Future of Firesupport... concepts and ideas...

Traditionaly infantry has had a range of options to choose from, if they have a need for support.
At platoon level there's usually some 40mm GLs and Hand Grenades..
At comppany level few 60-82mm mortars (2x81mm in Finnish army)
At Battallion level 107-120mm mortars or SP-Mortars (from 81mm mounted at M113 to AMOS)
At Brig./Div. level usually some 105mm-155mm often mixed, towed or SPA and prehaps some MRLSs

I was wondering will it remain like this "forever", or are there some new ideas brewing either in military or ATSr heads

I've been toying around with an idea of 60-75mm light field gun made from composites light enough to be carried in two pieces by 2 soldiers. Range would be around 1-3kms indirect and 1500m direct. Ammo would consist of HE and HEAT ammo obviously guided (imagine 75mm heats falling on top of your APC) or laser guided HE hitting your window.
The gun could be attached to each platoon...

Or maybe kamikaze UAV/mini cruise missile launched from a LAW type launcher....

Toss around ideas, yours or someone elses... new products anything...

Well, I think that the firesupport in the future will be based strongly on so called "GPS weapons" wich are extremly accurate and highly killing... These so called weapons would propably be launched from trucks... Not ordianry ones of course... But someting like this...

Though the US military would like to seem as if its phasing out artillery and going for air strikes and very local fire support, in reality those weapons are very useful in terms of a conventional war, and most other armies have not and will never do away with large numbers of high caliber artillery pieces for general bombardment. Missiles simply cannot make up for the cost and volume and effect of artillery strikes. Not to mention the ground support lost by using a few missiles and aircraft alone. Of course, artillery pieces are getting more accurate all the time, and will remain on the battlefield for years to come.

The army still misses not having the big guns of battleships to support troop landings even with high priced crusies missiles. Units on the ground in truely hostile areas or on the frontline need an artillery umbrella to shield them from attacks and make their own power projection powerful.

The idea of squad level large cailber rounds are very inciting, but present logistical and practical limitations, shells weight alot, and slow down the squad who will stop and set up this weapon when they see a target instead of closing range and using close weapons, giving superior firepower at the price of speed.

I would like to see the army try to give soldiers the artillery cover that was present in the vietnam era, always having a battery able to land rounds at a target within minutes, and not just reliying on circling aircraft that go home most of the time.

This would be especially effective in a occupied area rather than on the frontlines, where SP artillery is the god of war along with armor.

The US Army is working on a new artillery shell that is GPS guided and can change its course in mid air, making it capable of hitting urban targets.

I’ll try to find some links.

EDIT: Yeah, thanks Shattered.



[edit on 25-9-2005 by WestPoint23]

Originally posted by WestPoint23
The US Army is working on a new artillery shell that is GPS guided and can change its curse in mid air, making it capable of hitting urban targets.

I’ll try to find some links.

Link

Yea, it's called Excalibur by Raytheon.

Check it out.

Shattered OUT...

I was very suprised to hear that USMC is relying almost all the to airsupport or light mortars (81mm)
In my training (as recon sqd leader) i had at least a comppany of 120mm mortars and 6-18 122/155mm fieldguns at my disposal during attack ops (my squad was the point sqd moving in first) and at best i had 6 AMOS mortars, 18*122mm, 9*155mm and 6*122mm BM-21 grads to give me enough fire power to supress enemy while the rest of our battalion moved in for the attack. In addition to those pieces every inf co had several 80mm mortars at their disposal.

But on the other hand during battle griffin '05 we only had 3 120mm mortars and only thing that saved us from being overrun by leopards was the "ultimate" CS weapon APILAS


One note of the Finnish doctrine, it relies on largest artillery arm of the western europe and is designed only for one thing, stopping Russian attacks...