How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[SteelRain]

For all of you guys wondering why the Bundeswehr is so reluctant to donate Bundeswehr Marder IFV's to Ukraine.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/puma-tank-failure-is-heavy-setback-for-germany-defence-ministry/ar-AA15qN6V

One company of PzGrenBtl 112 was on exercise and all of its 18 Puma IFV's, that were upgraded to the newest Version Puma S1/Puma VJTF in 2020, failed within 8 days of training. The commander of 10. PzDiv explicitly mentioned that the Pumas were not exposed to heavy duty use.
PzGrenBtl 112 with its Pumas was scheduled to take over the VJTF lead by 01.01.2023. Now it has to fulfill this role with its aging Marders.

Conclusion:

After 10 years in service and an extensive upgrade in 2020 which should bring the puma to a "war ready" state the Puma is still plagued by all kinds of Problems.

[keas66]

10 minutes ago, SteelRain said:

For all of you guys wondering why the Bundeswehr is so reluctant to donate Bundeswehr Marder IFV's to Ukraine.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/puma-tank-failure-is-heavy-setback-for-germany-defence-ministry/ar-AA15qN6V

One company of PzGrenBtl 112 was on exercise and all of its 18 Puma IFV's, that were upgraded to the newest Version Puma S1/Puma VJTF in 2020, failed within 8 days of training. The commander of 10. PzDiv explicitly mentioned that the Pumas were not exposed to heavy duty use.
PzGrenBtl 112 with its Pumas was scheduled to take over the VJTF lead by 01.01.2023. Now it has to fulfill this role with its aging Marders.

Conclusion:

After 10 years in service and an extensive upgrade in 2020 which should bring the puma to a "war ready" state the Puma is still plagued by all kinds of Problems.

Whispers from another forum :

“Members of the military community allege it wasn't the vehicle that was the problem, but planning. They say that the maintainers weren't supplied with spares, and apparently the civilian contractors tasked with training the maintainers weren't brought in. Apparently, the vehicles had been scheduled to undergo maintenance before the exercise but for some reason that never happened”

[JonS]

6 hours ago, JonS said:

Not necessarily. Speed of response is mostly to do with the overall system, not the final delivery system. How quickly can a target be identified and located? How quickly can that be sent to a firing  battery? How quickly can the target location and description be turned into orders for the guns (bearing, elevation, and ammunition)? None of that is affected by the gun being used. Accuracy is down to the overall system too - how well defined is the target location? How well surveyed is the gun position? How well known is the current met conditions? Again, none of that is affected by the gun being used.

Precision is down to the gun - a shot-out 777 or Ceasar will be just as imprecise as a clapped out old D-30. But even then, the ground the gun is sitting on matters too - soft and slippery ground will allow the gun to move each time it fires, affecting precision. But a tight new D-30 on a good platform should be repeatably precise.

So, I wrote that on my phone, which is a PITA to type on. To add a bit more depth and detail to the above:

How quickly can a target be identified and located?

It can be extraordinarily hard to figure out exactly what something is, and where it is. Is that rifle shot a lone rifleman, or the forward listening post of a full company position? Getting that wrong will slow things down later as you have to re-calibrate the response – especially if you underestimate initially – but crying wolf all the time will soon create credibility and trust problems.

The second problem is target location. You’re being shot at, from “over there”, but that probably gives you an arc around 45° wide and between 100 and 800m deep, which is a LOT of ground. Geometry tells me it’s something like a quarter of a million square metres, which is about 2,500 usable target locations, each of which is 10x10m. ONE of those 2,500 is the one you’re after, maybe  another 24 are close enough to be useful, but the other 2,475 are wrong and will slow down your response.

Deriving a map grid can be by map-to-ground, and a good FO can do that pretty quick because they will be constantly following where they are on the map, and relating features around them to the map, so they already know where they are when the fun starts, and have a pretty good idea of where the love is coming from. But reading from a map is … risky. It’s super easy to transpose numbers. Uh, so I’ve heard … Anyhoo. It also depends on the quality of the map and the map-reading skill of the FO.

There’re also technical aids like super-Gucci binos that have a gps, gyroscope and laser range finder built in, so all you need to do is look at the target (assuming you can find it in all the battlefield clutter) and laze it to get a derived grid.

None of this depends on the guns firing the mission. It does depend on the level of training of the FO, and the technical aids they have available.

How quickly can that be sent to a firing battery?

This is not really a matter of radios, although obviously having a good comms network is a per-requisite. Rather it’s a matter of organisation, and in particular how much control the FO has. In general, there’s two schools of thought – either the FO can order fire (“shoot here, now!”), or the FO must request fire (“I have a target – can I have some bullets? Please?”). There are pros and cons with both approaches, which stretch all the way back to the level of training and experience required and forward to efficient and effective use of guns and ammunition. There is no right answer, but for the purposes of this being able to order fire direct from a battery does tend to move things along faster than having to go through command layers asking for permission.

None of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.

How quickly can the target location and description be turned into orders for the guns (bearing, elevation, and ammunition)?

Guns are aimed in terms of angles, and at some point a calculation is required to turn the target location from an grid (GR 123 456) to angles for the gun (a bearing of which way to point, and an  elevation for how far up to point in order to lob the bomb as far as you need, along with the type of ammo, amount of propellant to use, and any fuse setting). That’s invariably done on a computer, which are pretty quick at doing the raw calcs, but there may be additional steps to make sure that the target grid has been entered correctly. The computer doesn’t care whether you entered GR 123 456 or GR 123 546. It will spit out a valid bearing and elevation either way, but the guys on the ground will very definitely care about that. Again there are technical aids that can help speed things up here – those numbers that your super flash binos spat out could be transmitted automagically to the fire control system, which eliminates several machine-to-man-to-man-to-machine interfaces. You just have to hope that the guy pushing the button on the binos lazed the thing he meant to, and wasn’t shaking too much when he pressed the button, or didn’t clip some intervening terrain, or didn’t get laser skip off a reflective surface.

Anyway, ideally there’ll be two independent methods for deriving bearing and elevation, to try and get fat fingers out of the mix. Doing that and checking them against each other takes time, constrained by the slower method.

Modern SP guns are able to do those calculations in the turret, but towed guns generally require a central battery command post to provide that service. Whether the SPs are ‘allowed’ to use their inherent calculation capability – or if that’s still controlled centrally – is a contextual policy decision. On board the vehicle will typically be faster, although it mightn’t scale well – if you only have a single gun in support then a separate command post won’t help much, but if you want to fire a battery or battalion together onto the same target you’ll probably want a CP to be able to spread the love around – there’s not much point in 12 guns all pummeling the hell out of poor Ivan’s pit if the rest of his platoon is left in peace.

