Russian military intervention and aid to Syria #14

JohninMK wrote:Is this a real Russian Army unit? Moving in to get some live target practice? What is the camouflage?


ZOKA
@200_zoka
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Msta B M5

There was a battalion there at one time basically to utilize the Krasnodar guided rounds.

Have read reports suggesting towed guns are actually more flexible and mobile and are certainly cheaper and lighter than self propelled guns.

You can also load it with any type of ammo because there are no autoloader restrictions on shell or propellent length.

Well there are degrees... the D-30 howitzer is an excellent piece with three trails that are fixed at 120 degrees from each other giving the gun a full 360 degree field of fire... it takes longer to set up but once in place it does not matter which direction the gun needs to fire it is ready to shoot in any direction. The cost is that it takes slightly longer to put in position and to move... but most of their other guns like the one pictured have no such problems and can be set up and moved pretty quickly... they are smaller and lighter and fairly easy to move and to operate.... and they get the job done.

In fact the Vasilek 82mm mortar could move in to position... fire off 20 rounds and be gone in less than 2 minutes... and it is a towed weapon...

Towed weapons are smaller, lighter, cheaper, and often much more mobile... and they fire the same ammo the expensive SPA vehicles fire.

To be clear fitting a twin barrel 23mm cannon or a twin 14.5mm HMG on the back of a truck is one thing, but any sort of cannon as in artillery piece simply can't be realistically placed on a standard truck and fired... the best you could probably manage is a 120mm mortar.

There was a 122mm gun fitted to the rear of a truck shown a while back but was something structurally attached by design rather than a 122mm gun sitting on the back of a flatbed...

They fit 82mm mortars to Tigrs of course and a 120mm mortar might be possible too but such mounts would require serious structural reinforcement... basically custom design and likely some restrictions as to the angles it can safely fire without flipping the vehicle.

Yeah, you could probably put all sorts of weapons on the back of a truck and fire a few rounds no problem... but I would suggest the bigger guns like 152mm will be generating levels of recoil those truck chassis and suspensions were never designed to cope with.

The mechanism on the back appears to be much like the classic spade recoil absorber fitted to some artillery vehicles... which also suggests the recoil is too much for the chassis...

Another factor is that with a towed gun when you are not using the gun you can use the truck for other things, but when you are using the truck to tow the gun you can carry the ammo and the crew for the gun on the truck, whereas this vehicle mounted weapon requires an armoured cab to fire the gun in a forward direction... I doubt it could fire in any other direction...

The Russians reported their experience in Syria and they specifically said towed guns are useful and that a truck or wheeled vehicle mounted gun is not better than towed guns.

I had long discussions with Eehnie who believed there was a direct evolution... from towed to self propelled... so you start with ZU-23 twin barrel gun mounts and to upgrade them you mount them on vehicles or replace them with ZSU-23-4.

The reality is that some times towed weapons are actually superior... in Afghanistan the Soviets used 23mm cannon in their bases half way up mountains where a ZSU-23-4 had no chance of reaching and no helicopter could deliver them to.

The Army of Russia needs to be able to fight a wide variety of conflicts against a wide variety of enemies in a variety of different locations and situations.

The Russian military have to do their job no matter what the situation... they can't say... whoa... we can't go in to South Ossetia and save them from Georgian aggression because Georgia is not a HATO country and this wont be WWIII...

The conflict in Chechnia used a lot of Russian military equipment even if officially it was an MVD/internal security mission...

The Russian military needs to be ready for anything and need to be able to use what works... they are testing things in the real world and have decided that towed artillery pieces make sense... keeping the piece separate from the truck means the truck can deliver a towed gun to a position and then leave it there, or it can remain nearby ready to move if needed...

The Russian military has shown models of the Coalition on a tracked chassis and on a truck chassis but they have talked about towed guns being useful too.

I am not going to tell them they don't know what they are talking about...

US also thought all those MRAPs were more than good when fighting taliban but now that China and Russia became more powerfull they find out the MRAPs suck and need replacement.

Yeah, but the difference there is that they were using Humvees as troop transport and decided to change to proper MRAPs because Humvees are not armoured vehicles they are just fucking heavy big jeeps. They ended up replacing BMPs and BTRs with MRAPs... Russia never did that... they produced MRAPs and patrol vehicle replacements for Jeeps... their plans for new military vehicles do not include MRAPs.

Their MRAPs are Tigrs which they might be using in the mobile ATGM vehicle role but not troop transport.

Russians are not smarter than US generals and could make the same mistake.

They haven't made the same mistake, their plans for BMP and BTR replacements don't include MRAPs for full on WWIII type conflicts.

The only vehicles they have that could be called COIN type vehicles would be the light Typhoon range along with the Tigrs etc and they are not intended for mass production for proper real war situations... more like support and effectively peacemaking ops like in Syria.

For exemple the pantsir was develop to fight swarm tomahawks attack but not small and slow drones.

Small slow drones have only become a problem over the last decade.... and it is adapting to cope.

Hence why it has troubles fighting drones.

