US Army - 155mm Next Generation Howitzer (NGH)

[jsport]

RCH 155 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[DWG]

Best portee gun on the market available today is CAESAR or ATMOS 2000 tbf.

Neither is a portee system - that requires the ability to dismount the weapon from the truck and use it as a conventional wheeled gun. LIMAWS(G) - as pointed out by TomS - is about the only system to have offered it in recent years.

 

[timmymagic]

Neither is a portee system - that requires the ability to dismount the weapon from the truck and use it as a conventional wheeled gun. LIMAWS(G) - as pointed out by TomS - is about the only system to have offered it in recent years.

Quite why the UK hasn't resurrected LIMAWS(G) and LIMAWS(R) I will never know....base platform would still be available in updated form...

M777 and HIMARS have done great work in Ukraine....a 52cal barrel M777 in particular (now that the M777-ER is dead) would be fantastic.

And a C-130 artillery system using common base vehicles, combat proven in Ukraine is still a rather tempting prospect...

 

[DWG]

Quite why the UK hasn't resurrected LIMAWS(G) and LIMAWS(R) I will never know....base platform would still be available in updated form...

I'd imagine it would make a useful tractor for Sky Sabre/Land Ceptor, too.

 

[Pioneer]

Quite why the UK hasn't resurrected LIMAWS(G) and LIMAWS(R) I will never know....base platform would still be available in updated form...

M777 and HIMARS have done great work in Ukraine....a 52cal barrel M777 in particular (now that the M777-ER is dead) would be fantastic.

And a C-130 artillery system using common base vehicles, combat proven in Ukraine is still a rather tempting prospect...

Except, if you don't mind me saying, the excessive wear (chewing through) of the M777's barrels in the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
I think the lightweight material nature of the M777 having the same consequences as the earlier generation OTO-Melara Mod 56 105mm pack howitzer when used in prolonged firing.....

Regards
Pioneer

 

[Big_Zukini]

Yeah you can privatize that by getting rid of depots and eliminating levels of combat repair in favor of contractors. This is what USAF did with JSF.

A fully automatic howitzer will definitely save manpower though so I'm not sure what that means really. You're not hiring "automatic cannon repairmen" at the end of the day. They'll just be additional work hours hobbled onto field 91 MOSes. Gunners will then just be pressed into operator-maintainer duty, like a tank crew, minus two or three pairs of hands from the Paladins. It will even out that you probably didn't need those two or three pairs of hands to begin with.

Nobody actually bellyaches over the lack of a fifth crewman in the M1 Abrams.

Some personnel will have to be dedicated to maintaining the more sophisticated computerized systems on these machines, but I agree that there is probably some net reduction in manpower after all.

Your mistake is assuming that a mechanized solution is "the best". It's not!

This is the kind of old, obsolete ideas that Ukraine is putting paid to.

We've known for decades that towed guns were more survivable in battle than self-propelled ones but it was always assumed this is because self-propelled pieces are put in more dangerous regions. This doesn't actually seem to be the case. It seems towed guns are simply more survivable perhaps due to smaller areas presented to nearby shell bursts and fragments.

Pzh 2000 is the exception not the rule. It has the armor to survive.

I'd be careful about projecting lessons of the past onto the future. And I'd also be careful about over-learning from Ukraine and applying it elsewhere.
For some areas and nations, a towed howitzer may be more survivable, or just more practical. But for most I'd argue it isn't.
Sensory and computational availability are quickly eroding the howitzer's survivability, both towed and self propelled. Improvements in shoot and scoot times also yield diminishing returns. For a towed howitzer to work better, one must assume the enemy is lacking and will continue to lack in sensors and precise fires. Not a healthy assumption.
I don't know what the optimal setup would be for 2025. I'd bet it's a system of system where the selection of the howitzer type itself and its characteristics are of lower overall consequence than at any time in the past.
If one chooses to rely heavily on a large number of towed howitzers, that's perfectly fine - as long as they have the industrial capacity to support that.

Except, if you don't mind me saying, the excessive wear (chewing through) of the M777's barrels in the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
I think the lightweight material nature of the M777 having the same consequences as the earlier generation OTO-Melara Mod 56 105mm pack howitzer when used in prolonged firing.....

Regards
Pioneer

Said lightweight construction is pointless for Ukraine, so reports about M777 production expansion and localization in Ukraine sound nonsensical to me.

https://mil.in.ua/en/news/bae-system-plans-to-maintain-and-localize-the-m777-in-ukraine/

 

[timmymagic]

Except, if you don't mind me saying, the excessive wear (chewing through) of the M777's barrels in the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
I think the lightweight material nature of the M777 having the same consequences as the earlier generation OTO-Melara Mod 56 105mm pack howitzer when used in prolonged firing.....

I'm not sure where you've got that from but all the reports to date state that M777 barrels are massively exceeding expected life. In line with other modern Western 155 systems...