At some point in this piece of the chain, too, “someone” should do battlespace deconfliction – basically making sure that you aren’t about to inadvertently drop some bombs on other blue forces, or poke a hole in a helo or plane that’s about to buzz overhead.

Almost none of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.

How well surveyed is the gun position?

This is probably one of the simpler steps now –all guns (almost all?), including towed, currently in service in NATO-aligned armies have the ability to self-locate and orient using on-board GPS. That is, figure out exactly where they are in the world, and in exactly which direction the barrel is pointed. Those two pieces of information are crucial in being able to correctly calculate the bearing and elevation needed to get ‘splody goodness from “here” to way over “there.” Of course, that assumes you aren’t in a GPS-denied or degraded environment. Older guns, whether towed or SP need external – generally man-draulic – assistance to figure that out, essentially by triangulation from a known reference point. In this context, by older guns I basically mean all the old Soviet stuff that never got an upgrade.

So this does sort-of depend on the gun, but the ability to self-locate and orient is sort of binary – either it can, or it can’t. There aren’t really degrees of ability here. If it’s being done by manual survey, it’s highly dependent on training.

How well known are the current met conditions?

Bombs fly through the air on their way to the target. We all kind of know that but it’s easy to overlook the importance of that simple truth. Just like a rifle bullet, they are affected by wind – side wind, head wind, tail wind can all greatly affect where an unguided round will land. But, in addition, artillery rounds go up a really long way. That means they transition different temperatures, air densities, and even different wind directions on their way up and then back down again. It is extraordinarily unlikely that the various different effects on the round will neatly cancel each other out. More likely is an unpredictable error  will be introduced, that will change over the course of the day because, d’uh, weather changes over the course of the day. Artillery rounds are also in the air for multiple 10s of seconds, not the 2-3 seconds of a rifle round. That provides far more time for met effects to accumulate.

You can account for this in one of two ways. Either, fire a round, see where it lands, and correct from there. The adjustment between the first and second round inherently resolves the correction required for the current met conditions. That’s super simple, but also gives away surprise and takes time. The other option is to try and measure what the current met conditions are, then apply the necessary corrections (calculated by old-mate computer, thank gawd) before the first round is fired.

Neither of these approaches depend on the gun being used, but both depend on training – although just who is being trained changes. For the first method (fire one, see where it goes, adjust from there) it’s all on the FO. For the second method (lick finger, stick it up in the air) it depends on the training of the CP staff. In practice, a combination of both is generally used, although having reliable met is preferred because it’s faster and retains surprise – having a bomb suddenly arrive out of nowhere and land in your lap leaves no time to get into cover.

Oh, don’t forget to measure the propellant temp while you’re at it. The rate propellant burns is dependent on its temperature. Hotter = faster burn = a higher but ‘peakier’ impulse. Cooler = slower = smoother steadier push. The temperature can change quite a lot over the course of the day, for example between night and day, or if a weather front rolls through. Again, the difference can easily be adjusted for after the first round, but that takes time and costs surprise. Some platforms – generally only SPs – will be constantly and automagically measuring the charge temp. If not, someone will have to dash about every now and then with a probe thermometer, and that is a training and discipline issue.

 

 

So, all that’s to do with speed and accuracy. Precision is the other side of the coin. Put simply, accuracy is the ability to hit the thing you were pointing at, while precision is the ability to do it again. An artillery piece is basically a large clunky and clanky heat engine. Light the fuel, exhaust products of burn expand, that expansion pushes the piston (ie, the round) down the cylinder, just like a car engine. The fuel is different, of course, and hopefully the piston never comes back, but the principles are basically the same. And, just like a car engine, the various components are subject to wear. Wear inside the cylinder (ie, barrel) means that the piston (round) can wobble ever so slightly and ever so unpredictably. In addition, the shock of firing is, well, shocking. That shock is transmitted throughout the system, stressing all the components every time the gun fires. That accumulated stress particularly affects anywhere two pieces come together – screws and bolts joining various bits and bobs, axles that drive things that spin, and gears that elevate and point the barrel. As those things wear they become sloppy, and sloppy means minute but random variation which means unpredictability which means imprecision. Also, over the course of the last century, manufacturing processes have become more controlled, which means that more modern guns tend to be built to tighter tolerances to start with, which means they’re more precise straight out of the box.

Some guns – like the 777, and the PzH2000 – do have a good reputation for precision, but they aren’t inherently magical. Physics is physics and chemistry is chemistry. They are ‘just’ really well designed and manufactured modern guns. In general, precision isn’t specifically dependent on the type of gun used, except to say that newer designs are more precise than older designs, and guns that have fired lots of rounds will be less precise than guns that have fired fewer rounds.

Precision is also affected by variations between rounds, and between propellant. Generally any rounds (or propellant) made in a certain batch at a particular factory over a certain date range will be the same – or ‘same-enough’ that the differences can be ignored. But if, say, the density of the alloy used to make the shell body changes a bit, or the ratio of ingredients used in the propellant is altered just a wee bit, then the flight characteristics of the round will be different to what you may have expected. A good artillery system will take that into account by tightly controlling manufacture, and also by test firing rounds from different batches and … seeing what happens. Literally. Bang a round off, see where it lands, compare that to what was expected, figure out what the correction required for that batch is, and include it in the batch info. A less good artillery system … might not do that.

 

 

Finally, editing counts. The description is fairly limited, and doesn’t really talk about either accuracy OR precision, except to imply there was enough of both to do the job. It seems like the two forces were either pretty close together, or at least one of the rounds was astray since they had a bit of fratricide. Assuming that the three rounds described were the sum total fired, then the grunts and the gunners must have high confidence in the overall system – going straight to danger close is serious business, and not something you’d consider if the guns were firing sloppy.

Oh, one final final note: that airburst could be due to fuzing (prox or mechanical time) but it could also be due to a round with a point detonating (PD, ie, impact) fuze hitting a tree. Given they appear to be in a forest, my first bet would be a PD tree burst, then mechanical time, with prox last. Prox onto a target in a forest is problematic because the foliage canopy can provide a ‘false base’, leading to early and high detonation. High is bad because it dilutes the splinter pattern which reduces its effectiveness. Early is worse because rounds are typically coming from behind you, which means that an early round will be going off over your head rather than the bad guy's. Good FOs know those considerations, and choose fuzes accordingly.

 

Tl;dr: it could have been a 777, but nothing in what he wrote particularly suggests that, either for or against

Edited December 20, 2022 by JonS

[Kinophile]

2 hours ago, Huba said:

Here you go

 

 

Hah! 

