US Army - 155mm Next Generation Howitzer (NGH)

Kat Tsun said:
Best portee gun on the market available today is CAESAR or ATMOS 2000 tbf.
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Neither is a portee system - that requires the ability to dismount the weapon from the truck and use it as a conventional wheeled gun. LIMAWS(G) - as pointed out by TomS - is about the only system to have offered it in recent years.
 
DWG said:
Neither is a portee system - that requires the ability to dismount the weapon from the truck and use it as a conventional wheeled gun. LIMAWS(G) - as pointed out by TomS - is about the only system to have offered it in recent years.
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Quite why the UK hasn't resurrected LIMAWS(G) and LIMAWS(R) I will never know....base platform would still be available in updated form...

M777 and HIMARS have done great work in Ukraine....a 52cal barrel M777 in particular (now that the M777-ER is dead) would be fantastic.

And a C-130 artillery system using common base vehicles, combat proven in Ukraine is still a rather tempting prospect...
 
timmymagic said:
Quite why the UK hasn't resurrected LIMAWS(G) and LIMAWS(R) I will never know....base platform would still be available in updated form...

M777 and HIMARS have done great work in Ukraine....a 52cal barrel M777 in particular (now that the M777-ER is dead) would be fantastic.

And a C-130 artillery system using common base vehicles, combat proven in Ukraine is still a rather tempting prospect...
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Except, if you don't mind me saying, the excessive wear (chewing through) of the M777's barrels in the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
I think the lightweight material nature of the M777 having the same consequences as the earlier generation OTO-Melara Mod 56 105mm pack howitzer when used in prolonged firing.....

Regards
Pioneer
 
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Kat Tsun said:
Yeah you can privatize that by getting rid of depots and eliminating levels of combat repair in favor of contractors. This is what USAF did with JSF.

A fully automatic howitzer will definitely save manpower though so I'm not sure what that means really. You're not hiring "automatic cannon repairmen" at the end of the day. They'll just be additional work hours hobbled onto field 91 MOSes. Gunners will then just be pressed into operator-maintainer duty, like a tank crew, minus two or three pairs of hands from the Paladins. It will even out that you probably didn't need those two or three pairs of hands to begin with.

Nobody actually bellyaches over the lack of a fifth crewman in the M1 Abrams.
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Some personnel will have to be dedicated to maintaining the more sophisticated computerized systems on these machines, but I agree that there is probably some net reduction in manpower after all.

Kat Tsun said:
Your mistake is assuming that a mechanized solution is "the best". It's not!

This is the kind of old, obsolete ideas that Ukraine is putting paid to.

We've known for decades that towed guns were more survivable in battle than self-propelled ones but it was always assumed this is because self-propelled pieces are put in more dangerous regions. This doesn't actually seem to be the case. It seems towed guns are simply more survivable perhaps due to smaller areas presented to nearby shell bursts and fragments.

Pzh 2000 is the exception not the rule. It has the armor to survive.
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I'd be careful about projecting lessons of the past onto the future. And I'd also be careful about over-learning from Ukraine and applying it elsewhere.
For some areas and nations, a towed howitzer may be more survivable, or just more practical. But for most I'd argue it isn't.
Sensory and computational availability are quickly eroding the howitzer's survivability, both towed and self propelled. Improvements in shoot and scoot times also yield diminishing returns. For a towed howitzer to work better, one must assume the enemy is lacking and will continue to lack in sensors and precise fires. Not a healthy assumption.
I don't know what the optimal setup would be for 2025. I'd bet it's a system of system where the selection of the howitzer type itself and its characteristics are of lower overall consequence than at any time in the past.
If one chooses to rely heavily on a large number of towed howitzers, that's perfectly fine - as long as they have the industrial capacity to support that.

Pioneer said:
Except, if you don't mind me saying, the excessive wear (chewing through) of the M777's barrels in the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
I think the lightweight material nature of the M777 having the same consequences as the earlier generation OTO-Melara Mod 56 105mm pack howitzer when used in prolonged firing.....

Regards
Pioneer
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Said lightweight construction is pointless for Ukraine, so reports about M777 production expansion and localization in Ukraine sound nonsensical to me.
 
Pioneer said:
Except, if you don't mind me saying, the excessive wear (chewing through) of the M777's barrels in the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
I think the lightweight material nature of the M777 having the same consequences as the earlier generation OTO-Melara Mod 56 105mm pack howitzer when used in prolonged firing.....
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I'm not sure where you've got that from but all the reports to date state that M777 barrels are massively exceeding expected life. In line with other modern Western 155 systems...