The reason why barrels are an issue is because we've only started to ramp up production recently, despite having deployed them 2.5 years ago in the most artillery dense conflict since Korea. M777 was also in use in Ukraine, and in serious numbers well before other Western systems arrived in quantity. I wouldn't be shocked to find that M777 alone had fired >40% of the Western 155 ammunition supplied....

 

[timmymagic]

Said lightweight construction is pointless for Ukraine, so reports about M777 production expansion and localization in Ukraine sound nonsensical to me.

No-one ever said build me an artillery piece but make sure its heavy....

BAE aren't building a new facility in the UK for nothing....

 

[timmymagic]

I'd imagine it would make a useful tractor for Sky Sabre/Land Ceptor, too.

It looks like it will for the SHORAD requirement so there is that at least..

 

[Kat Tsun]

Some personnel will have to be dedicated to maintaining the more sophisticated computerized systems on these machines, but I agree that there is probably some net reduction in manpower after all.

SIGMA probably has a Toughbook running Windows 7 or Red Hat Linux, while Paladins have esoteric googly ass computers that haven't been built in 40 years, and they all run various forms of AFATDS. Replacing all that old ass Amiga shit with a modern laptop would save money and manpower by dozens, maybe multiple dozens, of hours a year. Electric mechanized loaders, like the kind used on Crusader, are also less fiddly and easier to maintain than a hydraulic system. But we already have plenty of qualified hydro maintainers on the Paladins so it's not a big deal.

The main benefit is that SIGMA does everything Paladin does with half the crew and no actual overhead costs in maintenance. It is probably significantly less maintenance intensive than Paladin, since it's wheeled as opposed to tracked, to be honest.

At the very worst, they're comparable work-hours for their crews, but again the SIGMA has half the crew of the Paladin.

I'd be careful about projecting lessons of the past onto the future. And I'd also be careful about over-learning from Ukraine and applying it elsewhere.
For some areas and nations, a towed howitzer may be more survivable, or just more practical. But for most I'd argue it isn't.

The only real "lesson" of the past that is dying is that towed howitzers are cheap and self propelled capacity is a luxury. It's the opposite: self propelled guns are for the povertous armies and towed guns are for the luxury forces these days.

Ukraine is the Millennial 1973 and it's putting paid to so many ideas that had just sort of been noticed but not really followed upon in 1973. One of these is the SP howitzer: in 1973 they were killed at higher rates than towed guns. It was assumed at the time this was because SP howitzers were being put closer to the front and towed guns shifted to less dangerous sectors.

As it turns out, SP howitzers just kind of suck and die a lot more because they're not well armored. We tried to address this in NATO with the Pzh 2000 and the XM2001 Crusader, and the Russians with their Coalition-SV, but none of those super howitzers except Pzh 2000 exists now. We got the same old shit we had in 1973. So it just dies on contact with D-30s and Giatsints. Again.

If you want self propelled guns to be cool you better make them tough. RCH 155 does this by being a tiny cube with the same protection as a Bradley. Sadly it's not on a M109 chassis but rather a truck. So it will probably die too when the splinter just eviscerates the drivetrain or they hit a particularly goofy crater. But the crew and gun will be safe and recoverable.

Sensory and computational availability are quickly eroding the howitzer's survivability, both towed and self propelled. Improvements in shoot and scoot times also yield diminishing returns. For a towed howitzer to work better, one must assume the enemy is lacking and will continue to lack in sensors and precise fires. Not a healthy assumption.

No, actually. The most survivable howitzers are the ones that don't move! The sole exception to this is Pzh 2000, probably because it's the only howitzer that is actually armored, and because of the accuracy of shell bursts being within 20 meters with 1980s systems it's the only one that is surviving counter-fire.

Everyone else either stays in the trench, and the shrapnel passes through air because it's a towed gun with a tiny profile so getting hit is a bad luck, or they try to drive away and brew up when a splinter flies through their "armor" and torches their MACS load. There's enough videos out there showing this exact thing.

It gets worse when we factor in FPVs that can detect self propelled pieces at a greater distance than towed ones, even when camouflaged, because boxes are rare in nature and the human eye is naturally drawn to funny moving shapes.

I don't know what the optimal setup would be for 2025.

It'll be whatever we have right now. NGH isn't producing hardware until 2027 at minimum.

I'd bet it's a system of system where the selection of the howitzer type itself and its characteristics are of lower overall consequence than at any time in the past.

This is just buzzwords strung together.

All modern SP howitzers with few exceptions (Coalition-SV, if it ever shows up, and Pzh 2000) are the same thing: a box with a big gun and small arms-at-best proof armor. You don't pick them for their capabilities. You pick them because they can be produced most readily.

DA is asking vendors to show business plans for how quickly they can ramp up their concepts. The actual shoot offs won't matter, unless someone doesn't make it to the shoot off, then we know they're so hard up that they can't even provide prototypes.

If one chooses to rely heavily on a large number of towed howitzers, that's perfectly fine - as long as they have the industrial capacity to support that.