[SteelRain]

1 hour ago, keas66 said:

Whispers from another forum :

“Members of the military community allege it wasn't the vehicle that was the problem, but planning. They say that the maintainers weren't supplied with spares, and apparently the civilian contractors tasked with training the maintainers weren't brought in. Apparently, the vehicles had been scheduled to undergo maintenance before the exercise but for some reason that never happened”

If that is true the easiest way for the manufactures would be to release an official statement to safe his reputation and blame the Bundeswehr for the failed maintenance. That didn't happen so i guess both are to blame and cable fire sounds more like a serious design flaw.

Edited December 20, 2022 by SteelRain

[Kinophile]

29 minutes ago, JonS said:

So, I wrote that on my phone, which is a PITA to type on. To add a bit more depth and detail to the above:

How quickly can a target be identified and located?

It can be extraordinarily hard to figure out exactly what something is, and where it is. Is that rifle shot a lone rifleman, the or the forward listening post of a full company position? Getting that wrong will slow things down later as you have to recalibrate the response – especially if you underestimate initially – but crying wolf all the time will soon create credibility and trust problems.

The second problem is target location. You’re being shot at, from “over there”, but that probably gives you an arc around 45° wide and between 100 and 800m deep, which is a LOT of ground. Geometry tells me it’s something like a quarter of a million square metres, which is about 2,500 usable target locations, each of which is 10x10m. ONE of those 2,500 is the one you’re after, maybe  another 24 are close enough to be useful, but the other 2,475 are wrong and will slow down your response.

Deriving a map grid can be by map-to-ground, and a good FO can do that pretty quick because they will be constantly following where they are on the map, and relating features around them to the map, so they already know where they are when the fun starts, and have a pretty good idea of where the love is coming from. But reading from a map is … risky. It’s super easy to transpose numbers. Uh, so I’ve heard … Anyhoo. It also depends on the quality of the map and the map-reading skill of the FO.

There’re also technical aids like super-Gucci binos that have a gps, gyroscope and laser range finder built in, so all you need to do is look at the target (assuming you can find it in all the battlefield clutter) and laze it to get a derived grid.

None of this depends on the guns firing the mission. It does depend on the level of training of the FO, and the technical aids they have available.

How quickly can that be sent to a firing  battery?

This is not really a matter of radios, although obviously having a good comms network is a pre-requisite. Rather it’s a matter of organisation, and in particular how much control the FO has. In general, there’s two schools of thought – either the FO can order fire (“shoot here, now!”), or the FO must request fire (“I have a target – can I have some bullets? Please?”). There are pros and cons with both approaches, which stretch all the way back to the level of training and experience required and forward to efficient and effective use of guns and ammunition. There is no right answer, but for the purposes of this being able to order fire direct from a battery does tend to move things along faster than having to go through command layers asking for permission.

None of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.

How quickly can the target location and description be turned into orders for the guns (bearing, elevation, and ammunition)?

Guns are aimed in terms of angles, and at some point a calculation is required to turn the target location from an grid (GR 123 456) to angles for the gun (a bearing of which way to point, and an  elevation for how far up to point in order to lob the bomb as far as you need, along with the type of ammo, amount of propellant to use, and any fuse setting). That’s invariably done on a computer, which are pretty quick at doing the raw calcs, but there may be additional steps to make sure that the target grid has been entered correctly. The computer doesn’t care whether you entered GR 123 456 or GR 123 546. It will spit out a valid bearing and elevation either way, but the guys on the ground will very definitely care about that. Again there are technical aids that can help speed things up here – those numbers that your super flash binos spat out could be transmitted automagically to the fire control system, which eliminates several machine-to-man-to-man-to-machine interfaces. You just have to hope that the guy pushing the button on the binos lazed the thing he meant to, and wasn’t shaking too much when he pressed the button, or didn’t clip some intervening terrain, or didn’t get laser skip off a reflective surface.

Anyway, ideally there’ll be two independent methods for deriving bearing and elevation, to try and get fat fingers out of the mix. Doing that and checking them against each other takes time, constrained by the slower method.

Modern SP guns are able to do those calculations in the turret, but towed guns generally require a central battery command post to provide that service. Whether the SPs are ‘allowed’ to use their inherent calculation capability – or if that’s still controlled centrally – is a contextual policy decision. On board the vehicle will typically be faster, although it mightn’t scale well – if you only have a single gun in support then a separate command post won’t help much, but if you want to fire a battery or battalion together onto the same target you’ll probably want a CP to be able to spread the love around – there’s not much point in 12 guns all pummelling the hell out of poor Ivan’s pit if the rest of his platoon is left in peace.

At some point in this piece of the chain, too, “someone” should do battlespace deconfliction – basically making sure that you aren’t about to inadvertently drop some bombs on other blue forces, or poke a hole in a helo or planes that’s about to buzz overhead.

Almost none of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.

How well surveyed is the gun position?

This is probably one of the simpler steps now –all guns (almost all?), including towed, currently in service in NATO-aligned armies have the ability to self-locate and orient using on-board GPS. That is, figure out exactly where they are in the world, and in exactly which direction the barrel is pointed. Those two pieces of information are crucial in being able to correctly calculate the bearing and elevation needed to get ‘splody goodness from “here” to way over “there.” Of course, that assumes you aren’t in a GPS-denied or degraded environment. Older guns, whether towed or SP need external – generally man-draulic – assistance to figure that out, essentially by triangulation from a known reference point. In this context, by older guns I basically mean all the old Soviet stuff that never got an upgrade.

So this does sort-of depend on the gun, but the ability to self-locate and orient is sort of binary – either it can, or it can’t. There aren’t really degrees of ability here. If it’s being done by manual survey, it’s highly dependent on training.

How well known are the current met conditions?

Bombs fly through the air on their way to the target. We all kind of know that but it’s easy to overlook the importance of that simple truth. Just like a rifle bullet, they are affected by wind – side wind, head wind, tail wind can all greatly affect where an unguided round will land. But, in addition, artillery rounds go up a really long way. That means they transition different temperatures, air densities, and even different wind directions on their way up and then back down again. It is extraordinarily unlikely that the various different effects on the round will neatly cancel each other out. More likely is an unpredictable error  will be introduced, that will change over the course of the day because, d’uh, weather changes over the course of the day. Artillery rounds are also in the air for multiple 10s of seconds, not the 2-3 seconds of a rifle round. That provides far more time for met effects to accumulate.

