2S43 "Malva" 152-mm SP howitzer

A larger calibre rocket will need more fuel.

A larger calibre rocket would carry more fuel for any given length, but rather less fuel than a smaller calibre rocket would need if you made it 3m longer to carry the extra fuel needed to get the extra range.

The larger calibre rocket with the same warheads as the smaller calibre rockets can be the same length and reach further, but I would agree that simply making the smaller calibre rocket longer and carrying more fuel would be the easier solution.

The early model 300mm Smerch rockets were 800kgs and could hit targets at 70km range. They replaced them with upgraded models that were 815kgs so 15kgs heavier, with a range of 90km. If they wanted rockets will 200km range then make them 1.3 tons each and they should be just fine... 500kgs of extra fuel per rocket would give the extra range needed... but the problem is that you wont be firing massive salvos of rockets at targets at that range very often.

They did have a system where one rocket was guided and the other rockets in the salvo were programmed to follow the leader, but I suspect most of the time you don't want accurate artillery rockets because artillery rockets are intended for hitting soft area targets where you might not know where each individual person is located... you just know they will be crossing this field when your rockets arrive so spread the rockets out evenly around this point of aim at this time for best effect...

The early model Smerch rockets had autogyros which stabilised their flight... it is not the same as guidance, but it countered crosswinds and other problems and led to the groupings being nicely close together, leading to better coverage of the area you are hitting.... no blind spots.

You are missing the point.

Malva is on a truck for mobility and speed... it is supposed to operate just behind friendly lines and is intended to hit enemy lines and the areas just behind enemy lines.

It is on a truck because it needs to be cheap and because it is cheap it will be used in large numbers, which means a lot of 152mm shells landing on enemy positions and then they move.

They don't need these vehicles to hit targets 60km away... they will have coalition vehicles attached to armoured formations for that role for counter battery fire.

Malva is a cheap numbers vehicle to increase the density of fire with a cheap vehicle they can buy in numbers that will be cheap to operate and mobile... able to move around the place to evade return fire or drone attack.

The tracked 152mm artillery and the 203mm artillery will be shooting at targets deep behind enemy lines with 80km ranged and 50km ranged shells.

Malva will be hammering enemy positions and any reserve troops the enemy might have that they are moving up to support their positions.... mobility to evade return fire and drones and good rate of fire and low cost is what they need.

(Not having the new guns and the new ammo will make them cheaper to buy and operate and support.)

If range is everything in artillery then I suppose mortars are superfluous then.

Even heavy caliber 120 mm mortar fire rarely exceeds 7km range in most cases. They don't even move. Supposing enemy counter-battery fire is that effective as you imply, this should mean the entire cadre of Russian mortarmen should be rendered extinct by now.

They're not. Mortars shoot at rates not worse than their longer ranged howitzer cousins.

This tells us enemy counter-battery is not that effective and that there is room for shorter ranged fire support like the 2S43 Malva.

When the Israelis copied the 122mm Grad rocket they actually changed the design... they made the warhead heavier and more powerful but the obvious consequence of that was a shorter range.

Artillery needs to reach the target but is generally mobile and will move to a position where it can hit its target from... fire... and then move away before counter battery fire arrives. If you have shorter range it doesn't mean he hits you and you can't hit him... both sides have thousands of targets... hundreds of thousands of targets on a battlefield and there is value in hitting most of them.

Drones have proven no where is safe on a modern battlefield so no level of range will actually make your artillery safe.

Having a gun that can fire extremely large distances means a very expensive very high tech gun made of exotic materials to resist the high pressures of firing heavy shells great distances... you spend more in propellent and you get more recoil and for what? An enemy special forces team operating behind your lines can still take you out with an RPG-18 or original LAW.

And I would add that mortars are the most devastating artillery on the battlefield... light and portable and their shells come in nearly vertically so with the side walls of the mortar bombs generating the fragments you get a nice even dense spread of shrapnel in a nice even circle making sure everyone nearby gets hit.

Mortars like the Vasilek are particularly dangerous.... roll up and position the gun... put in a four round 82mm mortar clip and fire one round... look at the screen showing the video feed from the drone or forward observer and correct your fire and then fire the remaining 3 mortar bombs in less than 2 seconds... load a second clip and fire four more rounds and then lift the gun back onto its wheels and you are gone... it can all be done in less than 2 minutes...

Vehicle based systems can fire from a stop and drive away immediately too, with a stabilised and computer aimed gun...

I think I read they have new 6km ranged 82mm mortar rounds for their 82mm mortars and also for vasilek... they can also use HATO 81mm mortar bombs if they need to.

The 120mm gun/mortars are even better with four times more HE.

And the 160mm mortars used by mountain troops fires HE bombs 40kgs in weight, while the 130kg mortar bombs of the 240mm mortars are amazing... they look like air delivered bombs when you see them.

The super long range European guns are wearing out their gun barrels and their vehicles are falling apart when the Orcs try to shoot more than 100 shots per day... that is partly because of the higher pressures to get the extra range.

It is not just a case of making the barrel a bit longer... when you design ammo you make the propellant to suit the barrel length so if you have long range ammo and you put it in a short barrel gun it probably wont go as far as standard ammo unless it gets part of its extra range with a lighter projectile.

A short barrel means the propellent doesn't get a chance to fully burn and the projectile is out of the barrel before peak pressure is achieved.

Peak pressure is what accelerates the shell down the barrel the fastest and gives you your range.

BTW the 30mm 2A42 cannon on the BMP-2 is an L/80.

