Artillery (in)accuracy

[Euri]

Is it normal for artillery to be that inaccurate? OK  it is not a precission strike but still it is a point strike near a TRF targeting a house and the shells fall everywhere but on the house

Edited March 6, 2017 by Euri

[akd]

If you want to destroy "a house," conventional artillery is not the right tool.

[Euri]

The real question is about the accuracy of the artillery in a point mission, rather than  about how to destroy a house

[Seedorf81]

Russian and Ukranian artillery is, in my experience with Black Sea, worse and very very very much worse in accuracy than US arty. I think US arty would flatten the house..

[Erwin]

42 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:

Russian and Ukranian artillery is, in my experience with Black Sea, worse and very very very much worse in accuracy than US arty. I think US arty would flatten the house..

This puzzles me since the Russians have always set great store in their artillery - IIRC considering it the predominant force.  Perhaps in the CM2 game we are simply not given enuff Russian arty as they would have in RL to compensate for the inaccuracy and the long call times?

[SeinfeldRules]

With US artillery, assuming you've accounted for all non-standard conditions, you will still have a "beaten zone" or around 80-120m long and 40m wide. This for a point target, both in game and in real life. A while ago I did some tests, and the game results were actually quite similar to data pulled from the US TFTs for a range of around 12,000-15,000m. I had the exact data written down, but it's gone now. I don't know what your "beaten zone" looks like in this particular case but modern artillery isn't a sniper rifle.

Edited March 7, 2017 by SeinfeldRules

[Erwin]

When playing modern Blue, have found that point target is very accurate.  Only slight less accurate for WW2.  Maybe more accurate than in RL - makes Russian arty look really bad.  But, perhaps Red arty is depicted more realistically?

[John Kettler]

Euri,

Russian artillery has its reputation for destructiveness from GPW period massive fires involving thousands upon thousands of guns. At the Battle of Berlin, they had over 40K pieces of artillery, which presumably counts mortars and rocket launchers, too. What I suspect may be happening in your case is that the Russians can't shoot as accurately as the US can because they simply don't have as good a handle on all the pieces of the problem that the US does. Mastery of minutiae can make a big difference in putting steel on target, and since BFC had access to people in/formerly in the US Army, such as Redleg JasonC, I deem it reasonable to posit the differences between the Russians and the US were gone over in detail and modeled. Examples of such things would include the temperature history of the propellant charges (vital to predicting actual performance vs nominal), true state of bore wear vs predicted (listed in a table), and quality of finish on the shells, to name but a few. If you watch how Russian towed artillery operates even today, you'll still sometimes see shells lying in mud being swabbed briefly with a rag, loaded and fired. Think that might open up the pattern a bit? You mentioned firing near a TRP. Was the offset more than 50 meters, for that's the limit of the shift radius allowable from it?

Regards,

John Kettler

 

Edited March 7, 2017 by John Kettler

[akd]

4 hours ago, Euri said:

The real question is about the accuracy of the artillery in a point mission, rather than  about how to destroy a house

The accuracy shown in your screenshot is superb for conventional artillery.  The precision is also very good.  Conventional artillery is not the tool for taking out a small point target unless you are willing to spend (arguably waste) lots of rounds.  Anyways, you've got 14 more minutes to land a round on that little house.

[John Kettler]

Euri,

Your problem is easily solved. Just move the MPI atop the DMPI (the house), and you're set. Ha!  Don't know from what distance or angle relative to your target line your artillery's firing, but axis of fire might be a factor in what's happening.   Frankly, given the size of the frag zones and number of impacts, that house (presuming it's wood), should be a sieve already. 

Regards,

John Kettler

[Euri]

4 hours ago, John Kettler said:

You mentioned firing near a TRP. Was the offset more than 50 meters, for that's the limit of the shift radius allowable from it?

Regards,

John Kettler

 

Thanks for the replay. Check the pic above. The TRF is practially next to the (intended) target

Edited March 7, 2017 by Euri

[John Kettler]

Euri,

Believe you may find this helpful in understanding just what corrections are applied in a US firing table. Please note the difference between the predicted range and the actual range, not to mention crosswind, headwind and tailwind effects. To what level these are modeled in the game, I don't know, but they matter during real fire missions. The farther away the guns are from the target, the more crosswinds come into play because they have more time to push the shell away from its planned path. 

http://www.bps-ok.org/physics/howitzer.pdf 

You may find this of interest, for it's the condensed version of FM 6-20 TACTICS, TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES FOR OBSERVED FIRE.

http://raceriv.com/arma2/fmc/fmc_6-30.pdf

Things that you specifically need to know from this are that normally, artillery goes to FFE for HE when a 100 meter bracket of the target is obtained; a TRP's location is known (theoretically, at least) to the the nearest 10 meters, and that a command called Shift from Known Point tells the FDC where to shoot relative to that point. It appears that real TRPs can be used for much larger shifts (hundreds of meters) than ours can. When US FA wishes to destroy a house with unguided munitions, this is called Precision Fire and uses only one gun. The FO uses one or more rounds to hit the target. Your situation, while galling, is a pretty small miss by artillery standards, and the real world correction would be trivial.

Regards,

John Kettler

[DMS]

May be accuracy is too good! Look videos from Urkaine, you can see incomming spotting rounds for minutes, but they don't hit the trench were cameraman sits. And UAV doesn't help. Old guns, old barrels, old ammo, huge dispersion. But Russian Chosta gun is new enough... In production since 2000s. May be devs suppose that it is worn out durind hybrid war, I don't know. Or distance is close to the maximal.

7 hours ago, John Kettler said:

crosswinds come into play

+1, looks like SW or NE wind.

 

Edited March 7, 2017 by DMS