M270/HIMARS MLRS-style launcher pod reload

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Indeed, but we were told such things couldn't survive and would be rapidly located and neutralised ... and yet both sides continue to use towed guns, meaning that the counterbattery environment is not, perhaps, as dreadful as we expected.

I've spent way too much time and way too many Sanity Points following the Russia-Ukraine War.

If the U.S. military was fighting itself, and everyone was on point, towed artillery would be consistently wrecked by fast and accurate counterbattery fire. Since high crew survival rates are built into modern U.S. military doctrine, it makes sense that the USMC and USA got rid of their towed artillery.

If both sides are using 30+ year old gear and counterbattery systems aren't as well developed, there's still a limited place for towed guns.

This is particularly true if you're willing to treat your people as expendable and accept a far lower quality of artillery fire. In that case, you can keep bringing towed artillery and heavy mortars onto the battlefield. The problem is that you'll be losing them at a rate of 15-40 per day against a competent foe, as the Russians are currently doing.

While both sides are justifiably being secretive about counter-battery warfare, it appears that counterbattery radars and other counterbattery systems are good enough to get a near instant range and bearing on the source of most artillery fire. At that point, the race is on between artillery mobility and counterbattery kill chain.

As an example, there was a Russian drone video released in the last two weeks where the Ukrainians screwed up and allowed a Russian recon drone to get very good visual fix on a HIMARS. Fortunately for the Ukrainians, their standard HIMARS battle doctrine saved their butts, since they've got "shoot and scoot" tactics nailed by this point. Meanwhile, crummy Russian counterbattery fire meant that they just lobbed a single Smerch (MRL) volley in the Ukrainians' general direction after the HIMARS had scooted into a nearby treeline. Lots of dead grass and smoking holes in the ground, but no dead HIMARS.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Since high crew survival rates are built into modern U.S. military doctrine, it makes sense that the USMC and USA got rid of their towed artillery.

Uh, the M777 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M777_howitzer) seems to be in current service with both of the branches mentioned above.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Uh, the M777 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M777_howitzer) seems to be in current service with both of the branches mentioned above.

To be fair the weapon appears to be airlifted instead of towed much of the time.