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Artillery is underpowered against vehicles


Armorgunner

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Finally finished the splinter investigation.  These shells are impressive.  They're really simply designed such that they fail largely in the radial direction, as I'm sure many of you know.

mSe2ZRi.png

I set a 152mm shell to "airburst" 1 meter away from a 40mm thick steel plate.

2tJ0UQe.png

Boom!  Some of those splinters are travelling mighty fast.  They by and large match the splinter velocity I calculated from the Gurney equations - so this part is pretty accurate for the artillery shell.

xeC8RFH.png

And then fragmentation peppers the armour plate.  Anything red here is failed completely.  Elements that are way wonky stretched failed and moved way too far but for some reason weren't eroded by the solver, and are almost certainly a fine metallic powder (so ignore them! Mostly means solution instability past the point these guys formed).

Looks pretty good compared to figure 1 in TFO's article, I think.

cDfhZMu.png

I think I'd rather not be hit by an artillery round in a tank now, and it also seems that misses to the side offer a higher risk of damaging the tank (simply due to most shells landing next to a tank rather than directly on it).  Overall, I may have to agree with the OP here that artillery isn't quite deadly enough to vehicles.  Nearby hits should have a high chance of causing heavy damage, and on more lightly armoured vehicles like BMPs, BTRs, Strykers and maybe even Bradleys, near hits should penetrate to the rear and rear-sides.

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And would at least strip away entire banks of ERA,  no? 

I haven't checked v Bradleys, but I wonder if initial rounds (impacting adjacent to the vehicle) should literally soften their side armor 'envelope'  whole the machine itself is fairly OK,  but then follow-on adjacent rounds would start penetration. 

So a 152mm strike would first seem to do no major damage,  but keep it going for say,  3+ minutes and stuff will start to fail in rapid order?

Be a lamb and bring your brads forward, @TheForwardObserver

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17 minutes ago, JUAN DEAG said:

@HerrTom So what was the average penetration in millimeters for the shrapnel? Is that an accurate model for a 152mm shell? Also, what program are you using and where can I acquire one of them?

I haven't had the time/been able to do enough tests to really determine the penetration of the shrapnel beyond being able to say that having the shell parallel to the armour is more dangerous.  I guess I can also say that at 1 meter, it can easily punch through 40mm of RHA.  It looks like some might be able to go through almost double that judging by the kinetic energy they have, though they wouldn't have much left afterwards.

The shell is an OF-25 HE-FRAG, which should be one of the standard 152mm shells in-game.

The program is AUTODYN, which I thankfully have access to.  I'm not sure how licensing works since I'm still able to use my Uni's license but as far as I know it's similar to most engineering tools - a few thousand dollars a license.

Edit: Also, the shrapnel one took 14 hours to solve, so you have to have time to do it too!

Edited by HerrTom
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A thing to consider is the damage this shrapnel does not to the armor, but to the pieces of technology modern tanks rely on to be dominant on the battlefield... sights, thermal sensors, APS, etc may be in armored housings but that armor isn't nearly as thick as the glacis plate is. A piece of shrapnel in your CITV will put it out of action right quick.

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I guess, an effective way to see how damage the vehicles should be is to take the STANAG 4569 protection scale against arty.

Stryker and BTR have a STANAG of 3/4, hence, an artillery shell landing at 60/30m could penetrate them.

Bradley with Era is more heavilly armored, depending of the side, it could get penetrated if the sells lands under 30/10 meters

For a direct hit, considering the shell will hit the top armor, it's very likely that the tank will be destroyed.

It'd be also interesting to bring the guided bomb case. As far as I know, guided bombs kill tanks mostly by near miss ( we can clearly see it here

, I don't know how a 155mm shell compares to a 250kg guided bomb, but it might be interesting to look into it.

Edited by FoxZz
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Well I just had a javelin miss a bmp3 - detonated next to it leaving a large crater and knocked out the bmp3.

now my understanding was the javelin is a shaped charge? So how does the blast from a missed javelin Ko a bmp3, yet near misses from 152 do no damage to an m1 - except damage to the tracks?

it just seems a bit inconsistent to me.

in this game this is the first of about 6 javelins that's actually missed. The bmp moved back, I suspect after the missile was launched. Thus leading to the near miss.

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1 hour ago, FoxZz said:

I guess, an effective way to see how damage the vehicles should be is to take the STANAG 4569 protection scale against arty.

Thank you! I was unaware of the standard.  The Mk. 82 is a 227 kg bomb with 87 kg of filling, compared to the approximately 5 kg of TNT in a 155mm shell.  I also realised that I assumed the shell was filled with Octol - which is probably more akin to the much less common OF-29 shell.  Composition B has a detonation velocity of 8050 m/s compared to Octol's 9000, so performance will probably be around 5% worse than my simulations.

