Ardennes posted:

The issue seems to be the design requirements of the M777, in order to get its weight where you want it and its mobility, besides utilizing nitrogen and being generally more fragile, it doesn't have a shield, and has a massive muzzle break to redirect the blast which is also hitting the troops. This is compounded by red bag charges.

Basically, liberal governments (particularly the US) pushed a lightweight, mobile, and low personnel artillery corps to such an extreme it is eating up its own personnel.

Hatebag posted:

couldn't they just make a bit of cover like sandbags with sorbothane panels on them and fire the guns from behind those? it doesn't seem like it would be hard to avoid the blast waves. that's probably cheaper than churning through troops plus the weapons manufacturers get to make proprietary sandbags or whatever so everyone gets their bribes

Hatebag posted:

couldn't they just make a bit of cover like sandbags with sorbothane panels on them and fire the guns from behind those? it doesn't seem like it would be hard to avoid the blast waves. that's probably cheaper than churning through troops plus the weapons manufacturers get to make proprietary sandbags or whatever so everyone gets their bribes

quote:

The relentless firing was being driven by a small, top-secret Army Delta Force group called Task Force 9. President Donald J. Trump had given the task force broad authority to use heavy firepower, and the task force applied it with savage enthusiasm, often bending the rules to hit not just enemy positions, but also mosques, schools, dams and power plants.

...

Sometimes, artillery crew members said, the task force ordered them to fire in a grid pattern, not aiming at any specific target but simply hurling rounds toward Raqqa, to keep the enemy on edge.

gradenko_2000 posted:

in any case I'm not particularly sympathetic to the kind of people that would shell civilians and just claim they missed after the fact

Megamissen posted:

frosted flake what can you tell me about this gun

Frosted Flake posted:

I'm sorry, all of that R&D money is going into a new model M777 which will fire even larger (proprietary) charges at even longer ranges, and requires an even larger muzzle brake.



It's also reaching the weight (and length!) where there's no reason to call or use M777 as a light gun, they may as well put a shield on it or put it on a SP mount for chrissakes.

e: I like your idea though, and there have been various "crew shelter" proposals like that. The issue is that the reason the weapon is in the inventory is to be a lightweight, rapidly deployable, rapid tactical repositioning, airmobile, airborne, gun. Any concession to reality is not going to be popular.

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/NextNavy/status/1720212602088050853

nothing can possibly go wrong with cutting the coast guard

Hatebag posted:

yeah i guess if they have to haul around the port-a-bunker™, that's that many fewer shells per gun. plus, turning all the marines' brains to goo means they're more likely to just kill themselves which cuts down on long term benefit payments. many factors to consider

Frosted Flake posted:

The US will lose WW3 because they will run their artillerymen into the ground using "modern" "lean" personnel management techniques



Also, the M777 is responsible to a large degree, if you guys want to get into cannon-chat. The short explanation is a lightweight gun that relies on a muzzle break to avoid shaking itself to pieces and doesn't even have a shield offers no protection to the crew and is directing a lot of the blast back at them for the sake of the gun.



Writing off 20% of an artillery regiment for a day's work is not sustainable, btw.

Frosted Flake posted:

American gun crews have also gotten so lax they don't even dig personal fighting positions to take cover from counter battery fire.



Those articles about Ukrainians griping that their NATO instructors did not prepare them to go up against the Russian army weren't wrong.

Frosted Flake posted:

Isn't that a BL 15 Pdr? It may not be, if you're American.



In either case, it's one the last generation of field guns before the French 75 and development of hydropnumatic recoil systems.

e: I think in America this would be the 3-inch gun M1897, 1890 or 1885.

Which like the British and French guns of the period, has a very un-chill history, not unlike the M777 in Raqqah.

Regarde Aduck posted:

I think it's a model M1877 but i'm cheating because i know he's Finnish

Frosted Flake posted:

Well that's just it. The articles all this year about Ukraine either "having" or "planning to achieve" artillery superiority, particularly since the Russian quantitative advantage isn't being denied anymore, all talk about firing at max range, their so-called ability to outrange Russian guns.

