Well, yeah, but would you want to trust yourself to something the French made?

Say what you will about French leadership -- I've said the same things. But your French soldier is well-trained and well-armed. In 1940, France had not only more tanks and aircraft than the Germans, they had BETTER tanks and aircraft. What they lacked was good generals with workablr doctrine.

And today they still make good stuff.

Is it that the Army doesn't want the French system, or does some Congressman insist on a system built in his district?

Stephen,

While I will grant you that the NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome has often affected our procurement processes (for the reasons MAJ Erik alludes to), I"m not sure about the French equipment.

In WWII, French tanks came w/ one-man turrets (which left the tank commander not only directing his vehicle, but also having to load AND fire the gun). While they had a good gun and good armor, they usually had no radio (platoon and company commanders' vehicles did), and were usually mechanically unreliable.

Today, of course, we have the example of the French carrier de Gaulle, which from most accounts, is barely able to make speed to allow aircraft to fly off its deck, and whose engines are, again, not the most reliable. (Of course, we have the counter-example of the Exocet, which has performed well world-wide.)

Just a thought....

Best thing about the French gun is that it has a sensor that can detect a potentially superior force and automatically goes into surrender mode.

I'm not sure, but I don't think any of the Exocets that struck their targets actually detonated. It was the remaining rocket fuel that caused most of the damage by starting tremendous fires. Otherwise they did perform well, though.

Part of the issue is that the XM177's been in the works for quite a while now. Another is the specs issued for the new howitzer require that it can be carried slung under a Blackhawk. That pretty much cuts out any sort of SP gun. Still, if we want one, South Africa mounts their super-long ranged 155mm on one. The Czech Republic also has one based on their Warsaw Pact-era 152mm SP Howitzer. Hook either one up with the targeting computers from the Paladin and we're good to go!

I'm partial to the Stryker. Don't know why.

What the Army should do is commission a bunch of Landmasters and Combat RVs.

Hey, they worked for Jan Michael Vincent and Bill Murray.

Kal

To Larry Elmore:

ALL of them? Wow. I thought, though, that some of the Exocets fired in the Iran-Iraq War worked as specified. (I believe, though, that several of the Exocets in the Falklands War malfunctioned as you noted.) How did the Stark suffer its damage?

On the issue of air-portability of the new howitzer, it has struck me that this is a less important capability, as more and more countries develop counter-battery radars and go to self-propelled themselves. The set-up (and therefore take-down) times of a towed gun will be unsurvivable as "bad guys" gain the ability to back-track shells and bring down counter-battery fire on positions (such as we can do w/ the Firefinder radars).

To paraphrase from Full Metal Jacket, the best thing about French weapons? Never been fired, only dropped once!!

Has to be something self-propelled in any case for a variety of reasons: a) to keep up with the combat formations. Artillery tends to be slower in any case. b) shoot and scoot. If you end up working in a place with ,say, Russian exported Grad or Smerch rocket batteries+counter battery radars. Even with a light gun (one I was trained on was a SP lightly armored 122mm howitzer), it still takes easily something like 50 seconds for the grenades to fly 10 miles. Longer with longer range fire,obviously. With good counterbattery coverage of your own and SP guns, you'll have time to evacuate if you're fast (and willing to see whatever gear you drop about your firing position get incinerated,obviously). The French version seems to a decent compromise between light weight and firepower, dont know about crosscountry mobility.

Dunno about this. Stryker is supposed to be "more mobile", but it, like a towed 155 or 105mm howitzer, must still be emplaced. So what's the advantage? It had better be rate of fire, rapidity of emplacement/(what's the inverse? deplacement?), accuracy, or range. Or all of the above.

The picture looks kinda bogus; every mobile artillery piece (we're talking indirect fire here) I've ever seen has some struts to stabilize them on emplacement. This thing has that wee platform in back that looks none too stable.

Dean-

I've been aboard the Stark and served aboard Underwood (same calls ship) and that was a big topic of study.

Both Excocets struck the ship above the waterline in Combat Systems Berthing. Neither missle detonated. There was a raging fuel fire for a while that put the ship very much in danger. Had the warheads detonated, they would very likely have also caused the missle magazine to go up. Between CS Berthing and the missle mag is just one space containing one of the ship's air conditioning units. As it was, during the fire one of the Gunners Mates had to sit in the magazine and keep the missles cool with a fire hose. In the berthing comartment nearly a third of the crew was killed right away in their bunks. Those that survived weren't able to get out because the aluminum ladder out of the compartment was heated so quickly that it got too soft to hold their weight. After hours of flooding the compartment with AFFF (foam mixed with seawater) they managed to put the fire out. There was somuch water in the compartment that the ship had a 15 degree list for a short while (at 18 degrees bad thing start to happen).

The Stark was left with lots of fire damage, serious structural damage, and a large hole in the hull. It's impressive that were able tomake it back to the US on its own power.

Hmm.. I suppose this goes to David. A large part of that need for struts or stabilization depends on whether we're looking at a cannon or a howitzer. The one I tinkered with was a 122mm howitzer based on the Russian 2S1 chassis (see http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/row/2s1.htm), with local electronics and datalink.

Didnt need or use any "struts" in that sense. Same goes for the heavier 152mm version. If I had to wager a guess, the need for those on a howitzer is not that great anyway .Basicly howitzers tend to fire at angles >45 degrees and cannons lower, which makes a big difference on the need for support before the recoil pushes it around.Also,the 2S1 weighed roughly 16-20 metric tons. (my personal fav in the respect are simple AA guns, every burst fired at a ground target pushes the whole thing around. At least with a dual 23mm). In the system I played with the propellant charge could be varied easily to keep those high angles. The reason for that method was that the unit was meant to operate in heavily forested terrain,and high angles means less cleanup to open up a firing sector,as well as better reach in the target end with less ammo wasted exploding on trees crowns and such.