The reason why barrels are an issue is because we've only started to ramp up production recently, despite having deployed them 2.5 years ago in the most artillery dense conflict since Korea. M777 was also in use in Ukraine, and in serious numbers well before other Western systems arrived in quantity. I wouldn't be shocked to find that M777 alone had fired >40% of the Western 155 ammunition supplied....
 
Big_Zukini said:
Said lightweight construction is pointless for Ukraine, so reports about M777 production expansion and localization in Ukraine sound nonsensical to me.
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No-one ever said build me an artillery piece but make sure its heavy....

BAE aren't building a new facility in the UK for nothing....
 
Big_Zukini said:
Some personnel will have to be dedicated to maintaining the more sophisticated computerized systems on these machines, but I agree that there is probably some net reduction in manpower after all.
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SIGMA probably has a Toughbook running Windows 7 or Red Hat Linux, while Paladins have esoteric googly ass computers that haven't been built in 40 years, and they all run various forms of AFATDS. Replacing all that old ass Amiga shit with a modern laptop would save money and manpower by dozens, maybe multiple dozens, of hours a year. Electric mechanized loaders, like the kind used on Crusader, are also less fiddly and easier to maintain than a hydraulic system. But we already have plenty of qualified hydro maintainers on the Paladins so it's not a big deal.

The main benefit is that SIGMA does everything Paladin does with half the crew and no actual overhead costs in maintenance. It is probably significantly less maintenance intensive than Paladin, since it's wheeled as opposed to tracked, to be honest.

At the very worst, they're comparable work-hours for their crews, but again the SIGMA has half the crew of the Paladin.

Big_Zukini said:
I'd be careful about projecting lessons of the past onto the future. And I'd also be careful about over-learning from Ukraine and applying it elsewhere.
For some areas and nations, a towed howitzer may be more survivable, or just more practical. But for most I'd argue it isn't.
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The only real "lesson" of the past that is dying is that towed howitzers are cheap and self propelled capacity is a luxury. It's the opposite: self propelled guns are for the povertous armies and towed guns are for the luxury forces these days.

Ukraine is the Millennial 1973 and it's putting paid to so many ideas that had just sort of been noticed but not really followed upon in 1973. One of these is the SP howitzer: in 1973 they were killed at higher rates than towed guns. It was assumed at the time this was because SP howitzers were being put closer to the front and towed guns shifted to less dangerous sectors.

As it turns out, SP howitzers just kind of suck and die a lot more because they're not well armored. We tried to address this in NATO with the Pzh 2000 and the XM2001 Crusader, and the Russians with their Coalition-SV, but none of those super howitzers except Pzh 2000 exists now. We got the same old shit we had in 1973. So it just dies on contact with D-30s and Giatsints. Again.

If you want self propelled guns to be cool you better make them tough. RCH 155 does this by being a tiny cube with the same protection as a Bradley. Sadly it's not on a M109 chassis but rather a truck. So it will probably die too when the splinter just eviscerates the drivetrain or they hit a particularly goofy crater. But the crew and gun will be safe and recoverable.

Big_Zukini said:
Sensory and computational availability are quickly eroding the howitzer's survivability, both towed and self propelled. Improvements in shoot and scoot times also yield diminishing returns. For a towed howitzer to work better, one must assume the enemy is lacking and will continue to lack in sensors and precise fires. Not a healthy assumption.
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No, actually. The most survivable howitzers are the ones that don't move! The sole exception to this is Pzh 2000, probably because it's the only howitzer that is actually armored, and because of the accuracy of shell bursts being within 20 meters with 1980s systems it's the only one that is surviving counter-fire.

Everyone else either stays in the trench, and the shrapnel passes through air because it's a towed gun with a tiny profile so getting hit is a bad luck, or they try to drive away and brew up when a splinter flies through their "armor" and torches their MACS load. There's enough videos out there showing this exact thing.

It gets worse when we factor in FPVs that can detect self propelled pieces at a greater distance than towed ones, even when camouflaged, because boxes are rare in nature and the human eye is naturally drawn to funny moving shapes.

Big_Zukini said:
I don't know what the optimal setup would be for 2025.
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It'll be whatever we have right now. NGH isn't producing hardware until 2027 at minimum.