44 minutes ago, Gazmaps said:

Well I just had a javelin miss a bmp3 - detonated next to it leaving a large crater and knocked out the bmp3.

now my understanding was the javelin is a shaped charge? So how does the blast from a missed javelin Ko a bmp3, yet near misses from 152 do no damage to an m1 - except damage to the tracks?

it just seems a bit inconsistent to me.

in this game this is the first of about 6 javelins that's actually missed. The bmp moved back, I suspect after the missile was launched. Thus leading to the near miss.

Do you have a save or video of that?  A Javelin has a tandem HEAT warhead, so yeah, it should be significantly less destructive than a 152/155mm shell.  Though I remember playing a mission where my Javelin team fired at a group of infantry.  It missed and made a pretty large crater.  AAR told me they managed to kill 4 soldiers with a miss!

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FoxZz,

Welcome aboard!

You raise some excellent points in referencing the STANAGs. I tend to think of them as being more like ammo and fuel compatibility, fueling connections and the like. Guess I need to do some reading on the ones you cite.

HerrTom,

Javelin has been used by the British (and maybe the US, too) to wipe out insurgent IED planting teams. This one is the British. NSFW audio w/o headset or similar.

http://www.vets2vote.com/video/operations-and-strategy/antitank-weapons/ied-team-meets-mr-javelin/821302705001

Regards,

John Kettler

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HerrTom,

I've seen high speed radiographs of a shell bursting. What happens is the casing expands in such a way that it very nearly resembles an American football when viewed from the side. This is its maximum distension prior to case rupture and the resultant high velocity fragments. There is very little effect at all on the nose and even less on the base, which, of course, has to handle the maximum dynamic loads when fired.

Here is a flash radiograph of a German 20 mm HE. Unfortunately, this is after case rupture. It does, though, show my point.

zjrtFfz.jpg

Regards,

John Kettler

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So artillery will Kill APCS and IFVs and severely degrade or mission Kill MBTs even with near misses and airbursts. If battlefront would model this in the game I guess artillery would be the dominant arm on the battlefield and battles would be fought between the depleted and severely degraded survivors of arty barrages. Also gives the attacker a strong advantage since its easier to hit defenders with arty. Guess Russia would have a great equalizer or worst right there.

Would that make for a fun game ? In a modern setting with superb detection and  acquisition (drones.. radars..thermals) methods and extremely accurate arty (even with dumbs shells) thanks to glonass, GPS and computer. .probably not. 

WWII is another matter since arty takes longer.. less radios to call it, less flexible and far less accurate so it would be less dominant. Splinter tech is probably less advanced too and less able to penetrate .

Edited by antaress73
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6 minutes ago, antaress73 said:

So artillery will Kill APCS and IFVs and severely degrade or mission Kill MBTs even with near misses and airbursts. If battlefront would model this in the game I guess artillery would be the dominant arm on the battlefield and battles would be fought between the depleted and severely degraded survivors of arty barrages. Also gives the attacker a strong advantage since its easier to hit defenders with arty. Guess Russia would have a great equalizer right there. 

What's with you and trying to find "The great equalizer" for the Russians?  It's like every other post you've made is how some US thing isn't really as powerful as it seems, or some Russian thing will explode all the Americans.  

Re: Direct hits in general

Artillery has been problematic historically simply because the concentration of fires to achieve effects has been prohibitive against armor.  Or looking to what field artillery considers effective "destructive" effects, it's something like a 20% kill rate.  Which is still unfortunate, but it provides a historical context to why artillery has a sort of "yes it kills/no it doesn't" dynamic, when artillery hits it certainly can be lethal.  But again conventionally employed each conventional shell only carries a small percentage of a "kill."  

What's changed, and changed without a minor conflict ala 6 Days War/Persian Gulf 1991 to really illustrate how much it's really going to do is target acquisition is more precise, and the ability to drop rounds on top of targets has increased.  While the capabilities to find targets with drones/drop guided rounds on targets has been demonstrated, it's been done in highly permissive environments (or Russia's artillery operating against the Ukraine has done so in virtual safety against an enemy with no real electronic warfare capabilities, US precision fires has been blowing up dudes with beards and AKs for the last 15 years).  

So in an environment in which drones are making it 200 meters from the launch point before having their receivers burned out, or pretty much anyone's signals from space are highly suspect, it might be very much the exception than the rule to put rounds on top of a target rapidly.

Also more specifically to the Russians, as discussed elsewhere on this forum, only a fairly small part of the overall force is modern/especially well trained.  It'd be interesting to see how much of what CMBS is the exception vs the rule for Russian performance.  

In any event I'd contend if artillery was more lethal in CMBS it'd encourage using the sort of shoot and scoot, multiple firing position tactics that tankers use anyway.  One of the great advantages of armor is that it's not as adversely affected by being in the "kill" area for artillery, and displacing under fire is something quite doable (and indeed, why defensive positions are supposed to have alternate positions).  