You can account for this in one of two ways. Either, fire a round, see where it lands, and correct from there. The adjustment between the first and second round inherently resolves the correction required for the current met conditions. That’s super simple, but also gives away surprise and takes time. The other option is to try and measure what the current met conditions are, then apply the necessary corrections (calculated by old-mate computer, thank gawd) before the first round is fired.

Neither of these approaches depend on the gun being used, but both depend on training – although just who is being trained changes. For the first method (fire one, see where it goes, adjust from there) it’s all on the FO. For the second method (lick finger, stick it up in the air) it depends on the training of the CP staff. In practice, a combination of both is generally used, although having reliable met is preferred because it’s faster and retains surprise – having a bomb suddenly arrive out of nowhere and land in your lap leaves no time to get into cover.

Oh, don’t forget to measure the propellant temp while you’re at it. The rate propellant burns is dependent on its temperature. Hotter = faster burn = a higher but ‘peakier’ impulse. Cooler = slower = smoother steadier push. The temperature can change quite a lot over the course of the day, for example between night and day, or if a weather front rolls through. Again, the difference can easily be adjusted for after the first round, but that takes time and costs surprise. Some platforms – generally only SPs – will be constantly and automagically measuring the charge temp. If not, someone will have to dash about every now and then with a probe thermometer, and that is a training and discipline issue.

 

 

So, that’s all accuracy. Precision is the other side of the coin. Put simply, accuracy is the ability to hit the thing you were pointing at, while precision is the ability to do it again. An artillery is basically a large clunky and clanky heat engine. Light the fuel, products of fuel burn expand, that expansion pushes the piston (ie, the round) down the cylinder, just like a car engine. The fuel is different, of course, and hopefully the piston never comes back, but the principles are basically the same. And, just like a car engine, the various components are subject to wear. Wear inside the cylinder (ie, barrel) means that the piston (round) can wobble ever so slightly and ever so unpredictably. In addition, the shock of firing is, well, shocking. That shock is transmitted throughout the system, stressing all the components every time the gun fires. That accumulated stress particularly affects anywhere two pieces come together – screws and bolts joining various bits and bobs, axles that drive things that spin, and gears that elevate and point the barrel. As those things wear they become sloppy, and sloppy means minute but random variation which means unpredictability which means imprecision. Also, over the course of the last century, manufacturing processes have become more controlled, which means that more modern guns tend to be built to tighter tolerances to start with, which means they’re more precise straight out of the box.

Some guns – like the 777, and the PzH2000 – do have a good reputation for precision, but they aren’t inherently magical. Physics is physics and chemistry is chemistry. They are ‘just’ really well designed and manufactured modern guns. In general, precision isn’t specifically dependant on the type of gun used, except to say that newer designs are more precise than older designs, and guns that have fired lots of rounds will be less precise than guns that have fired fewer rounds.

Precision is also affected by variations between rounds, and between propellant. Generally any rounds (or propellant) made in a certain batch at a particular factory over a certain date range will be the same – or ‘same-enough’ that the differences can be ignored. But if, say, the density of the alloy used to make the shell body changes a bit, or the ratio of ingredients used in the propellant is altered just a wee bit, then the flight characteristics of the round will be different to what you may have expected. A good artillery system will take that into account by tightly controlling manufacture, and also by test firing rounds from different batches and … seeing what happens. Literally. Bang a round off, see where it lands, compare that to what was expected, figure out what the correction required for that batch is, and include it in the batch info. A less good artillery system … might not do that.

 

 

Finally, editing counts. The description is fairly limited, and doesn’t really talk about either accuracy OR precision, except to imply there was enough of both to do the job. It seems like they were either pretty close together, or at least one of the rounds was astray since they had a bit of fratricide. Assuming that the three rounds described were the sum total fired, then the grunts and the gunners must have high confidence in the overall system – going straight to danger close is serious business, and not something you’d consider if the guns were firing sloppy.

Oh, one final final note: that airburst could be due to fuzing (prox or mechanical time) but it could also be due to a round with a point detonating (PD, ie, impact) fuze hitting a tree. Given they appear to be in a forest, my first bet would be a PD tree burst, then mechanical time, with prox last. Prox onto a target in a forest is problematic because the foliage canopy can provide a ‘false base’, leading to early and high detonation. High is bad because it dilutes the splinter pattern which reduces its effectiveness. Early is worse because rounds are typically coming from behind you, which means that an early round will be over your heads rather than the bad guys. A good FO would know those considerations, and choose a fuze accordingly.

 

Tl;dr: it could have been a 777, but nothing that he wrote particularly suggests that, either for or against

Thanks @JonS! 

[billbindc]

56 minutes ago, JonS said:

So, I wrote that on my phone, which is a PITA to type on. To add a bit more depth and detail to the above:

How quickly can a target be identified and located?

It can be extraordinarily hard to figure out exactly what something is, and where it is. Is that rifle shot a lone rifleman, the or the forward listening post of a full company position? Getting that wrong will slow things down later as you have to recalibrate the response – especially if you underestimate initially – but crying wolf all the time will soon create credibility and trust problems.

The second problem is target location. You’re being shot at, from “over there”, but that probably gives you an arc around 45° wide and between 100 and 800m deep, which is a LOT of ground. Geometry tells me it’s something like a quarter of a million square metres, which is about 2,500 usable target locations, each of which is 10x10m. ONE of those 2,500 is the one you’re after, maybe  another 24 are close enough to be useful, but the other 2,475 are wrong and will slow down your response.

Deriving a map grid can be by map-to-ground, and a good FO can do that pretty quick because they will be constantly following where they are on the map, and relating features around them to the map, so they already know where they are when the fun starts, and have a pretty good idea of where the love is coming from. But reading from a map is … risky. It’s super easy to transpose numbers. Uh, so I’ve heard … Anyhoo. It also depends on the quality of the map and the map-reading skill of the FO.

There’re also technical aids like super-Gucci binos that have a gps, gyroscope and laser range finder built in, so all you need to do is look at the target (assuming you can find it in all the battlefield clutter) and laze it to get a derived grid.

None of this depends on the guns firing the mission. It does depend on the level of training of the FO, and the technical aids they have available.

How quickly can that be sent to a firing  battery?

This is not really a matter of radios, although obviously having a good comms network is a pre-requisite. Rather it’s a matter of organisation, and in particular how much control the FO has. In general, there’s two schools of thought – either the FO can order fire (“shoot here, now!”), or the FO must request fire (“I have a target – can I have some bullets? Please?”). There are pros and cons with both approaches, which stretch all the way back to the level of training and experience required and forward to efficient and effective use of guns and ammunition. There is no right answer, but for the purposes of this being able to order fire direct from a battery does tend to move things along faster than having to go through command layers asking for permission.