Big_Zukini said:
I'd bet it's a system of system where the selection of the howitzer type itself and its characteristics are of lower overall consequence than at any time in the past.
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This is just buzzwords strung together.

All modern SP howitzers with few exceptions (Coalition-SV, if it ever shows up, and Pzh 2000) are the same thing: a box with a big gun and small arms-at-best proof armor. You don't pick them for their capabilities. You pick them because they can be produced most readily.

DA is asking vendors to show business plans for how quickly they can ramp up their concepts. The actual shoot offs won't matter, unless someone doesn't make it to the shoot off, then we know they're so hard up that they can't even provide prototypes.

Big_Zukini said:
If one chooses to rely heavily on a large number of towed howitzers, that's perfectly fine - as long as they have the industrial capacity to support that.
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You're ignoring the part where I said this is a manpower and payroll budget issue, not an industrial issue. The DA already knows how good towed pieces are, it just knows that it also can't support that, because it takes like 7-9 dudes to man a M777 optimally. It's about 4 or 5 for an M109. A SIGMA can be operated by two or three guys.

Big_Zukini said:
Said lightweight construction is pointless for Ukraine, so reports about M777 production expansion and localization in Ukraine sound nonsensical to me.
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They're making barrels and spare parts. Because we have neither now. We kinda ran out.
 
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Kat Tsun said:
the human eye is naturally drawn to funny moving shapes
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I'd argue this is the most important part. Any systems that doesn't move is inherent more stealthy than one that does. The Stugs were doing this in WW2. Profile is, after all, a primary determinant of survivability as was recognized by the Soviets.
 
yeetmahboi said:
I'd argue this is the most important part. Any systems that doesn't move is inherent more stealthy than one that does. The Stugs were doing this in WW2. Profile is, after all, a primary determinant of survivability as was recognized by the Soviets.
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A towed gun with a camo net looks like a fallen tree and is rapidly discarded from the mind, without further means of identification such as thermal or radar reconnaissance, unless the reconnaissance soldier is very skilled. It can, quite literally, be perfectly replicated by some scrub brush, old netting, and a log.

A tank-like box requires a much more sophisticated deception method which may not be in the man-hours budget of a battery. With present trends being what they are, the ability to hide in plain sight, and the ability to not be killed when fired upon, is paramount. This means either very heavily armored howitzers, which do not exist outside of Germany, or towed guns with fortifications to hide gunners underground.

Which one will the U.S. Army go for? Neither. It can't afford to field a new howitzer and it can't afford the cost of towed gun manpower so it will be sitting in the worst of both worlds: not armored enough to survive counterfire and stay mobile, but also not camouflagable enough to seriously hide from the most basic visual airborne observation which a cartel or a Iranian militia might have.

Big boxes are not effective at hiding. The Russians have begin painting their tanks like barns and sheds but this only works in areas where there's little combat. In a major war, such as against China, the U.S. will simply conscript people but it will still have a delay of manufacturing new towed guns for them to use.

In a minor war, gunners might end up just getting popped by FPV drones from cartels or something.

Everything old is new again. Gabions came back as HESCO barriers and now towed guns are having a bit of a moment.
 
Kat Tsun said:
A towed gun with a camo net looks like a fallen tree and is rapidly discarded from the mind, without further means of identification such as thermal or radar reconnaissance, unless the reconnaissance soldier is very skilled. It can, quite literally, be perfectly replicated by some scrub brush, old netting, and a log.

A tank-like box requires a much more sophisticated deception method which may not be in the man-hours budget of a battery. With present trends being what they are, the ability to hide in plain sight, and the ability to not be killed when fired upon, is paramount. This means either very heavily armored howitzers, which do not exist outside of Germany, or towed guns with fortifications to hide gunners underground.

Which one will the U.S. Army go for? Neither. It can't afford to field a new howitzer and it can't afford the cost of towed gun manpower so it will be sitting in the worst of both worlds: not armored enough to survive counterfire and stay mobile, but also not camouflagable enough to seriously hide from the most basic visual airborne observation which a cartel or a Iranian militia might have.

Big boxes are not effective at hiding. The Russians have begin painting their tanks like barns and sheds but this only works in areas where there's little combat. In a major war, such as against China, the U.S. will simply conscript people but it will still have a delay of manufacturing new towed guns for them to use.

In a minor war, gunners might end up just getting popped by FPV drones from cartels or something.

