Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: MillCreek on February 23, 2017, 10:19:28 AM
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http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2017/02/time-military-paid-anti-aircraft-gun-locked-onto-toilets/
Another shining moment in military procurement history.
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Your tax dollars at work: The Sargent York system
Are we talking about your public skool edjoocashin? :P
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The Bofors L70 40x365mm ammunition was pretty bad-ass though. You can still find the projectiles around as they all got surplused out. The nicer ones have a dummy nose on them.
The shell itself had a mini-radar proximity fuse, filled with HE, and the shell body has a bunch of stacked tungsten beads inside.
http://www.gunbroker.com/item/623634553
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Are we talking about your public skool edjoocashin? :P
Interesting how Chrome autocorrected to that. Google must be a fan of John Singer Sargent, the portrait painter.
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The Bofors L70 40x365mm ammunition was pretty bad-ass though. You can still find the projectiles around as they all got surplused out. The nicer ones have a dummy nose on them.
The shell itself had a mini-radar proximity fuse, filled with HE, and the shell body has a bunch of stacked tungsten beads inside.
http://www.gunbroker.com/item/623634553
I'll pass this on to some of my Air Defender (aka "Duck Hunters"), see if they want a keepsake for this failed system. They took a lot of grief for not having a good SHORAD system while the Abrams, Bradleys and Apaches were being deployed to USAREUR units.
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I recall seeing this mentioned in news reports as a kid. I was unclear on whether the entire concept was unworkable or if it was just Ford didn't know how to do it.
I was also curious if anyone was sure the Soviet system actually functioned as claimed. If theirs had taken out a latrine or set of bleachers, would anyone blink an eye?
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I recall seeing this mentioned in news reports as a kid. I was unclear on whether the entire concept was unworkable or if it was just Ford didn't know how to do it.
I was also curious if anyone was sure the Soviet system actually functioned as claimed. If theirs had taken out a latrine or set of bleachers, would anyone blink an eye?
Radar and targeting was not great. But if it did hit you... Well, it would be a quick end.
Not useful against aircraft with a long standoff range. Helicopters and stuff like the A10? Devastating.
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I recall seeing this mentioned in news reports as a kid. I was unclear on whether the entire concept was unworkable or if it was just Ford didn't know how to do it.
I was also curious if anyone was sure the Soviet system actually functioned as claimed. If theirs had taken out a latrine or set of bleachers, would anyone blink an eye?
The tech just wasn't quite there yet. The 1 Gen Apaches didn't have the Longbow Radar (until 1993ish). Tactics at that time still required a Kiowa to serve as "Spotter" for several Apaches. Kiowas had laser designators for Hellfire missiles, and since they are tiny, they were much harder to spot.
And the capability of the ZSU 23-4 was somewhat overrated. You know, what with commies back then being 10 feet tall and everything.
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I recall seeing this mentioned in news reports as a kid. I was unclear on whether the entire concept was unworkable or if it was just Ford didn't know how to do it.
I was also curious if anyone was sure the Soviet system actually functioned as claimed. If theirs had taken out a latrine or set of bleachers, would anyone blink an eye?
Well, I'm not some military strategy guru, nor did I sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I got the sense that even by the late 70's if enemy air assets got close enough, even in a full on engagement with a top tier power like the former Soviet Union, that we could effectively use a cannon or "bullet" system vs. missiles or just air power directly, we dun goofed.
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The tech just wasn't quite there yet. The 1 Gen Apaches didn't have the Longbow Radar (until 1993ish). Tactics at that time still required a Kiowa to serve as "Spotter" for several Apaches. Kiowas had laser designators for Hellfire missiles, and since they are tiny, they were much harder to spot.
And the capability of the ZSU 23-4 was somewhat overrated. You know, what with commies back then being 10 feet tall and everything.
23-4 was overrated, and a death trap as the armor was on par with a M113. It'd still murder the hell out of early Apaches if they were caught in the open. UH60's? One 23-4 could slaughter a bunch of them in a hurry under the right/wrong circumstances.