None of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.

How quickly can the target location and description be turned into orders for the guns (bearing, elevation, and ammunition)?

Guns are aimed in terms of angles, and at some point a calculation is required to turn the target location from an grid (GR 123 456) to angles for the gun (a bearing of which way to point, and an  elevation for how far up to point in order to lob the bomb as far as you need, along with the type of ammo, amount of propellant to use, and any fuse setting). That’s invariably done on a computer, which are pretty quick at doing the raw calcs, but there may be additional steps to make sure that the target grid has been entered correctly. The computer doesn’t care whether you entered GR 123 456 or GR 123 546. It will spit out a valid bearing and elevation either way, but the guys on the ground will very definitely care about that. Again there are technical aids that can help speed things up here – those numbers that your super flash binos spat out could be transmitted automagically to the fire control system, which eliminates several machine-to-man-to-man-to-machine interfaces. You just have to hope that the guy pushing the button on the binos lazed the thing he meant to, and wasn’t shaking too much when he pressed the button, or didn’t clip some intervening terrain, or didn’t get laser skip off a reflective surface.

Anyway, ideally there’ll be two independent methods for deriving bearing and elevation, to try and get fat fingers out of the mix. Doing that and checking them against each other takes time, constrained by the slower method.

Modern SP guns are able to do those calculations in the turret, but towed guns generally require a central battery command post to provide that service. Whether the SPs are ‘allowed’ to use their inherent calculation capability – or if that’s still controlled centrally – is a contextual policy decision. On board the vehicle will typically be faster, although it mightn’t scale well – if you only have a single gun in support then a separate command post won’t help much, but if you want to fire a battery or battalion together onto the same target you’ll probably want a CP to be able to spread the love around – there’s not much point in 12 guns all pummelling the hell out of poor Ivan’s pit if the rest of his platoon is left in peace.

At some point in this piece of the chain, too, “someone” should do battlespace deconfliction – basically making sure that you aren’t about to inadvertently drop some bombs on other blue forces, or poke a hole in a helo or planes that’s about to buzz overhead.

Almost none of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.

How well surveyed is the gun position?

This is probably one of the simpler steps now –all guns (almost all?), including towed, currently in service in NATO-aligned armies have the ability to self-locate and orient using on-board GPS. That is, figure out exactly where they are in the world, and in exactly which direction the barrel is pointed. Those two pieces of information are crucial in being able to correctly calculate the bearing and elevation needed to get ‘splody goodness from “here” to way over “there.” Of course, that assumes you aren’t in a GPS-denied or degraded environment. Older guns, whether towed or SP need external – generally man-draulic – assistance to figure that out, essentially by triangulation from a known reference point. In this context, by older guns I basically mean all the old Soviet stuff that never got an upgrade.

So this does sort-of depend on the gun, but the ability to self-locate and orient is sort of binary – either it can, or it can’t. There aren’t really degrees of ability here. If it’s being done by manual survey, it’s highly dependent on training.

How well known are the current met conditions?

Bombs fly through the air on their way to the target. We all kind of know that but it’s easy to overlook the importance of that simple truth. Just like a rifle bullet, they are affected by wind – side wind, head wind, tail wind can all greatly affect where an unguided round will land. But, in addition, artillery rounds go up a really long way. That means they transition different temperatures, air densities, and even different wind directions on their way up and then back down again. It is extraordinarily unlikely that the various different effects on the round will neatly cancel each other out. More likely is an unpredictable error  will be introduced, that will change over the course of the day because, d’uh, weather changes over the course of the day. Artillery rounds are also in the air for multiple 10s of seconds, not the 2-3 seconds of a rifle round. That provides far more time for met effects to accumulate.

You can account for this in one of two ways. Either, fire a round, see where it lands, and correct from there. The adjustment between the first and second round inherently resolves the correction required for the current met conditions. That’s super simple, but also gives away surprise and takes time. The other option is to try and measure what the current met conditions are, then apply the necessary corrections (calculated by old-mate computer, thank gawd) before the first round is fired.

Neither of these approaches depend on the gun being used, but both depend on training – although just who is being trained changes. For the first method (fire one, see where it goes, adjust from there) it’s all on the FO. For the second method (lick finger, stick it up in the air) it depends on the training of the CP staff. In practice, a combination of both is generally used, although having reliable met is preferred because it’s faster and retains surprise – having a bomb suddenly arrive out of nowhere and land in your lap leaves no time to get into cover.

Oh, don’t forget to measure the propellant temp while you’re at it. The rate propellant burns is dependent on its temperature. Hotter = faster burn = a higher but ‘peakier’ impulse. Cooler = slower = smoother steadier push. The temperature can change quite a lot over the course of the day, for example between night and day, or if a weather front rolls through. Again, the difference can easily be adjusted for after the first round, but that takes time and costs surprise. Some platforms – generally only SPs – will be constantly and automagically measuring the charge temp. If not, someone will have to dash about every now and then with a probe thermometer, and that is a training and discipline issue.

 

 

So, that’s all accuracy. Precision is the other side of the coin. Put simply, accuracy is the ability to hit the thing you were pointing at, while precision is the ability to do it again. An artillery is basically a large clunky and clanky heat engine. Light the fuel, products of fuel burn expand, that expansion pushes the piston (ie, the round) down the cylinder, just like a car engine. The fuel is different, of course, and hopefully the piston never comes back, but the principles are basically the same. And, just like a car engine, the various components are subject to wear. Wear inside the cylinder (ie, barrel) means that the piston (round) can wobble ever so slightly and ever so unpredictably. In addition, the shock of firing is, well, shocking. That shock is transmitted throughout the system, stressing all the components every time the gun fires. That accumulated stress particularly affects anywhere two pieces come together – screws and bolts joining various bits and bobs, axles that drive things that spin, and gears that elevate and point the barrel. As those things wear they become sloppy, and sloppy means minute but random variation which means unpredictability which means imprecision. Also, over the course of the last century, manufacturing processes have become more controlled, which means that more modern guns tend to be built to tighter tolerances to start with, which means they’re more precise straight out of the box.

Some guns – like the 777, and the PzH2000 – do have a good reputation for precision, but they aren’t inherently magical. Physics is physics and chemistry is chemistry. They are ‘just’ really well designed and manufactured modern guns. In general, precision isn’t specifically dependant on the type of gun used, except to say that newer designs are more precise than older designs, and guns that have fired lots of rounds will be less precise than guns that have fired fewer rounds.