Everything old is new again. Gabions came back as HESCO barriers and now towed guns are having a bit of a moment.
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What you say is largely true for Ukraine, but if we look at Ukraine, it is not a typical war at all. That is because the war in Ukraine is largely static, and that is something every western armed force should invest heavily to avoid.

In practice if the US was to fight somewhere, it would not be static due to the US's demonstrated superiorities. Same goes for some of its allies.
It is correct to anticipate attrition, but if one expects a frontline to be dynamic, then the platforms and weapons must also be mobile.

There's also the matter of the howitzer's part in an armed force's fires portfolio. It's diminishing, hence my "buzzwords" about potential alternative solutions.
You said it yourself - the crew of a manned howitzer is excessively large. The more sophisticated, the less crew is needed. But also the more it becomes dependent on a platform.
Closest thing I saw to a sophisticated towed gun is the Elbit ATHOS, which is huge and heavy and impractical.
 
Big_Zukini said:
What you say is largely true for Ukraine, but if we look at Ukraine, it is not a typical war at all.
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Literally nobody serious says this. Everyone is comparing Ukraine to 1973 or Desert Storm depending on what they want to achieve.

Big_Zukini said:
That is because the war in Ukraine is largely static, and that is something every western armed force should invest heavily to avoid.
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Then don't get involved in wars. Either you invest in an army that wins fights, and is large and well supplied, or you don't and you lose.

Big_Zukini said:
In practice if the US was to fight somewhere, it would not be static due to the US's demonstrated superiorities.
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Defeatist thinking like this is what DOD is presently fighting a winning battle against, however slowly, tbh. The idea that we can win a war of attrition is anathema after the psychological and moral damages caused by the post-Cold War U.S. Army (including Desert Storm) "victories" from Iraq to Bosnia and back again, but there are a few very brave people in DOD who put their careers on the line to say "yeah we can probably do it".

Big_Zukini said:
Same goes for some of its allies.
It is correct to anticipate attrition, but if one expects a frontline to be dynamic, then the platforms and weapons must also be mobile.
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The frontlines are not mobile. They are static. There is a large number of reasons to believe the U.S. Army would be ineffective in combat against a ground force like the PLAGF, and an equally large number of reasons to think the opposite, but none of the reasons in favor are because the U.S. Army is "maneuverist" and "mobile".

That's something people expect the Chinese or Iranians to be doing.

Our biggest issue is that we lack the capacity to produce weapons on the scale of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Our second biggest issue is that we think we need to be able to do this alone, because our allies are flaky in Ukraine, so they'll be flaky in the Pacific too.

Big_Zukini said:
You said it yourself - the crew of a manned howitzer is excessively large. The more sophisticated, the less crew is needed. But also the more it becomes dependent on a platform.
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I literally don't know what this means. It's a mechanical rammer and picker. One for shells, one for bags. This is incredibly basic, simple, foundational stuff. There is literally nothing in here that matters beyond "it's a new thing so it's scary" I guess?

Mechanization makes things simpler, not harder, to a point. In general, there is a lot to be mechanized in a howitzer literally dating back to the Korean War though. The idea that M109 is some magically mechanized automatic machine is actually insane thinking. It's a glorified M7 Priest. The Archer Artillery System would be significantly cheaper to operate than M109, if we replaced them with it, once we built up sufficient spare parts.

Big_Zukini said:
Closest thing I saw to a sophisticated towed gun is the Elbit ATHOS, which is huge and heavy and impractical.
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Nobody is considering ATHOS. NGH is between five vendors and most of them are going to roll out things already in production or previously proposed to DA. Archer, RCH 155/AGM, K9 are on the table. I forget the rest.
 
Big_Zukini said:
What you say is largely true for Ukraine, but if we look at Ukraine, it is not a typical war at all
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The war in Ukraine is a conflict between two Soviet oriented decaying armies, one has allies right up their tail like Vietnam and the other a sustainable demographic and MIC. As western trained and oriented forces account for a minimal fraction of all the world's armies, it's pretty representative of any future local conflict.
Big_Zukini said:
That is because the war in Ukraine is largely static, and that is something every western armed force should invest heavily to avoid.
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Peer to peer HIC would be inherently slow and the FLOT static, until a side gains total AirSup.
 
breakingdefense.com

Army launching self-propelled howitzer competition in mid-February, after globetrotting evaluation tour - Breaking Defense

Under the new plan, the service could potentially begin fielding a mix of self-propelled howitzers in 2030, according to Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean.
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com

If all goes as planned, that second round of downselects will occur in early FY27 ahead of initial fielding in the 2030 timeframe — but possibly with “multiple” self-propelled howitzer lines of effort, as the Army reexamines its force structure.
 
yeetmahboi said:
The war in Ukraine is a conflict between two Soviet oriented decaying armies, one has allies right up their tail like Vietnam and the other a sustainable demographic and MIC. As western trained and oriented forces account for a minimal fraction of all the world's armies, it's pretty representative of any future local conflict.

