Syrian Artillery

[MartinEden]

And to the dude so full of confidence in the Finnish Army: sure, the Finns could give the Americans a decent go of it IN FINLAND for a while, but how about you Finnish boys come take us on in Texas. How long you think the Finnish Army would last anywhere but Finland?

[Battlefront.com]

Fortunately for Finland, it has no intention of going to Texas (or even to Sweden for that matter, though some do dream of it )

I'll just restate what I said. Syrian artillery is not likely to be very effective against the sort of military action CM:SF is simulating. They could do things to make them more effective than not, but broadly speaking they would be nothing more than a harrassing element. They have just about no chance of being anything more than that. They are solidly Soviet styled and the sorts of things URC is talking about are polar opposite. Previous attempts at fundamental reform within the Syrian military have not worked, so I doubt they will be able to do much between now and CM:SF's fictitious date.

Steve

[panzermartin]

How about on map mortars? Will they be as ineffective as the rest of the syrian artillery? On a second thought, will they have on map mortars at all?

[John Kettler]

If I were the Syrians, I'd invest in a bunch of cheap throwaway launchers for rockets or even foil coated fireworks with enough oomph to get high enough to be seen by the Firefinder, reacted to, and tracked. The idea would be to completely overload the system's ability to extract meaningful data from the radar picture, during which I could do all sorts of unpleasant things, say, several artillery salvoes, an MRL firing, or what have you. Done correctly, they might even be able to frighten the tacair types, who'd be suddenly confronted with a whole slew of "SAMs" soaring up from the ground.

Regards,

John Kettler

[MartinEden]

Thank goodness the Syrians wouldn't be that smart.

[Battlefront.com]

Syrians won't have onmap mortars. So far as we can tell the smallest they have are 82mm. Some Arab militaries do have a 60mm mortar, which is homegrown, but we haven't found any mention of the Syrians having any. Since 82mm mortars are not really relevant to the map sizes we're actively supporting, there is no reason to include them.

Steve

[John Kettler]

Steve,

Maybe it's that I'm pretty beat right now, but I don't follow your logic at all. Given game maps big enough to support MBT clashes, why would you leave off a weapon with a minimum range of 100 meters (M-1937 82mm mortar, per Isby's WEAPONS AND TACTICS OF THE SOVIET ARMY, Fully Revised Edition, p. 250) and a max range corresponding closely with max trained for engagement range for the M1A2 series (3000 meters)? What am I missing here?

Regards,

John Kettler

[SSgt Viljuri]

MartinEden wrote:

And to the dude so full of confidence in the Finnish Army: sure, the Finns could give the Americans a decent go of it IN FINLAND for a while, but how about you Finnish boys come take us on in Texas. How long you think the Finnish Army would last anywhere but Finland?

You're probably right. We couldn't stand the heat in Texas, but how about Upper Michican?

If we'd invade Northern Michican, the local population would be sympathetic to our cause (since they are consisting largely of people of Finnish origin), but any US countermeasures would miss their mark completely.

Even Michican's own National Guard would be lost, since they couldn't locate Upper Michican on Map and would probably end up to Canada instead.

And how about that! Canada would join the Union at last (just think about the hunting possibilities), so you would happily give the "Uppies" to us.

All would be happy. Almost too happy, if Climate Change would really kick in!

[Battlefront.com]

John,

It's a fair point, but at this time we are not planning on supporting on map mortars above 60mm size. They aren't supposed to be used in a direct support role anyway. Bringing an entirely different weapons system into the discussion, such as the Abrams, is senseless. They have nothing to compare with each other and therefore is irrelevant.

We are not generally supporting map sizes that you guys are used to from CMx1 days. We've made that clear several times already, but of course it bears repeating. Generally maps will be 1500m in any one dimension. Remember that CM:SF is not a tank heavy game, so thinking in tank terms is incorrect. An Abrams would need 5k x 5k maps to fully exercise its range AND have some amount of room for maneuver. That is way outside of the range of technical abilities of today's computers. At least with the sort of highly detailed enviornments we have.