Precision is also affected by variations between rounds, and between propellant. Generally any rounds (or propellant) made in a certain batch at a particular factory over a certain date range will be the same – or ‘same-enough’ that the differences can be ignored. But if, say, the density of the alloy used to make the shell body changes a bit, or the ratio of ingredients used in the propellant is altered just a wee bit, then the flight characteristics of the round will be different to what you may have expected. A good artillery system will take that into account by tightly controlling manufacture, and also by test firing rounds from different batches and … seeing what happens. Literally. Bang a round off, see where it lands, compare that to what was expected, figure out what the correction required for that batch is, and include it in the batch info. A less good artillery system … might not do that.

 

 

Finally, editing counts. The description is fairly limited, and doesn’t really talk about either accuracy OR precision, except to imply there was enough of both to do the job. It seems like they were either pretty close together, or at least one of the rounds was astray since they had a bit of fratricide. Assuming that the three rounds described were the sum total fired, then the grunts and the gunners must have high confidence in the overall system – going straight to danger close is serious business, and not something you’d consider if the guns were firing sloppy.

Oh, one final final note: that airburst could be due to fuzing (prox or mechanical time) but it could also be due to a round with a point detonating (PD, ie, impact) fuze hitting a tree. Given they appear to be in a forest, my first bet would be a PD tree burst, then mechanical time, with prox last. Prox onto a target in a forest is problematic because the foliage canopy can provide a ‘false base’, leading to early and high detonation. High is bad because it dilutes the splinter pattern which reduces its effectiveness. Early is worse because rounds are typically coming from behind you, which means that an early round will be over your heads rather than the bad guys. A good FO would know those considerations, and choose a fuze accordingly.

 

Tl;dr: it could have been a 777, but nothing in what he wrote particularly suggests that, either for or against

Also, shouldn't be be caveating emptor every single detail? We don't really know the provenance of the story, the actual bona fides of the writer, etc. Sure, it's interesting but we have no real way to prove that some of it or all of it isn't fanfic. That it's written compellingly uh rah makes it if anything more suspect. 

[JonS]

12 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Also, shouldn't be be caveating emptor every single detail? We don't really know the provenance of the story, the actual bona fides of the writer, etc. Sure, it's interesting but we have no real way to prove that some of it or all of it isn't fanfic. That it's written compellingly uh rah makes it if anything more suspect. 

Yeah, I kind of touched on that.

1 hour ago, JonS said:

Finally, editing counts. The description is fairly limited, and doesn’t really talk about either accuracy OR precision, except to imply there was enough of both to do the job. It seems like they were either pretty close together, or at least one of the rounds was astray since they had a bit of fratricide. Assuming that the three rounds described were the sum total fired ...

I have no reason to suppose it's wholesale BS (or even retail BS), and the guy appears to be legit and credible. But you're right that what people leave out of a story can be as informative as what they include.

 

Edited December 20, 2022 by JonS

[Beleg85]

Insane clip. Soon helicopters could be equipped with mine plows, they fly so close to the ground anyway.

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

How well known are the current met conditions?

All but the the smallest drones should have an accessory met package that feeds met data back to a brigade level server or similar. If it could be made a small as I think it could be you could use a standard package across most of the drone fleet, and the cost per piece therefore would not be that high. You would need some sort of comms protocol so it didn't broadcast when it was supposed to be radio silent, but I think that is doable compared to the general electromagnetic insanity on the modern battlefield. Chrissl might have a more informed opinion on the practicality of the idea?

 

8 hours ago, Huba said:

Just started to read it, I'll prepare a little summary when I'm done:

 

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/15/russia-ukraine-war-mobilization-putin-attack/

Quote

Neither the better morale and superior technology of the Ukrainians nor the lack of equipment, training, and motivation of freshly drafted Russians have prevented Russia from achieving its interim military aims at a relatively modest political cost. If the arrival of a few tens of thousands of mobilized troops was enough to achieve that, then what would another million troops do?

Murz, and the gentleman who wrote the FP article seem to have RADICALLY different opinions of Russia's prospects....

 

[JonS]

7 minutes ago, dan/california said:

All but the the smallest drones should have ...

Tell me you haven't seen The Pentagon Wars without telling me you haven't seen The Pentagon Wars

[danfrodo]

42 minutes ago, dan/california said:

All but the the smallest drones should have an accessory met package that feeds met data back to a brigade level server or similar. If it could be made a small as I think it could be you could use a standard package across most of the drone fleet, and the cost per piece therefore would not be that high. You would need some sort of comms protocol so it didn't broadcast when it was supposed to be radio silent, but I think that is doable compared to the general electromagnetic insanity on the modern battlefield. Chrissl might have a more informed opinion on the practicality of the idea?

 

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/15/russia-ukraine-war-mobilization-putin-attack/

Murz, and the gentleman who wrote the FP article seem to have RADICALLY different opinions of Russia's prospects....

 

Murz:  Yes, the russian interim military goals of losing Kharkiv & Kherson were certainly met, along w getting thousands of mobiks killed for nothing around Bakhmut. 

And the cost?  Setting your nation's economic growth back a generation and needing another generation at least to bring it up to modernity? -- a small price to pay. 

THis guy is really making some sense.

[sburke]

2 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Murz:  Yes, the russian interim military goals of losing Kharkiv & Kherson were certainly met, along w getting thousands of mobiks killed for nothing around Bakhmut. 

And the cost?  Setting your nation's economic growth back a generation and needing another generation at least to bring it up to modernity? -- a small price to pay. 

THis guy is really making some sense.

I think we are seeing more than a single generation of downturn for Russia.  Frankly Russia is cashing in its foreseeable future here.  We are talking multiple generations paying the cost of this war both economically and in social demographics.  But hey if those newly mobilized can buy their daughter a smart phone...  someone should hack those and load up a "cost of this war" calculator.

[Fenris]

Next part of this interview

 

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Insane clip. Soon helicopters could be equipped with mine plows, they fly so close to the ground anyway.

Another example showing that if you're in one of these helicopters, you need to put down pretty much straight away while there is still some degree of control.  At least bleed off forward momentum so you don't break apart of flip over (as this one did).  The thing is, the pilot has to know he's hit that badly, which I expect is not easy to know.  I saw one video of a Russian helicopter that flew for probably about a full minute before everything fell apart, so that pilot probably thought he could "make it".