Peer to peer HIC would be inherently slow and the FLOT static, until a side gains total AirSup.
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Neither the US nor PRC have sufficient industrial advantage to gain air supremacy. It will be isolated and temporary pockets of air superiority, probably for limited offensives, and a general air parity over theater.

Analogous to Ukraine 2024 and Britain 1940.
 
I don't know whether any future fight for the US will be more or less static on the ground, or not. But I know I'd rather have a system that's mobile and doomed to take higher rates of attrition, than one that cannot participate in maneuver warfare as effectively.
When you have long, grinding, static warfare, you can make adjustments to make your force more efficient, but when you have an opportunity and can maneuver, you need a lot of things to come together to make it happen and I'd rather not have a piece of kit that's inherently prohibitive.

I do acknowledge some advantages of towed systems, but I think that overall if it takes a truck to slice a crew in half, that's worth doubling attrition.
 
Big_Zukini said:
I don't know whether any future fight for the US will be more or less static on the ground, or not. But I know I'd rather have a system that's mobile and doomed to take higher rates of attrition, than one that cannot participate in maneuver warfare as effectively.
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Then you're wrong and, thankfully, nobody listens to this kind of nonsense in DOD. There's going to be a very close industrial war, assuming we don't avoid the war outright, and we may very well lose that war. Maneuverism is dead, unless you fight an army that was already defeated, but this has always been the case, and the PLA is very much alive and able.

Taking higher loss rates for slightly better tactical and identical strategic mobility is how you lose against a demographically and industrially superior opponent.

Big_Zukini said:
When you have long, grinding, static warfare, you can make adjustments to make your force more efficient, but when you have an opportunity and can maneuver, you need a lot of things to come together to make it happen and I'd rather not have a piece of kit that's inherently prohibitive.
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Modern wars are attrition wars because nobody has the industrial capabilities, demographics, or sheer finances to actually conduct the kinds of buildup we saw in WW2. The USA and PRC are the British Empire and the Third Reich. There's no America out there in the world ready to bolster either side, unless space aliens show up. There are also issues with TTPs and such in dealing with drones. Nobody knows how to respond to them. It'll be a period of the French walking into machine guns for about a year or two.

Let's try to not make it worse and at least use Napoleonic skirmisher tactics as opposed to Napoleonic line tactics for our August 1914.

Big_Zukini said:
I do acknowledge some advantages of towed systems, but I think that overall if it takes a truck to slice a crew in half, that's worth doubling attrition.
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Then we lose to the PLA because they have more 17-44 year olds (the demographic share of people who were able to be brought into the Iraq War at the height of the surge) than the United States has an entire population. It's still very close, even accounting for ROC, Japan, Korea added into that whole population metric, too. Something like 450 million. Any war that causes us to lose a similar rate of people, or lose men instead of equipment, is a war we lose.

The ideal is actually a towed gun that has a crew of three but so far nobody has been able to perfect this holy grail of gunnery.

Very hard to kill and very hard to inflict casualties on crew, but also the crews are tiny, so even if they all die from an Excalibur or something it's not that big of a deal compared to a 7-9 man crew of an M777.
 