But it isn't having troubles fighting drones... reports of drones being shot down outside Russian air bases in Syria suggest it is the drones having the problems...

In Saudi Arabia drones and cruise missiles all got through an air defence that spent a lot of money on state of the art western air defence equiment and systems... a failure of radar and sensors as well as IADS management systems for sure.

They didn't even see it coming.

They were focused on fighting US so they developed weapons against them. Now they are focused fighting terrorists and could develop weapons against them that would suck against a conventional army.

They ARE focussed on fighting HATO and the weapons they are developing for use in Syria can broadly also be used against HATO because most of the drones and other equipment the terrorists are supplied with is coming from HATO and Israel anyway.

A truck mounted gun can be used against guerillas and conventional army. The towed gun would be destroyed in matters of minutes by conventional army armed with 155mm truck mounted guns.

So you are claiming that any fixed position will be destroyed by artillery immediately but put it on wheels and it becomes safe?

Really?

HATO has lots of drones armed with weapons to engage targets as they see them.... whether moving or stationary... yet having a towed gun positioned out of line of sight from enemy forces firing at targets identified by drone or other means passing coordinates for targets to the towed gun suddenly make that gun terribly vulnerable. Russian artillery units with Rockets are very mobile and have excellent range and would be the ideal platform for counter battery fire.... why do you think towed guns would be obliterated but a truck mounted model would be safe?

A tracked gun like Msta-S would be very good against conventional army but too expensive against a guerilla.

The Russian army is large... why not have both?

A truck mounted gun can fight both and survive pretty well.

A gun is firing or it is moving... it will never do both... these things are not tanks or IFVs and do not have any fire on the move capability.

Now to make that cheaper you take out the turret with the autoloader and just keep the gun. Such systems are good for small country but russia has the Msta-S as main artillery they don't really need it which is not cheap because full of electronics and has an autoloader. But the same with only the gun is very usefull.

Russia has plans for truck mounted guns....



Because the Kurganets and Boomerang and Typhoon chassis will not be able to take the Coalition turret... but they also plan to make and operate towed guns based on their experience.

Not every country they come up against will have effective artillery counter battery capability, or indeed effective artillery counter battery fire capability that cannot be defeated or undermined.

With new artillery ammo with 180km range how often do you think mobile artillery is going to be moving?

Shoot and run tactics. An fix position will be found pretty fast and bombed pretty fast. Pantsir and tor can protect against drones but certainly not against artillery salvos.

The thing about the military is that they are not able to be that precious about their forces... if they didn't deploy and use their forces because they fear losing them what sort of force would they be? The Salvation Army?

Towed guns wont be the only artillery they use, they will use it where it makes sense and its benefits make it more useful than other artillery types... in such a situation a truck or track mounted system wont be better off.

Even HATO forces wont have artillery radar covering every square inch of terrain in front of them and if they do those radars can be targeted and eliminated.

The very suggestion that the Taliban in Afghanistan don't use mortars because if they do they will be instantly obliterated by US fire power is amusing... I am sure US soldiers would appreciate that level of support against their enemy, but they will likely also be the first to admit that does not exist in the real world.

Also a towed artillery piece might be sent to a location to attack a specific target but any enemy force trying to target that towed gun is therefore vulnerable to counter counter battery fire.

A Towed gun battery that digs a trench for covering the crews and moves the trucks away while the guns are firing to make them less visible could start firing at targets they are getting target info via comms... which would also warn them when enemy artillery incoming is detected.... giving them time to stop firing and run for the trenches and giving them a better than good chance of surviving the attack, but also allowing a nearby rocket battery of Grads to then target the enemy battery before their rounds even land.

Some of the towed guns might get hit, but then that could have happened even if they were on trucks...

Even in Ukraine counter battery fire happens in matter of minutes. You have video on youtube of gun/mortar position being attacked after they fired from there.

So what... do you think a tank crew gets a warning that they are under attack from ATGMs.... a battlefield is a dangerous place... are you trying to tell me being in a tin can that does not stop much more than machine gun fire makes them completely safe?

A Russian rocket battery given information about a US battery that has just fired on Russian forces has maps and can work out the general area the vehicles could have moved to depending upon the time since they fired and launch sensor fused submunitions to obliterate any armoured vehicles over a fairly enormous area... thing is that such a payload wouldn't be that effective against deployed towed guns, but really efficient way of eliminating much more expensive more mobile units...

A fixed gun will also involve 5 or 6 people to man it. All dead if there is a counter battery fire on them.

Of course... totally all dead... so why does the US make towed artillery pieces?

That's what I suggest.

But you are saying that towed guns are obsolete and should be removed from service?

... you know... fixed gun... all dead...

That's as expensive as the tracked one. I was thinking of something much more simplier to have a light system.

No where near as expensive to buy and only a fraction of the operational and service costs and much more road mobile at the expense of mobility cross country, though as it will be operating with other wheeled vehicles that wont be that much of an issue.

It is a 70km and soon a 180km range 152mm gun... there wont be a light version... just like there wont be a light version of the 203mm guns or 240mm mortars either.