Tunguskas aren't something I'd sneeze at. At all. It's a Phalanx on tracks with missile backups. Pantsir-S1s are too new for me to know much about them. Missile truck, essentially.
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It strikes me as a system that could be great in defense if a group of them could sit on aircraft approaches. If it was moving into an area behind a screen of tanks or if the tanks were engaged with other ground assets, it would be more difficult to pick out low targets.
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So what are the current US ground air defense systems? Is the Avenger pretty much it, and is that still in the inventory any more? I remember when Boeing was building those 30 years ago or so.
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stingers, avengers, and patriots are it.
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So what are the current US ground air defense systems? Is the Avenger pretty much it, and is that still in the inventory any more? I remember when Boeing was building those 30 years ago or so.
We're been lacking ADA for a long time now.
Avenger is very low capacity. 4 or 8 shots. It uses the same missile as the man portable Stinger launcher. It can also be mounted on a Bradley as well. The E model isn't bad, but it's only meant to be used against helicopters, light and low aircraft, allegedly drones, etc.
Patriots are for real aircraft and incoming missiles. It's a pretty good missile battery, but slightly expensive because each missile is pretty sophisticated.
THAAD is for ballistic missiles. It's done ok in tests, but hasn't seen hostile deployment so anyone's guess.
We're actually not lacking in any tech or capacity. They're just stingy as hell in handing out ADA.
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We're actually not lacking in any tech or capacity. They're just stingy as hell in handing out ADA.
I would guess that has to do with the fact that we've not fought any ground battles without complete air dominance in 60+ years?
(I'm of course not saying we shouldn't be developing air defense artillery because that can obviously change.)
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I would guess that has to do with the fact that we've not fought any ground battles without complete air dominance in 60+ years?
(I'm of course not saying we shouldn't be developing air defense artillery because that can obviously change.)
Concur. I'd still develop something between the Stinger and Patriot. Ideally something large enough to take out aircraft, small enough to be vehicle mounted. Reason being, someday rail guns and lasers may get powerful enough to make current aircraft hazardous. Drones will always be around and not necessarily small either. Predator drones or similar can fly higher than Stinger range, and a hellfire analog will toast an armored vehicle.
Problem may be quick launched drones or missiles. That's within the tech capacity of commercial drones with explosives attached. Ideally a bolt on laser package would be ideal, but we're still a bit away from that for field use.
The Tunguska fits the bill nicely. Guns for helicopters, missiles for planes or helicopters over the horizon. Good radar and computer fire control would make it handy against drones as well.
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I think part of the issue is missiles that can go up and get aircraft that are standing off are not small.
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Concur. I'd still develop something between the Stinger and Patriot. Ideally something large enough to take out aircraft, small enough to be vehicle mounted. Reason being, someday rail guns and lasers may get powerful enough to make current aircraft hazardous. Drones will always be around and not necessarily small either. Predator drones or similar can fly higher than Stinger range, and a hellfire analog will toast an armored vehicle.
Problem may be quick launched drones or missiles. That's within the tech capacity of commercial drones with explosives attached. Ideally a bolt on laser package would be ideal, but we're still a bit away from that for field use.
The Tunguska fits the bill nicely. Guns for helicopters, missiles for planes or helicopters over the horizon. Good radar and computer fire control would make it handy against drones as well.
Thinking this through, we may just have to wait for railguns, small EFP smart munitions, think like something similar to the CBU-97, but fires "up", or the 10+kW solid state laser systems. If the worry is conventional aircraft, we have the advantage of "throwing money a the problem" with the larger theater sized systems like Patriot, than the mobile ones. And it seems that with second and third-tier powers eventually getting and fielding drone tech that's bridging the gap between military drones and higher end commercial stuff, any missile may not be a good choice to hit one, and they'll have the ability to fly nap-of-the-earth to the nth degree, due to zero safety concerns for a pilot. And a gun system still might not see one in time, so something all optical, and directed energy might be the only thing that has the needed response time.
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I know little of this, but I know CIWS techs that did Baghdad deployments where ground based CIWS were smoking incoming mortar fire. Mount the damn things on a tank chassis. Heck, mate the radar to an Abrams chassis and a GAU-8. Will the tank carry a twin GAU-8? Be kinda entertaining if the guns would depress for direct ground fire too.