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Kat Tsun said:
Then you're wrong and, thankfully, nobody listens to this kind of nonsense in DOD.
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You mentioned NGH in your comment. Are you aware NGH calls for a self propelled howitzer? Has NGH been since altered and now calls for the so called "less vulnerable" towed howitzer?
Kat Tsun said:
There's going to be a very close industrial war, assuming we don't avoid the war outright, and we may very well lose that war. Maneuverism is dead, unless you fight an army that was already defeated, but this has always been the case, and the PLA is very much alive and able.
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The US fought countless wars since WW2. Can we really raise any example where maneuverism was "dead"?
The 1973 Yom Kippur War and ODS which you mentioned are both opposite cases of Ukraine. They were fast wars (weeks - months), without any well defined front line.
Kat Tsun said:
Then we lose to the PLA because they have more 17-44 year olds (the demographic share of people who were able to be brought into the Iraq War at the height of the surge) than the United States has an entire population. It's still very close, even accounting for ROC, Japan, Korea added into that whole population metric, too. Something like 450 million. Any war that causes us to lose a similar rate of people, or lose men instead of equipment, is a war we lose.
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Why are you bringing the PLA into a discussion about artillery?
Any realistic fight between the US and allies vs the Axis, would require little to no ground element involvement.
Particularly in the defense of Taiwan, who in their right mind would support a land invasion into China? In that case, a massive industrial ramp-up is assured.
Kat Tsun said:
The ideal is actually a towed gun that has a crew of three but so far nobody has been able to perfect this holy grail of gunnery.
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So you're proposing vaporware?
Kat Tsun said:
Very hard to kill and very hard to inflict casualties on crew, but also the crews are tiny, so even if they all die from an Excalibur or something it's not that big of a deal compared to a 7-9 man crew of an M777.
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Which is exactly why I'm rooting for the halved-crew self-propelled variants.
Basic wheeled SPH have a crew about as large as towed SPH, while more automated but larger ones have a typical crew of 0-4. That is, they can even be operated remotely to reduce exposed manpower.
 
I find it Hilarious that people are pointing to Ukraine for the use of Tow Artillery...


When all the damn studies point to the fact that tow crews have the highest attrition rates of the Artillery types.

The gun might survive a hit but the crews, the most important part...

Are not.

Hell Ukraine admits that shot and scoot tactics are what keeping the casualties for the Ceasars and like down.
 
Firefinder said:
I find it Hilarious that people are pointing to Ukraine for the use of Tow Artillery...


When all the damn studies point to the fact that tow crews have the highest attrition rates of the Artillery types.

The gun might survive a hit but the crews, the most important part...

Are not.

Hell Ukraine admits that shot and scoot tactics are what keeping the casualties for the Ceasars and like down.
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Can you please point me to recent stats on attrition rates for artillery and their crews? I didn't know such were publicly available.
 
defence-industry.eu

Leonardo DRS and KNDS partner to offer Combat-Proven CAESAR artillery system to U.S. Army

KNDS highlighted the system’s performance in Ukraine, where 120 CAESAR systems are currently deployed, as proof of its reliability and survivability in high-threat environments.
defence-industry.eu defence-industry.eu

www.elbitamerica.com

Mobile Tactical Cannon - Elbit America

The SIGMA Next-Gen. Mobile Tactical Cannon is American-made at Elbit America’s new facility in North Charleston, South Carolina. The system is based on a highly mobile 10x10 wheeled platform, paired with a fully automated 155mm, 52-caliber cannon, with a 40-round magazine in the turret.
www.elbitamerica.com www.elbitamerica.com

www.armyrecognition.com

AUSA 2025: Hanwha advances K9 MH Wheeled Howitzer as US Army reassesses artillery

Hanwha shows a wheeled K9A2 howitzer at AUSA 2025 in Washington, a truck-agnostic 155 mm option aligned with the Army’s post-ERCA path and trials expected
www.armyrecognition.com www.armyrecognition.com
 
Forest Green said:

Army reveals formal requirements for howitzer competition (EXCLUSIVE)​

breakingdefense.com

Army reveals formal requirements for howitzer competition (EXCLUSIVE) - Breaking Defense

The document, dated Oct. 20, and marked as controlled unclassified information, sheds additional light onto the Army's plans to host a new competition.
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com
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Armored yet mobile and transportable, built in the USA, and able to use US ammo.

Rhinemetall and Hanwha better find a production plant!
 
Scott Kenny said:
Armored yet mobile and transportable, built in the USA, and able to use US ammo.

Rhinemetall and Hanwha better find a production plant!
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I wouldn't narrow it down to just Hanwha. Some might read it and think they're talking about a tracked vehicle, but really even a wheeled vehicle can be seriously armored - depending on what they mean by that.

Do they mean armoring the crew compartment? If so, wheeled vehicles like 8x8/10x10 APCs are definitley viable.
And guns on trucks can potentially reach it depending on how much armor they're talking about.

They also talk about survivability through shoot and scoot, which might favor wheeled vehicles.
Guns on trucks like the Elbit SIGMA and Hanwha's K9 turret on wheels are less protected than an RCH on a Boxer or Piranha but are more stable and can thus reach higher speeds offroad and onroad with lower risk of overturning, and can generally better utilize nearby roads than tracked vehicles.

