Netfires - Tube Artillery - MLRS

[William F. Owen]

There are only 3 actual 120mm LG Bombs that I aware of. I am not aware of any that are in service or combat proven.

Point being, the Israelis have a whole family of very light and very easy to use laser designators, one of which is in service with USMC. I was looking at one the other day. Takes 30 mins of training to use!

[Fuchs]

There are only 3 actual 120mm LG Bombs that I aware of. I am not aware of any that are in service or combat proven.

Point being, the Israelis have a whole family of very light and very easy to use laser designators, one of which is in service with USMC. I was looking at one the other day. Takes 30 mins of training to use!

Wilf, there are dozens of projects - and have been since many years.
The today American PGMM effort has its roots in a German 120mm LG bomb project of the 80's and is the best known (together with Swedish STRIX and UK Merlin) guided mortar munition.

That's a language barrier and public relations issue.
Almost nothing happened in the U.S. about guided mortar bombs, but a search for "guided mortar" in google yields almost entirely U.S.-related results. That's ridiculous.

I've seen a list dating back to IIRC '99 that listed dozens of guided artillery and mortar munition projects, including from countries like Bulgaria and India.
Americans talk a lot about their weapons projects even years before they yield production examples or a cancellation - other countries work silently on their hardware. IIRC many munitions on the list (HDD search is working) had SAL guidance.

Here's a short and old list that I found with a quick search:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/row/ADHPM.htm

Even the Russians alone have two systems in in service allegedly (Kitolov and Gran) in 120mm with SAL guidance.

[Ken White]

Putting 'Guided 120mm mortar' in Google popped up on the first page entries from Sweden, India, China and the US.

The M395 is in limited operational service in Afghanistan. Both Sweden and Switzerland have adopted the Strix so it is in service though Ii suppose one can quibble about the operational aspect...

The M395 is an ATK product, derived from the Diehl and Lockheed Martin cooperation on the Bussard PGM -- that ouight to be common knowledge. No one is denying that Diehl was the originator (except the ATK company that would now like to sell it to anyone who'd buy it and is wary of German export controls...).

As Fuchs said:

"...Americans talk a lot about their weapons projects even years before they yield production examples or a cancellation - other countries work silently on their hardware. IIRC many munitions on the list (HDD search is working) had SAL guidance.

Too true -- one of the many adverse impacts of a dysfunctional Congress...

[Fuchs]

You cheated by adding "120mm" to your search

I attempted to recover the table in .htm that I remembered with several google searches and found almost exclusively U.S.-related results.

[Ken White]

Your search should've turned up the British Merlin (81mm)...

[Fuchs]

Your search should've turned up the British Merlin (81mm)...

Yes, on the 10th page.

I get an automatic redirect to google.de.
(I enter the search at .com and get a result page like this:
http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=...le-Suche&meta= )
Maybe their databases differ slightly.

Again; there's not only America.

[William F. Owen]

Wilf, there are dozens of projects - and have been since many years.
The today American PGMM effort has its roots in a German 120mm LG bomb project of the 80's and is the best known (together with Swedish STRIX and UK Merlin) guided mortar munition.

IIRC Strix is militmetric IR and not laser guided. Merlin was IR LOAL as well. Neither is Laser guided that I know of.

I only know of 3 laser guided weapons that have achieved firing status.
Those are :

1. IAI Fireball
2. M395
3. Gran

Light cheap and easy to use LDs have only been around for the last 5 years, so it doesn't surprise me that there are not that many 120mm munitions that have actually fired.

However there are lot of other Laser guided munitions out there, all of which can use the Light weight LDs.

[Fuchs]

Merlin had mm wavelength radar.
Wilf, I listed the three munition as most well-known guided examples. They are really well-known, while many other munitions (some of which in service) are almost entirely unknown. SAL is the most common guidance principle among the rather unknown types IIRC.

120mm vs. 105mm:
The French 120mm mortars with rifled barrel are extremely close to the 105mm, there's not much difference (except low angle fire) any more.
120mm cargo (ICM) bombs (IMI, RUAG, TDA) are in production since years (not necessarily in the U.S.). I've even found an Italian 81mm ICM bomb in Jane's (Simmel Difesa S6A2, under development in 2004, 9 bomblets).

I see a challenge to adjust the understanding and organization of mortar units due to the increased range and capability. The longest-ranged 120mm mortars are now equivalent to standard WW2 field artillery.
My take on this is that -despite remaining organic support assets- they should provide horizontal support to neighboring units as well (the majority of lethal fires should be such missions) in a kind of NCW spin-off.

@ODB:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandt_60_mm_LR_Gun-mortar

[William F. Owen]

I see a challenge to adjust the understanding and organization of mortar units due to the increased range and capability. The longest-ranged 120mm mortars are now equivalent to standard WW2 field artillery.
My take on this is that -despite remaining organic support assets- they should provide horizontal support to neighboring units as well (the majority of lethal fires should be such missions) in a kind of NCW spin-off.

Well thanks to some goading by the member of this board, I have been working on some unit level concepts, and mortars keep in surprising me. I am not sure I share the idea of supporting neighbouring units, as that does produce several C2 problems, though not impossible.

If you match the capabilities of your mortar platoon with an STA platoon you do seem to fall into a very interesting "virtuous cycle."

[Fuchs]

I've got a concept in mind - technologies/concepts creep inside the armed services from big/heavy/expensive to compact/light/cheap and become useful to more and more units and lower levels of hierarchy.

The first use of an innovation is often clumsy and expensive and found in navy ships (think about AEGIS, for example) or stationary installations, followed by a still expensive but not so bulky anymore application in combat aircraft (think about the early days of radar). Next are often AFVs/artillery and then it trickles down to infantry when the tech is really cheap, light and compact.

The C2 challenge that you wrote about is no perfect example, but almost fits this pattern. Divisional artillery of whole corps was assembled to support single divisional attacks or Großkämpfe (essentially major battles) in WW2 (or earlier).
Artillery coordinators on corps level or higher coordinated that with their small staff's preparation (Arko, for example).

Divisional artillery was not meant to support neighbor divisions, but it did so - and the procedures for it were the hierarchical procedures of that time.
This can and should be done much lower in the hierarchy today - like on battalion/company level or (with some quite uncommon indirect fire armament) on platoon level.
Modern communication technology coupled with modern indirect fire control (which is quite automated) could be used to coordinate such horizontal supporting fires.
Wilf, maybe you've read a version of my skirmisher text that already had that feature. It's really mostly a matter of communication and good prioritization.

It would be wasteful to let one battalion/regiment fight its own fight when a neighbor unit has some support assets that could help but aren't prepared/ordered to do so.
The 'organic fire support' thinking should be replaced with a 'horizontal fire support' thinking.

Maybe that happens, and maybe the natural consequence would be an increase in range till we see integrated regiment-sized combat teams with their own SPH battery instead of heavy mortars.
That is btw something that resembles a concept of the 50's.


Classic artillery - separate from the direct fire forces - will remain necessary because we can't be sure about the survivability of forward indirect fire assets.

[William F. Owen]

Wilf, maybe you've read a version of my skirmisher text that already had that feature. It's really mostly a matter of communication and good prioritization.

No not read it. Fire it across!

I agree about communication and priorities. It is doable and perhaps even desirable, but I'd only want to look at this once I start work on Formation Levels of organisation and I see myself stuck on units for some time yet.