Here's a view from a Russian drone:

Steve

[Combatintman]

What looks to be a pretty good article on Russian Cyber Operations from the Carnegie Institute came out a couple of days ago.  I confess I haven't read all of it due to personal bandwidth issues but their stuff is pretty good.  From the bits I did read, the deduction that stuck out for me in my line of work is that Russia struggles with intelligence-led planning/decision-making - certainly not an earth-shattering revelation to either myself or followers of this thread but always good to have confirmation.  I'm sure the more analytical types on this thread will draw out a hell of a lot more than that:

https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/12/16/russia-s-wartime-cyber-operations-in-ukraine-military-impacts-influences-and-implications-pub-88657

 

Edited December 20, 2022 by Combatintman

[LongLeftFlank]

22 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

What is going to happen when they take Yuri, the only guy who knows how the wastewater treatment pumps work, and get him killed in Ukraine?  The pumps will stop working, eventually, and Sergei (the guy who didn't get mobilized) will have to learn on the job how to fix them.  Provided there's a factory to make it and a driver to deliver it.

Oh, I know there's a Chinese company happy to send Chinese technicians to provide those essential services, and all the equipment... for cash.

And hey, why not cut out the middleman, they'll happily modernise and operate all the O&G infra and mines for Mother Russia as well, and provide all the civil infra gratis.

Here, just let the nice warm friendly dragon slither its coils around you while your own society dissolves, stupid drunken bear.

[BlackMoria]

"Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?"  I guess we will see if Russia can dance....

Edited December 20, 2022 by BlackMoria

[LongLeftFlank]

...killed during an air-raid on Tobruk; a NAAFI tea urn fell on his head. 

So where might we find imagery of devastated districts of Donetsk City, leveled by 8 years of merciless Banderite terrorist shelling?

Pretty easy to find on the Ukraine side of the line....

Both sides filling up hospitals....

 

 

Edited December 20, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[cesmonkey]

Lawmakers unveil government funding bill to stave off Friday shutdown
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/19/government-funding-deal-hits-11th-hour-snag-the-fbi-headquarters-00074663

Quote

The omnibus includes about $45 billion for Ukraine, exceeding President Joe Biden’s request for $37 billion

 

[LongLeftFlank]

 

 

[Huba]

Zelensky visited Bakhmut today.

Edit:

Changed the tweet, this thread has a lot of photos from the visit

Edited December 20, 2022 by Huba

[LongLeftFlank]

So did St. Nicholas

Although, kids still there???... wtf?!!!!

2.  HeliosRunner's sitrep thread. As usual, I like his topo maps, although his front line markings should not be taken too literally.

 

Edited December 20, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[AlsatianFelix]

Pretty sure the sound editor of this Ukrainian artillery clip is a fan of CMBB, because that's where he got his sound files. I'd know the sound of my pixeltruppen getting minced anywhere, https://twitter.com/nevedimka123/status/1604863216768585729?s=20&t=zW_3xmI4sTwmHMeUwrMBtw

Edited December 20, 2022 by AlsatianFelix
I'm stupid

[The_Capt]

13 hours ago, JonS said:

So, I wrote that on my phone, which is a PITA to type on. To add a bit more depth and detail to the above:

How quickly can a target be identified and located?

It can be extraordinarily hard to figure out exactly what something is, and where it is. Is that rifle shot a lone rifleman, or the forward listening post of a full company position? Getting that wrong will slow things down later as you have to re-calibrate the response – especially if you underestimate initially – but crying wolf all the time will soon create credibility and trust problems.

The second problem is target location. You’re being shot at, from “over there”, but that probably gives you an arc around 45° wide and between 100 and 800m deep, which is a LOT of ground. Geometry tells me it’s something like a quarter of a million square metres, which is about 2,500 usable target locations, each of which is 10x10m. ONE of those 2,500 is the one you’re after, maybe  another 24 are close enough to be useful, but the other 2,475 are wrong and will slow down your response.

Deriving a map grid can be by map-to-ground, and a good FO can do that pretty quick because they will be constantly following where they are on the map, and relating features around them to the map, so they already know where they are when the fun starts, and have a pretty good idea of where the love is coming from. But reading from a map is … risky. It’s super easy to transpose numbers. Uh, so I’ve heard … Anyhoo. It also depends on the quality of the map and the map-reading skill of the FO.

There’re also technical aids like super-Gucci binos that have a gps, gyroscope and laser range finder built in, so all you need to do is look at the target (assuming you can find it in all the battlefield clutter) and laze it to get a derived grid.

None of this depends on the guns firing the mission. It does depend on the level of training of the FO, and the technical aids they have available.

How quickly can that be sent to a firing battery?

This is not really a matter of radios, although obviously having a good comms network is a per-requisite. Rather it’s a matter of organisation, and in particular how much control the FO has. In general, there’s two schools of thought – either the FO can order fire (“shoot here, now!”), or the FO must request fire (“I have a target – can I have some bullets? Please?”). There are pros and cons with both approaches, which stretch all the way back to the level of training and experience required and forward to efficient and effective use of guns and ammunition. There is no right answer, but for the purposes of this being able to order fire direct from a battery does tend to move things along faster than having to go through command layers asking for permission.

None of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.

How quickly can the target location and description be turned into orders for the guns (bearing, elevation, and ammunition)?

Guns are aimed in terms of angles, and at some point a calculation is required to turn the target location from an grid (GR 123 456) to angles for the gun (a bearing of which way to point, and an  elevation for how far up to point in order to lob the bomb as far as you need, along with the type of ammo, amount of propellant to use, and any fuse setting). That’s invariably done on a computer, which are pretty quick at doing the raw calcs, but there may be additional steps to make sure that the target grid has been entered correctly. The computer doesn’t care whether you entered GR 123 456 or GR 123 546. It will spit out a valid bearing and elevation either way, but the guys on the ground will very definitely care about that. Again there are technical aids that can help speed things up here – those numbers that your super flash binos spat out could be transmitted automagically to the fire control system, which eliminates several machine-to-man-to-man-to-machine interfaces. You just have to hope that the guy pushing the button on the binos lazed the thing he meant to, and wasn’t shaking too much when he pressed the button, or didn’t clip some intervening terrain, or didn’t get laser skip off a reflective surface.

Anyway, ideally there’ll be two independent methods for deriving bearing and elevation, to try and get fat fingers out of the mix. Doing that and checking them against each other takes time, constrained by the slower method.

Modern SP guns are able to do those calculations in the turret, but towed guns generally require a central battery command post to provide that service. Whether the SPs are ‘allowed’ to use their inherent calculation capability – or if that’s still controlled centrally – is a contextual policy decision. On board the vehicle will typically be faster, although it mightn’t scale well – if you only have a single gun in support then a separate command post won’t help much, but if you want to fire a battery or battalion together onto the same target you’ll probably want a CP to be able to spread the love around – there’s not much point in 12 guns all pummeling the hell out of poor Ivan’s pit if the rest of his platoon is left in peace.