And the mobility is mentioned as a broad range of possibilities, not requirements. So if you can make something as compact and airmobile like an M142 HIMARS, that'd be amazing. But also if it's just sea-mobile and very road mobile that's also good. And if it's less road mobile but very offroad mobile and easily rail-mobile that's also very good.
I think that's a healthy approach. Too many programs were shut down because of restrictive mobility requirements based on decades-old logistical assets, instead of building a battle-optimized system and then a logistical framework around it. These two schools of thought should coexist and apply on a per case basis.

I don't think any of the competitors is thus automatically disqualified. And I think particularly some of the wheeled options can be downsized at least a bit if necessary.
 
The requirements document also includes a call for the new howitzer to be as heavily armored as the currently fielded M109A7.
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Huh???

I may be totally lost, but isn't the M109 using welded aluminium as "armor"? I wouldn't call that "heavily armored" and it certainly should be a low bar to clear for modern vehicles, even if add-on armor is necessary. Although one needs to seriously question the need for heavy armor on an SPG that's supposed to be far away from the line of contact. If it's about drones and loitering munitions, active protection systems and electronic countermeasures seem more weight efficient and arguably more efficient overall.
 
I could be mistaken but I think the M109A6 introduced some improvements to survivability versus the minimum of armor the earlier M109s provided. Still nothing impressive but better than nothing while the XM2001 was in development (at the time, RIP Crusader).

For a tracked design I think the option for enhanced top-armor like the PzH-2000 has would be a good thing. You can't armor it enough survive a modern anti-armor PGM, but maybe well enough to shrug off a hit from a stray DPICM bomblet or cheap kamikaze drone that somehow made it past everything.

As for wheeled designs, the main benefits of those seem to be transportability and mobility and keeping those advantages doesn't leave much room for better armor. Protection against shell fragments would probably have to be good enough.
 
The Big Question for Track vs Wheel is WHERE you want the mobility these days

Track wins hands down in off road, 110 years of experience shows that.

Wheels on the other hand give you speed on roads and hard surface terrain, as seen by the Fun Russia has had trying to smack Himars.

Which roads become increasing common but they do give away you likely route to the enemy. Double edge sword there. And the more maintenance and slower speed of tracks is similar.

Simplified but that is the major jist of it.


So it is something that no matter which is pick. It going argued over by keyboard experts, actual soldiers, and dozens of other people til AFTER the next one.
 
With Boxer you could get both, get the 155mm gun module and an equal number of wheeled and tracked hulls, unless the wheeled/tracked versions have different dimensions for the module payloads.
 
Colonial-Marine said:
You can't armor it enough survive a modern anti-armor PGM,
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You can, actually. Because ideally these heavily armoured SPGs would be used in maneuver centric operations that would have entire regions blanketed with jamming and smokes, that would turn "just hide in the trench, there's no saving the gun" to "we can run past this field of fires".

Just stick armour boxes on it.
 
yeetmahboi said:
You can, actually. Because ideally these heavily armoured SPGs would be used in maneuver centric operations that would have entire regions blanketed with jamming and smokes, that would turn "just hide in the trench, there's no saving the gun" to "we can run past this field of fires".

Just stick armour boxes on it.
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You can't without dramatically increasing weight and thus stress on chassis components and power train, as well as increasing fuel consumption.

If your SPG has to be heavily armored to be effective in it's role, something went fundamentally wrong a long while ago because you accidentally developed an MBT.
 
Armor protection for SPH always went between "we can stop a fragment from this distance" to "we can stop a fragment from that distance".
 
I still think the optimal answer for top attack munitions of whatever flavor is an APS, not steel plates or even ERA.
 
Big_Zukini said:
I wouldn't narrow it down to just Hanwha. Some might read it and think they're talking about a tracked vehicle, but really even a wheeled vehicle can be seriously armored - depending on what they mean by that.

Do they mean armoring the crew compartment? If so, wheeled vehicles like 8x8/10x10 APCs are definitley viable.
And guns on trucks can potentially reach it depending on how much armor they're talking about.

They also talk about survivability through shoot and scoot, which might favor wheeled vehicles.
Guns on trucks like the Elbit SIGMA and Hanwha's K9 turret on wheels are less protected than an RCH on a Boxer or Piranha but are more stable and can thus reach higher speeds offroad and onroad with lower risk of overturning, and can generally better utilize nearby roads than tracked vehicles.