As far as the actual effects of a direct hit from an artillery round on a tank, again, it's not an especially common historical event.  I think a lot would depend on the fuzing, where the round hit, etc etc.  

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1 hour ago, panzersaurkrautwerfer said:

What's with you and trying to find "The great equalizer" for the Russians?  It's like every other post you've made is how some US thing isn't really as powerful as it seems, or some Russian thing will explode all the Americans.  

Re: Direct hits in general

Artillery has been problematic historically simply because the concentration of fires to achieve effects has been prohibitive against armor.  Or looking to what field artillery considers effective "destructive" effects, it's something like a 20% kill rate.  Which is still unfortunate, but it provides a historical context to why artillery has a sort of "yes it kills/no it doesn't" dynamic, when artillery hits it certainly can be lethal.  But again conventionally employed each conventional shell only carries a small percentage of a "kill."  

What's changed, and changed without a minor conflict ala 6 Days War/Persian Gulf 1991 to really illustrate how much it's really going to do is target acquisition is more precise, and the ability to drop rounds on top of targets has increased.  While the capabilities to find targets with drones/drop guided rounds on targets has been demonstrated, it's been done in highly permissive environments (or Russia's artillery operating against the Ukraine has done so in virtual safety against an enemy with no real electronic warfare capabilities, US precision fires has been blowing up dudes with beards and AKs for the last 15 years).  

So in an environment in which drones are making it 200 meters from the launch point before having their receivers burned out, or pretty much anyone's signals from space are highly suspect, it might be very much the exception than the rule to put rounds on top of a target rapidly.

Also more specifically to the Russians, as discussed elsewhere on this forum, only a fairly small part of the overall force is modern/especially well trained.  It'd be interesting to see how much of what CMBS is the exception vs the rule for Russian performance.  

In any event I'd contend if artillery was more lethal in CMBS it'd encourage using the sort of shoot and scoot, multiple firing position tactics that tankers use anyway.  One of the great advantages of armor is that it's not as adversely affected by being in the "kill" area for artillery, and displacing under fire is something quite doable (and indeed, why defensive positions are supposed to have alternate positions).  

As far as the actual effects of a direct hit from an artillery round on a tank, again, it's not an especially common historical event.  I think a lot would depend on the fuzing, where the round hit, etc etc.  

I'm talking about in the game panzersaurkrautwerfer. I like playing the Russians, this is probably because most people like to play the US and I like the challenge. Nothing personal against you or americans in general. I focus on the russian side since I play them more. When I play the US I like to play infantry-centric battles. Here you go, another reason to hate me ;) I have nothing against your favorite toy either, the Abrams but blowing them up in the game is satisfying becauss they are indeed fantastic machines ;)

As for real life, A war with Russia would be bloody for all sides and I have no wish to see this happening. Both sides would suffer immensely and both sides have assets that can blow up/neutralize each other. It would be a traumatizing event for all, even if NATO ultimately wins.

Edited by antaress73
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Arty being more lethal in CMBS would indeed make alternate fighting positions and shoot and scoot a must though the maps are fairly small for such tactics. Directs hits should be rare but even near misses or overhead airbursts would be dangerous since you would lose some sub-systems that makes an MBT such a threat on the modern battlefield. Much more so than in WWII.

Edited by antaress73
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On 11/30/2016 at 2:05 PM, FoxZz said:

It'd be also interesting to bring the guided bomb case. As far as I know, guided bombs kill tanks mostly by near miss ( we can clearly see it here

, I don't know how a 155mm shell compares to a 250kg guided bomb, but it might be interesting to look into it.

That was a concrete bomb, if it had been live that tank would have been toast. But you can see that the KE alone of that would have ruined a tank. When we drop on armor we use tail fusing for the bomb, which will kill it very dead, including ex-Iraqi Abrams. I'd chock the "miss" up there to most likely being the EOTS on that F-35 being out of calibration, or just standard CEP stuff.

This discussion reminds me of my own cadet war story though from when I did Army things. The second summer at USMA is a month in the field ("Buckner), meant to be more tactical and also expose you to the various branches of the army (it was a lot broader in the past with cadet vs cadet tank fights at Ft. Knox). One day is Field Artillery day where you rotate through the FDC, gun line, and actually on a hill calling in 5-7 round 105mm missions on old tanks. There was a female in my platoon, maybe 5'2" and never speaking more than a sentence per week. Most of us were pretty lousy at our first ever fire mission but she gets up there and the first spotting round emits a loud "PING" Garand style as it bounced off the top of the M60 or whatever she called it on. We all kind of revered her in awe after that. She got to set the pile of excess propellant bags on fire too which was the hottest fire I've ever seen (like burned my face from 100 yards hot).