At some point in this piece of the chain, too, “someone” should do battlespace deconfliction – basically making sure that you aren’t about to inadvertently drop some bombs on other blue forces, or poke a hole in a helo or plane that’s about to buzz overhead.

Almost none of this depends on the guns that will fire the mission. It does depend on the doctrine and training of the people involved.

How well surveyed is the gun position?

This is probably one of the simpler steps now –all guns (almost all?), including towed, currently in service in NATO-aligned armies have the ability to self-locate and orient using on-board GPS. That is, figure out exactly where they are in the world, and in exactly which direction the barrel is pointed. Those two pieces of information are crucial in being able to correctly calculate the bearing and elevation needed to get ‘splody goodness from “here” to way over “there.” Of course, that assumes you aren’t in a GPS-denied or degraded environment. Older guns, whether towed or SP need external – generally man-draulic – assistance to figure that out, essentially by triangulation from a known reference point. In this context, by older guns I basically mean all the old Soviet stuff that never got an upgrade.

So this does sort-of depend on the gun, but the ability to self-locate and orient is sort of binary – either it can, or it can’t. There aren’t really degrees of ability here. If it’s being done by manual survey, it’s highly dependent on training.

How well known are the current met conditions?

Bombs fly through the air on their way to the target. We all kind of know that but it’s easy to overlook the importance of that simple truth. Just like a rifle bullet, they are affected by wind – side wind, head wind, tail wind can all greatly affect where an unguided round will land. But, in addition, artillery rounds go up a really long way. That means they transition different temperatures, air densities, and even different wind directions on their way up and then back down again. It is extraordinarily unlikely that the various different effects on the round will neatly cancel each other out. More likely is an unpredictable error  will be introduced, that will change over the course of the day because, d’uh, weather changes over the course of the day. Artillery rounds are also in the air for multiple 10s of seconds, not the 2-3 seconds of a rifle round. That provides far more time for met effects to accumulate.

You can account for this in one of two ways. Either, fire a round, see where it lands, and correct from there. The adjustment between the first and second round inherently resolves the correction required for the current met conditions. That’s super simple, but also gives away surprise and takes time. The other option is to try and measure what the current met conditions are, then apply the necessary corrections (calculated by old-mate computer, thank gawd) before the first round is fired.

Neither of these approaches depend on the gun being used, but both depend on training – although just who is being trained changes. For the first method (fire one, see where it goes, adjust from there) it’s all on the FO. For the second method (lick finger, stick it up in the air) it depends on the training of the CP staff. In practice, a combination of both is generally used, although having reliable met is preferred because it’s faster and retains surprise – having a bomb suddenly arrive out of nowhere and land in your lap leaves no time to get into cover.

Oh, don’t forget to measure the propellant temp while you’re at it. The rate propellant burns is dependent on its temperature. Hotter = faster burn = a higher but ‘peakier’ impulse. Cooler = slower = smoother steadier push. The temperature can change quite a lot over the course of the day, for example between night and day, or if a weather front rolls through. Again, the difference can easily be adjusted for after the first round, but that takes time and costs surprise. Some platforms – generally only SPs – will be constantly and automagically measuring the charge temp. If not, someone will have to dash about every now and then with a probe thermometer, and that is a training and discipline issue.

 

 

So, all that’s to do with speed and accuracy. Precision is the other side of the coin. Put simply, accuracy is the ability to hit the thing you were pointing at, while precision is the ability to do it again. An artillery piece is basically a large clunky and clanky heat engine. Light the fuel, exhaust products of burn expand, that expansion pushes the piston (ie, the round) down the cylinder, just like a car engine. The fuel is different, of course, and hopefully the piston never comes back, but the principles are basically the same. And, just like a car engine, the various components are subject to wear. Wear inside the cylinder (ie, barrel) means that the piston (round) can wobble ever so slightly and ever so unpredictably. In addition, the shock of firing is, well, shocking. That shock is transmitted throughout the system, stressing all the components every time the gun fires. That accumulated stress particularly affects anywhere two pieces come together – screws and bolts joining various bits and bobs, axles that drive things that spin, and gears that elevate and point the barrel. As those things wear they become sloppy, and sloppy means minute but random variation which means unpredictability which means imprecision. Also, over the course of the last century, manufacturing processes have become more controlled, which means that more modern guns tend to be built to tighter tolerances to start with, which means they’re more precise straight out of the box.

Some guns – like the 777, and the PzH2000 – do have a good reputation for precision, but they aren’t inherently magical. Physics is physics and chemistry is chemistry. They are ‘just’ really well designed and manufactured modern guns. In general, precision isn’t specifically dependent on the type of gun used, except to say that newer designs are more precise than older designs, and guns that have fired lots of rounds will be less precise than guns that have fired fewer rounds.

Precision is also affected by variations between rounds, and between propellant. Generally any rounds (or propellant) made in a certain batch at a particular factory over a certain date range will be the same – or ‘same-enough’ that the differences can be ignored. But if, say, the density of the alloy used to make the shell body changes a bit, or the ratio of ingredients used in the propellant is altered just a wee bit, then the flight characteristics of the round will be different to what you may have expected. A good artillery system will take that into account by tightly controlling manufacture, and also by test firing rounds from different batches and … seeing what happens. Literally. Bang a round off, see where it lands, compare that to what was expected, figure out what the correction required for that batch is, and include it in the batch info. A less good artillery system … might not do that.

 

 

Finally, editing counts. The description is fairly limited, and doesn’t really talk about either accuracy OR precision, except to imply there was enough of both to do the job. It seems like the two forces were either pretty close together, or at least one of the rounds was astray since they had a bit of fratricide. Assuming that the three rounds described were the sum total fired, then the grunts and the gunners must have high confidence in the overall system – going straight to danger close is serious business, and not something you’d consider if the guns were firing sloppy.

Oh, one final final note: that airburst could be due to fuzing (prox or mechanical time) but it could also be due to a round with a point detonating (PD, ie, impact) fuze hitting a tree. Given they appear to be in a forest, my first bet would be a PD tree burst, then mechanical time, with prox last. Prox onto a target in a forest is problematic because the foliage canopy can provide a ‘false base’, leading to early and high detonation. High is bad because it dilutes the splinter pattern which reduces its effectiveness. Early is worse because rounds are typically coming from behind you, which means that an early round will be going off over your head rather than the bad guy's. Good FOs know those considerations, and choose fuzes accordingly.

 

Tl;dr: it could have been a 777, but nothing in what he wrote particularly suggests that, either for or against

“But they got the Pz2000 up and running in a month - it can’t be that complicated”  The_Capt said sardonically.