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I know little of this, but I know CIWS techs that did Baghdad deployments where ground based CIWS were smoking incoming mortar fire. Mount the damn things on a tank chassis. Heck, mate the radar to an Abrams chassis and a GAU-8. Will the tank carry a twin GAU-8? Be kinda entertaining if the guns would depress for direct ground fire too.
What's the ammo load for sustained CIWS engagement? Seems like that could be a limiting factor.
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What's the ammo load for sustained CIWS engagement? Seems like that could be a limiting factor.
A naval CIWS generally has about 20 seconds of ammo, ~1500 rounds@4500rpm.
That said, it doesn't normally need to fire 20 seconds against a target. The system stops shooting when the target reads as no longer a threat on radar. For a mortar round, that's probably 'blown up', but even a hit that knocks it off course so that it's no longer on a trajectory that threatens to impact the protected area can cause the CIWS to stop considering it a target and move to the next.
But yeah, manage to get a dozen mortar rounds on simultaneous incoming trajectories and the CIWS system probably won't be able to stop all of them. Even if you can't, a dozen mortar rounds will probably exhaust the ammo and let the next ones through until somebody manages to reload the thing. I can't find a reload time figure for the US Phalanx system, but the Dutch Goalkeeper, which uses 30mm rounds vs Phalanx's 20mm, takes 9 minutes to reload below deck.
However, if you think about it for a moment, there's a large, large difference between lobbing a mortar or two at a base and launching a dozen synchronized. You then have the "problem" that the less synchronized your launches are, the more that the system can handle, and since it'll be nailing the ones that would hit first, that enables the people on the base(the true targets), to get under better cover before any manage to hit to do damage.
For that matter, while you might be able to move a couple tubes without being seen, moving a dozen is more likely to be spotted, and again, that enables the personnel to get under cover. So the system, even limited, drastically increases the costs of successfully attacking the base.
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http://www.aparat.com/v/ro75v/C-RAM_weapon_system_being_used_in_Iraq
I guess this is the ground based system. It seems to me they wouldn't have to use 20mm shells for things like mortars, but I figure a hit from just one would take out most anything. I guess 20mm would also have the range to reach out and hit incoming at a greater distance.
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From what I have heard, the enemy liked to set up somewhere and fire a few mortar rounds then run off. Even a limited capability would knock down the random mortar shots. If they were to keep firing until the ammo of the CIWS is expended, the radar should be able to track the location of the mortars and take them out or direct patrols to them. Maybe I am assuming too much capability.
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I know little of this, but I know CIWS techs that did Baghdad deployments where ground based CIWS were smoking incoming mortar fire. Mount the damn things on a tank chassis. Heck, mate the radar to an Abrams chassis and a GAU-8. Will the tank carry a twin GAU-8? Be kinda entertaining if the guns would depress for direct ground fire too.
I believe the CIWS relies on pretty powerful radar...that's the limiting factor for mounting it on a vehicle I'd bet.
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http://www.aparat.com/v/ro75v/C-RAM_weapon_system_being_used_in_Iraq
I guess this is the ground based system. It seems to me they wouldn't have to use 20mm shells for things like mortars, but I figure a hit from just one would take out most anything. I guess 20mm would also have the range to reach out and hit incoming at a greater distance.
Hmm... 1-3 seconds per fire. About a dozen mortars per ammo load might be a touch high.
20mm is indeed more for range than for increased punch, though you do want the ability to punch through fairly thick steel, just to ensure a kill.
As for insurgent tactics - that was indeed where it was at - shoot & scoot, sometimes using disposable mortar rounds, because they're very much on a clock for US forces to backtrack the mortar launch and counterfire or deploy troops to catch them.
Which is why something that can knock down even a couple rounds is very much a game changer for them, because now they have to do much larger operations in order to even hope to get a hit, and they're running on shoestrings as is. Which means fewer operations, fewer successes to advertise for more funds with, etc...
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Thats some funny *expletive deleted*it right there.