Longer barrels are heavier and harder to make and don't last as long because they maintain pressure for longer in the chamber and the start of the barrel... which means the rifling wears out faster and it therefore loses accuracy faster and it costs more.

When driving around the place a very long barrel is a pain in the arse... forget World of Tanks and War Thunder.... a long barrel does not just phase through building or a tree when you are driving and turning in built up or forested areas... that damages the barrel and can make you miss everything you aim at and you will need to drive all the way back to a rear area for repairs... which most of the time means a barrel replacement... which does not take 5 seconds or 40 seconds... and all this time you are useless to the units you are supposed to be supporting.

It is like with sniper rifles... why don't sniper rifles have 2 metre long barrels?

Because it would be too heavy and too awkward to carry around, and too prone to damage, and would make aiming and switching between targets a pain.

But it would increase muzzle velocity so the bullet is effective to greater ranges.

If you want excessive range then use artillery rockets... they can already hit targets at massive ranges.

With guided shells and for use against point targets where massive range is useful I am sure they can make some subcalibre small HE rounds with guidance to hit individual vehicles at enormous ranges, but most ammo wont need to reach that far.

Most targets accuracy does not matter as much as volume in the shortest space of time... an again a volley of simple cheap dumb rockets often does the best job here too.

Would like to see them do to the 203mm gun what they have done with the 152mm gun, including using the same propellant bag types.

With aerodynamic redesign and new propellant and other refinements the 203mm gun would be rather useful both on land for the Army but also at sea for the Navy.

They could use 152mm guns in their new destroyers and 203mm guns for their new cruisers. They could also use a mix of 152mm and 203mm guns for their coastal batteries.

At the moment the Bereg is 130mm and has a tiny shell with very unimpressive shooting range.

Even just a Coalition vehicle would massively improve range and accuracy and the payload weight of each shell.

The weight of the shells means assisted loading is the bare minimum and autoloading probably a reasonable requirement.

In terms of autoloading the projectiles are not double the calibre and double the length of 152mm shells so the Coalition turret could be scaled up to suit.

If they can get the range up to 180km as they hope for the 152mm rounds then 250km is not unreasonable for the 203mm... of course extra range can hurt.

Range comes from shell weight and muzzle velocity and aerodynamic shape.

A well designed low drag round extends the range quite a bit but low drag often means longer and pointier which reduces the internal volume for HE payload.

Extra range can also be achieved by reducing the shell weight to make it lighter so it can be fired at a higher muzzle velocity.

And extra range can also be achieved with a longer heavier more expensive barrel and more propellant which reduces the life of the barrel.

The simplest solution would be to take a 152mm shell with its optimised aerodynamic shape and put it in a sabot and fire it in a 203mm gun... the round is already guided and low drag and the much larger propellant load of the 203mm gun will have it leaving the barrel at much higher velocities... much the same as an APFSDS round from a tank gun could achieve enormous range if you could fire it up high into the air because its low drag and high muzzle velocity because it is only 7kgs while the normal 125mm HE shells are about 20kgs.

Of course all the things they did to a 152mm shell they could do to the 203mm shell to improve its performance... but another aspect is adding propulsion.

A 152mm shell is about 50kgs, so you could add a nose mounted ramjet engine with 10kgs of fuel and still have maybe 30kg of HEFRAG payload left... which is pretty good.

10kgs of fuel could run the ramjet for a minute or two which could be used to totally counter drag completely so the round will maintain muzzle velocity for several minutes into the flight making a huge increase in range.

The point is that with a 203mm shell you are working with a 110kg shell so there is more scope for improved flight range while retaining a decent amount of payload.

Control surfaces inside the ramjet engine exhaust... thrust vectoring... would allow a very low drag way of manouvering the shell that would be more effective than conventional fins which would create drag and reduce the flight range of the round.

Such vehicles are cheaper to operate and with better mobility on roads, so you can have rather more vehicles roaming around.

Their electronics should be to the level where rather than lining them up wheel hub to wheel hub and firing together at a designated target they can be dispersed around the rear area of your frontline all able to pop out of cover and fire a few rounds at various targets and then drive back into cover and hide.

Unlike the orcs the Russians want to soften targets before they assault them which means firing a few shots at civilian targets from max range and then hiding is just not going to cut it.

These vehicles will likely fire off their available rounds (about 30 I think) and then reload. Whether they fire them all off in one barrage or if they move and fire from several locations and then go and reload will depend on the local situation I suspect.

The purpose of this vehicle is to increase the number of barrels delivering shells to the target in the fastest possible time.

Having more guns means sustained fire for very long periods is no longer needed to get shells on target.

This means they spend less time firing and more time moving.

Its pathetic how Western sources just simply assign poor range data (24 - 29 km) on Russian systems based on questionable NATO sourced info while overhyping the range (40 - 55 km) of comparable NATO systems, this is another brazen attempt to give people the impression that Russian tech is inferior to the West

They are very different systems. The French system is expensive and fragile and is designed as a sniper rifle to hit specific targets and to then run away and hide.

The Russian system is a way of having more guns without spending too much on tracked vehicles, and allowing a much higher rate of fire and volume of fire on the target with a mobile and cheap system.

If they wanted something expensive and super long range there is no reason why they couldn't have put Coalitions gun on this vehicle, but they didn't need the extra range because it wont be used for counter battery fire and other exotic uses.

It is to support Russian troops on the front line, there is no reason to reach deep into their rear areas with this system... Smerch and Coalition and Hermes can do that better and cheaper and more cost effectively.

Conversely using Western systems to support your troops is a waste of time... they break if you try to fire more than 100 rounds a day... at a time when Russian guns will be firing more than 100 rounds an hour.