Which is not how sustainable counter battery operations work, or artillery operations generally. It's way too hard on the guns and you are very limited on what you can do at the edge of the envelope. More to the point, besides trashing the guns, this is undoubtedly trashing the crews as well. You can't fire ER projectiles all day long.

We're on the hook for Ukrainian pensions iirc, and the aerosolized barrel liners, copper driving bands and lead foil used to clear them out, on top of the TBI and hearing loss, are creating a ticking time bomb.

Frosted Flake posted:

We're on the hook for Ukrainian pensions iirc,

Frosted Flake posted:

Isn't that a BL 15 Pdr? It may not be, if you're American.



In either case, it's one the last generation of field guns before the French 75 and development of hydropnumatic recoil systems.

e: I think in America this would be the 3-inch gun M1897, 1890 or 1885.

Which like the British and French guns of the period, has a very un-chill history, not unlike the M777 in Raqqah.

Megamissen posted:

its on a golf course located on ground that used to belong to the artillery regiment based here
what are the basket things between the wheels and the barrel for?

Frosted Flake posted:

Frosted Flake posted:

Well that's just it. The articles all this year about Ukraine either "having" or "planning to achieve" artillery superiority, particularly since the Russian quantitative advantage isn't being denied anymore, all talk about firing at max range, their so-called ability to outrange Russian guns.

Which is not how sustainable counter battery operations work, or artillery operations generally. It's way too hard on the guns and you are very limited on what you can do at the edge of the envelope. More to the point, besides trashing the guns, this is undoubtedly trashing the crews as well. You can't fire ER projectiles all day long.

We're on the hook for Ukrainian pensions iirc, and the aerosolized barrel liners, copper driving bands and lead foil used to clear them out, on top of the TBI and hearing loss, are creating a ticking time bomb.

skooma512 posted:

they thought somehow people would give a poo poo or be able to stop them if they put in more guys.

Noosphere posted:

Also, it's quite an indictment of the amount of force brought to bear on the Islamic State, that an entirely naked artillery battery was able to operate in the open for months without being troubled. Was there really anyone in Raqqa but defenseless civilians ?

skooma512 posted:

Also lol we were shelling cities in Syria and doing it as destructively to ourselves as possible because they thought somehow people would give a poo poo or be able to stop them if they put in more guys.

The Oldest Man posted:

It's not because getting a few dozen or a couple hundred soldiers killed is going to stop the war, it's because the neoliberal consensus is that imperial violence is something you can ration and manage like it's a line item on your op-ex finance report. If more than 1 or 2 US soldiers get killed in one go, that makes people at home pay attention - they want the war to stop, they want the war to escalate, it doesn't actually matter. What matters is that it creates Opinions about the situation beyond those held by the pmc middle managers in charge of doling out the cheapest possible violence while safely insulating the populace from knowing or caring about it, and that's dangerous to the neoliberal consensus.

Frosted Flake posted:

It's interesting that it admits the US fired H&I missions because that was denied for a long time as "ISIS propaganda".

Frosted Flake posted:

I would only that that the other part of this, which connects to nearly every other post ITT, is that they can't imagine "just use longer lanyards" or "use better PPE", which are relatively easy to implement health and safety improvements. I don't mean they couldn't do it. They can't imagine doing it.

A longer lanyard, which heavy artillery used in the world wars (or fired by remote with the crews behind berms, in trenches etc.) or better ear protection are relatively inexpensive solutions. Even more obvious an inexpensive are procedural changes like more crew rest, rotating crews etc.



All of their proposed solutions emerge from the same neoliberal consensus The Oldest Man described, which are incredibly capital intensive.

They would rather buy "BrainScope" whatever the gently caress that is, than use a longer lanyard and have the crews shelter during firing.

Real hurthling! posted:

has anyone ever gotten tbi from a mortar fwoomph? just go with those

Frosted Flake posted:

Mortars fire at a much, much lower velocity.

Bar Crow posted:

Telling my commanding officer that the brain damage app says I’ve had too many brain damage points today.

stephenthinkpad posted:

So in layman's terms, the artillery dudes got pounded by the shock waves of the firing at close range. So this new disease is like a different form of concussion?

stephenthinkpad posted:

So in layman's terms, the artillery dudes got pounded by the shock waves of the firing at close range. So this new disease is like a different form of concussion?