Steve

[panzermartin]

Maybe their off-map mortar artillery will be more effective compared to their heavier assets, given their lower profile and more flexible nature perhaps...

[John Kettler]

Steve,

I somehow missed the smaller map discussion, but if on board mortars are out, then let me offer a renewed request for something I felt CM has desperately needed since it first came out and I played Fire on the Mountain in ROW: specialized TRPs and defensive concentrations for mortars over and above the standard TRPs usable by conventional artillery and MRLs.

Also, unless you're planning a lot of MOUT, isn't 1500 meters on the low side even with the MGS in play, let alone some of the ATGMs? Offhand, I'd expect, in open terrain at least, that deployment zones would be under fire often.

Regards,

John Kettler

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by MartinEden:

This is some funny stuff. I suspect a war between Syria and the U.S. would be much more like Desert Storm than Iraqi Freedon, which would mean WEEKS of Air Strikes and Cruise Missle strikes before anything else. To expect the Syrian Army to have any command and control after that is quite silly.

yeah, high level stuff would likely be gone. on lower levels the effects would be more marginal. what the practical effect would be would depend on the general structure of Syrian forces. if Syrians have rigid Soviet style structure then their forces would be paralyzed and isolated. if they have had some success in transforming their force towards more flexible independend units then the effect would be less radical.

still in any case the air campaign would not destroy Syrian artillery. in Kosovo even official NATO kill claims for the 78 days are less than 400 mortars and guns - less than 5 guns and mortars per day. if we take NATO claims at face value and double them to negate terrain etc differences between Kosovo and Syria, it would take a 200 day air campaign to destroy Syrian artillery.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by MartinEden:

And to the dude so full of confidence in the Finnish Army: sure, the Finns could give the Americans a decent go of it IN FINLAND for a while, but how about you Finnish boys come take us on in Texas. How long you think the Finnish Army would last anywhere but Finland?

i'm not full of confidence in the Finnish Defence Forces. much of FDF is borderline comical. there's no doubt that US would seriously kick our asses, be that in Texas or Finland. man for man, US soldier is superior to Finnish one. training, fitness and equipment is simply superior. our only card is to make the fight bloody enough so that it isn't worth it for the enemy. after all, there's not much to gain in taking Finland, since there's no oil or anything.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

They have just about no chance of being anything more than that. They are solidly Soviet styled and the sorts of things URC is talking about are polar opposite. Previous attempts at fundamental reform within the Syrian military have not worked, so I doubt they will be able to do much between now and CM:SF's fictitious date.

fair enough. some odd arty shells here or there is enough for me.

[SSgt Viljuri]

urc wrote:

(snips) US soldier is superior to Finnish one. training, fitness and equipment is simply superior.

Are you shore?

Despite the obvious differences, there are certain advantages to us, like the fact that we aren't that ignert.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by SSgt Viljuri:

Are you shore?

Despite the obvious differences, there are certain advantages to us, like the fact that we aren't that ignert.

have you been exposed to UN vets or are you being sarcastic?

even if it was true that some pros tend to be squares, i'm not sure if it matters in combat.

[Peter Cairns]

Steve,

I've come across a couple of reports that Syria was trying to buy Krasnopol guided artillery projectiles a few years back ( about the same time they got Kornets).

Depending on the variant (120mm, 122mm, 152mm, and 120mm mortar laser targeted munitions seem to be available) is there any idea if these have actually been acquired, and even if they had, would they be in sufficent quantities to merit inclusion.

Peter.

[John Kettler]

Peter Cairns,

If I'm playing as the Syrians, I sure hope so! If I could clobber a Stryker or M1 in exchange for losing a single field gun/heavy mortar to CB/CM fire, he'll run out of AFVs before I run out of tubes. And did you know there's also a kit for 122 Grad and similar

rockets?

Regards,

John Kettler

[Battlefront.com]

I've not seen any mention of them having advanced artillery rounds, no. They were on their 2005 shopping list after Russia forgave $10b in debt.

