflict. It is not the best choice for any kind of force-on-force war where you are expecting to deal with counter battery fire. That is where self-propelled artillery (either tracked or wheeled) really shines. The M777 will be great in some wars -- if you want to put a battery of guns on a hilltop firebase and refight Vietnam 1965-72 it's clearly the best gun in the world. But if you use it against a conventional enemy that has self-propelled guns you're going to end up in second place.

Faced off with a "near peer" adversary with large amounts (ie more than we have) of heavy self propelled guns will effectively decimate our ability to put out offensive/counter battery fire. As seen on some recent simulations.

 

[tomahawk6]

Faced off with a "near peer" adversary with large amounts (ie more than we have) of heavy self propelled guns will effectively decimate our ability to put out offensive/counter battery fire. As seen on some recent simulations.

HIMARS would be a big equalizer.

 

[RADOPSIGOPACCISOP]

HIMARS would be a big equalizer.

It was in the sims, unfortunately they're not ours right now. There's a reason why rocket artillery is still a thing.