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1 hour ago, Codename Duchess said:

There was a female in my platoon, maybe 5'2" and never speaking more than a sentence per week. Most of us were pretty lousy at our first ever fire mission but she gets up there and the first spotting round emits a loud "PING" Garand style as it bounced off the top of the M60 or whatever she called it on. We all kind of revered her in awe after that.

I wonder what her subsequent career has looked like.

Michael

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It's like what we've been talking about on other forums tongue in cheek: Technology makes it possible that the next wars will be fought by women, children (re fast FPS responses) and the elderly (expendable - have already had a long life, can't live forever).

Young healthy males will be relegated to simply carrying heavier weights (cheaper than using robots on inhospitable terrain).

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7 hours ago, HerrTom said:

 

@John Kettler Very informative.  I looked at the case in more detail.  I see more destruction in the nose than expected, but it seems a pretty good match for your radiograph!

tMXjasW.gif

 

 

I suppose that the destruction in the nose is because the shell lands nose first. What do the scaled numbers on the left side mean?

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5 hours ago, Codename Duchess said:

This discussion reminds me of my own cadet war story though from when I did Army things. The second summer at USMA is a month in the field ("Buckner), meant to be more tactical and also expose you to the various branches of the army (it was a lot broader in the past with cadet vs cadet tank fights at Ft. Knox). One day is Field Artillery day where you rotate through the FDC, gun line, and actually on a hill calling in 5-7 round 105mm missions on old tanks. There was a female in my platoon, maybe 5'2" and never speaking more than a sentence per week. Most of us were pretty lousy at our first ever fire mission but she gets up there and the first spotting round emits a loud "PING" Garand style as it bounced off the top of the M60 or whatever she called it on. We all kind of revered her in awe after that. She got to set the pile of excess propellant bags on fire too which was the hottest fire I've ever seen (like burned my face from 100 yards hot).

I remember that fire...

20160712_111838_zpslrf8b6sx.jpg

The range still hasn't changed much either.

20160712_151935_zpsruawyki1.jpg

20160712_094011_zpsqluexfih.jpg

Edited by Currahee150
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5 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

I wonder what her subsequent career has looked like.

Michael

I think ours was the last class (I didn't finish with them) before they fully opened combat arms to females, so she's in a support unit somewhere.  She was a math major though, hence the accuracy.

1 hour ago, Currahee150 said:

I remember that fire...

Yup that's it!  Although I swear ours was a lot larger.  I had a video on my blackberry of it.  Well sorta, an enlisted guy bet me $20 I couldn't stay facing it.  The flames were so intense when it went up that we all ran away screaming in pain/excitement.  I lost $20 and the video is terrible lol.

I remember at the end of the day we had like way too much ammo left, so they called in a 50-75 round fire mission.  It was pretty cool watching the gun crews operate at max RoF.  The gun captain could barely talk by the end of it.
 

 


283060_10150259024648737_7223531_n.jpg?o


188249_2186889268226_4059720_n.jpg?oh=5e
The Brazilian guy attached to our squad fell asleep and his uniform had tons of velcro on it, so we fixed it.

Edited by Codename Duchess
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On 12/1/2016 at 10:33 AM, HerrTom said:

Do you have a save or video of that?  A Javelin has a tandem HEAT warhead, so yeah, it should be significantly less destructive than a 152/155mm shell.  Though I remember playing a mission where my Javelin team fired at a group of infantry.  It missed and made a pretty large crater.  AAR told me they managed to kill 4 soldiers with a miss!

Been away for a few days but here you go. the other interesting observation is that the BMP shows no damage to any of the subsystems (except the tracks) but is destroyed???

I like the game because its a good simulation. Its great to see how you can use the toolkits of the various sides to overcome the opposing adversary's.

The US tanks and Javs are very powerful in the simulation as I suspect they are in the real world - however it would be a more balanced and interesting simulation if the advantages of the redfor where perhaps not under modeled. My understanding is that the Russians like pre planned artillery and lots of it - I have certainly being using it to combat US tanks in the game - be good to the full effect of this as I suspect its a very valid tactic.

 

 

 

 

 

Picture1.jpg

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7 hours ago, Codename Duchess said:

The Brazilian guy attached to our squad fell asleep and his uniform had tons of velcro on it, so we fixed it.

Lol, thats more like it! In a similar vein, we had a squid in our squad. He only had the navy blueberry uniform, and stuck out like a sore thumb during our FTX. Another dude thought it would be a good idea to buy a ghillie suit for said FTX. It wasn't. 

7 hours ago, panzersaurkrautwerfer said:

ARGH CADETS WHY

Because...I don't know. Probably because I wanted an excuse not to study last night. 

155s would have been cooler for sure though.

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