I don't think that it would amount to much anyway. They are very expensive round for round. The problem with weapons like this is that if you don't have a ton of them, and suffer fairly widespread devistation of your ability to use what you do have, then the usefulness is questionable. Especially since someone has to be in place with a laser designator at the right place and right time. That's a lot of things that have to go right in order to be more than an annoyance.

Steve

[Peter Cairns]

Steve,

As a follow on, I know that some Russian tanks can fire laser guided ATGM,s, do you know if they can operate with a seperate designator.

I know the designation range for a Krasnapol is about 7km ( probably 4 miles) and I had thought of using SP artillery in a very flat trajectory from behind a ridge with the designator on it.

That would mean a fairly short range under 10 miles, but depending on terrain might greatly reduce the ability of CB radars to detect it.

(Due to the curve of the earth d=SQRoot (1.5h) where d is distance in miles, and h height in feet, thus a 6 ft man can see the horizon at sea 3 miles away, as 6x1.5=9, SQroot 9=3).

By keeping an artillery round low you reduce the range at which it can be detected and the time to calculate it's trajectory, in addition any round that manouvres makes calculating the firing point hugely more difficult.

If the same technique could be used by tanks using an external designator, it might allow them to engage targets without exposing themselves.

I should add that this isn't really something I would expect to be allowed in CM:SF, in that although it may be technically possible, for a range of reasons that Steve has gone in to, it isn't probable and therefore it's a tactic that a smarter enemy might use but Syria almost certainly wouldn't.

Peter.

[Battlefront.com]

Not all lasers work for all things in all situations. I don't know if a tank's lader designator would work with Kransapol shells. Coordination between armor and artillery units would likely be extremely poor anyways thanks to the poor communications systems and centralized command structure.

In any case, I don't know of any evidence that they have any, not to mention significant, amounts of sch shells.

Steve

[John Kettler]

Peter Cairns,

You have a truly devious Red Hat mind. You may well be onto something, since I bet the Firefinder radars don't "look" anywhere nearly that low typically, thus neatly avoiding having a substantial ground clutter processing issue to deal with. The various laser-guided TLGMs (tank launched guided missiles) are, so far as I know, beam riders, whereas the Krasnopol type weapons home on a reflected laser spot. Two entirely different principles. OTOH, they might operate in the same frequency band, in which case, you'd also have to look at any modulation applied to the designator beam. You could easily have two laser sources in the same band, but with wildly different characteristics as signals.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Peter Cairns]

Steve,

I wasn't thinking of using the Tanks designator to guide an artillery shell, I was looking at an infantry team using a designator for a TFGM, so the tank remained hidden.

John,

The other thing that i hve been looking at is Irans version of the Chinese CSS-8, which is actually the old SA-2 Guideline used as a SSM.

This again has a realitively low trajectory, but also has the advantage of in theory accepting mid course commands, as it was originally a beam rider.

Thus by altering it's flight path immediately after launch then bringing it back on target you make detecting the launch point far more difficult.

In addition as most early Russian SAM's have been progressively undated, it might able to detect and attack CB radars or even if it had a terminal IR guidance package, recently fired field artillery.

It's sort of a poor mans HARM when you don't have an airforce (left).

Of course the Syrians may well not have recieved them from Iran and are unlikely to have the capability to utilise them this effectively even if they did.

Also if the US or UK integrate CB radar capability in to JSTARSor ASTOR, none of it will work.

Iran also as a number 0f 1,500km plus missiles with cluster warheads, up to 1,400 bomblets with a CEP of about 200-400m.

These could well be used against Airfields throughout the gulf, particularly to target Tankers, AWAC's, JSTAR, Transports and Bombers, effectively anything that is a big target which can't be put in a hardened hanger.

Diego Garcia might be in range from Southern Iran and I sustect every major oil instalation in the gulf will also be vulnerable. A PAC£should be effective against it, but I doubt the US has enough of them to cover all the possible targets.

Peter.