And the mobility is mentioned as a broad range of possibilities, not requirements. So if you can make something as compact and airmobile like an M142 HIMARS, that'd be amazing. But also if it's just sea-mobile and very road mobile that's also good. And if it's less road mobile but very offroad mobile and easily rail-mobile that's also very good.
I think that's a healthy approach. Too many programs were shut down because of restrictive mobility requirements based on decades-old logistical assets, instead of building a battle-optimized system and then a logistical framework around it. These two schools of thought should coexist and apply on a per case basis.

I don't think any of the competitors is thus automatically disqualified. And I think particularly some of the wheeled options can be downsized at least a bit if necessary.
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I was mostly meaning that the foreign producers need a factory here.

I do think that the K9 is the best SPG in the world right now, but that won't win it the contract without local production.
 
EmoBirb said:
You can't without dramatically increasing weight and thus stress on chassis components and power train, as well as increasing fuel consumption.

If your SPG has to be heavily armored to be effective in it's role, something went fundamentally wrong a long while ago because you accidentally developed an MBT.
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Except what Crusader and NLOS-C and 2S38 showed that this is the way forward of the top end.

Attrition warfare isn't everything. Once you've amassed enough tiny breakthroughs and broken the enemy resolve to hold positions, a large operation is needed to bring all that together and roll up the frontline. That's the thinking behind Penetration Division and what's happening in Pokrovsk right now.

Even in Ukraine we are seeing a copycat Assault Breaker concept being utilized to hit the lightly armoured BMPs in transit with mass drone attacks to bypass the forward AD. If the Army thinks it will fight a peer opponent it has to come up with strategies to shatter a defense of 5th gen DCA with SDBs long range artillery and dispersed drone controllers. Which is why CAS is still relevant and so is heavy, specialized armour. These big SPGs are getting spotted and hit while on the move, anywhere from "plinked by Su-57s" to "gettinf swarmed while escorting IFVs" and that means armour to tank the general supermolten copper jet and over pressure.
 
I think you meant 2S35, 2S38 is a SPAAG.

That aside, if current trends are anything to go by, then increased tactical mobility is favored heavily over increasing armor. With the number of proposed and in service, truck based or generally wheeled SPGs having sharply increased over the years. RCH 155 is the cream of the crop example, while Malva and Bohdana are simpler and far cheaper examples of that trend, with Caesar and Archer falling somewhere in between.

Such systems are able to set up position quickly, fire and reposition. They're harder to discern than tracked SPGs, they can move quickly on roads, are less maintenance intensive and could be considered cheaper. RCH 155 can allegedly even fire on the move.

Heavier armor would negate these advantages and would also trouble tracked SPGs. Even MBTs struggle with certain warheads flying around, and these vehicles were designed for heavy duty frontline action. SPGs were always softer, because they can keep their distance. Now, the distance does not keep them safe, but trying to turn them into armored pillboxes wouldn't change that. Instead active protection systems like hard kill systems, close in weapon stations or electronic countermeasures are light weight solutions to address the issue and could even be retrofitted to existing SPG systems. Trying to create an SPG that can shrug off modern anti-tank munitions would lead down a road reminiscent of late WW2 "super tanks" from Germany, where you have a heavily armored but sluggish and thus actually rather vulnerable behemoth.

It's like proposing to introduce heavy composite and steel armor as well as ERA on fighter jets or bombers because they could perhaps be hit by something on the runway. Ideally they just don't, and the same applies for SPGs. If it still happens, that's shitty but usually shouldn't be the norm and additional protective measures like the ones I mentioned above can already greatly increase survivability.

Ultimately I doubt the US will field an SPG in the future that seriously armored. It will be the usual "able to shrug off shrapnel and light autocannon rounds" kind of stuff.
 
EmoBirb said:
Huh???

I may be totally lost, but isn't the M109 using welded aluminium as "armor"? I wouldn't call that "heavily armored" and it certainly should be a low bar to clear for modern vehicles, even if add-on armor is necessary. Although one needs to seriously question the need for heavy armor on an SPG that's supposed to be far away from the line of contact. If it's about drones and loitering munitions, active protection systems and electronic countermeasures seem more weight efficient and arguably more efficient overall.
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Aluminum works reasonably well as armor versus small arms and shell splinters.

An SPG that can take anything but a direct hit from a 155mm shell is probably what we're going to see in terms of passive armor, IMO. Shell splinters at 5m, plus APS for top attack threats like DPICM, drones, loitering munitions, and ATGMs.
 

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