You're ignoring the part where I said this is a manpower and payroll budget issue, not an industrial issue. The DA already knows how good towed pieces are, it just knows that it also can't support that, because it takes like 7-9 dudes to man a M777 optimally. It's about 4 or 5 for an M109. A SIGMA can be operated by two or three guys.

Said lightweight construction is pointless for Ukraine, so reports about M777 production expansion and localization in Ukraine sound nonsensical to me.

They're making barrels and spare parts. Because we have neither now. We kinda ran out.

 

[yeetmahboi]

the human eye is naturally drawn to funny moving shapes

I'd argue this is the most important part. Any systems that doesn't move is inherent more stealthy than one that does. The Stugs were doing this in WW2. Profile is, after all, a primary determinant of survivability as was recognized by the Soviets.

 

[Kat Tsun]

I'd argue this is the most important part. Any systems that doesn't move is inherent more stealthy than one that does. The Stugs were doing this in WW2. Profile is, after all, a primary determinant of survivability as was recognized by the Soviets.

A towed gun with a camo net looks like a fallen tree and is rapidly discarded from the mind, without further means of identification such as thermal or radar reconnaissance, unless the reconnaissance soldier is very skilled. It can, quite literally, be perfectly replicated by some scrub brush, old netting, and a log.

A tank-like box requires a much more sophisticated deception method which may not be in the man-hours budget of a battery. With present trends being what they are, the ability to hide in plain sight, and the ability to not be killed when fired upon, is paramount. This means either very heavily armored howitzers, which do not exist outside of Germany, or towed guns with fortifications to hide gunners underground.

Which one will the U.S. Army go for? Neither. It can't afford to field a new howitzer and it can't afford the cost of towed gun manpower so it will be sitting in the worst of both worlds: not armored enough to survive counterfire and stay mobile, but also not camouflagable enough to seriously hide from the most basic visual airborne observation which a cartel or a Iranian militia might have.

Big boxes are not effective at hiding. The Russians have begin painting their tanks like barns and sheds but this only works in areas where there's little combat. In a major war, such as against China, the U.S. will simply conscript people but it will still have a delay of manufacturing new towed guns for them to use.

In a minor war, gunners might end up just getting popped by FPV drones from cartels or something.

Everything old is new again. Gabions came back as HESCO barriers and now towed guns are having a bit of a moment.

 

[Big_Zukini]

A towed gun with a camo net looks like a fallen tree and is rapidly discarded from the mind, without further means of identification such as thermal or radar reconnaissance, unless the reconnaissance soldier is very skilled. It can, quite literally, be perfectly replicated by some scrub brush, old netting, and a log.

A tank-like box requires a much more sophisticated deception method which may not be in the man-hours budget of a battery. With present trends being what they are, the ability to hide in plain sight, and the ability to not be killed when fired upon, is paramount. This means either very heavily armored howitzers, which do not exist outside of Germany, or towed guns with fortifications to hide gunners underground.

Which one will the U.S. Army go for? Neither. It can't afford to field a new howitzer and it can't afford the cost of towed gun manpower so it will be sitting in the worst of both worlds: not armored enough to survive counterfire and stay mobile, but also not camouflagable enough to seriously hide from the most basic visual airborne observation which a cartel or a Iranian militia might have.

Big boxes are not effective at hiding. The Russians have begin painting their tanks like barns and sheds but this only works in areas where there's little combat. In a major war, such as against China, the U.S. will simply conscript people but it will still have a delay of manufacturing new towed guns for them to use.

In a minor war, gunners might end up just getting popped by FPV drones from cartels or something.

Everything old is new again. Gabions came back as HESCO barriers and now towed guns are having a bit of a moment.

What you say is largely true for Ukraine, but if we look at Ukraine, it is not a typical war at all. That is because the war in Ukraine is largely static, and that is something every western armed force should invest heavily to avoid.

In practice if the US was to fight somewhere, it would not be static due to the US's demonstrated superiorities. Same goes for some of its allies.
It is correct to anticipate attrition, but if one expects a frontline to be dynamic, then the platforms and weapons must also be mobile.

There's also the matter of the howitzer's part in an armed force's fires portfolio. It's diminishing, hence my "buzzwords" about potential alternative solutions.
You said it yourself - the crew of a manned howitzer is excessively large. The more sophisticated, the less crew is needed. But also the more it becomes dependent on a platform.
Closest thing I saw to a sophisticated towed gun is the Elbit ATHOS, which is huge and heavy and impractical.

 

[Kat Tsun]

What you say is largely true for Ukraine, but if we look at Ukraine, it is not a typical war at all.

Literally nobody serious says this. Everyone is comparing Ukraine to 1973 or Desert Storm depending on what they want to achieve.

That is because the war in Ukraine is largely static, and that is something every western armed force should invest heavily to avoid.

Then don't get involved in wars. Either you invest in an army that wins fights, and is large and well supplied, or you don't and you lose.

In practice if the US was to fight somewhere, it would not be static due to the US's demonstrated superiorities.

Defeatist thinking like this is what DOD is presently fighting a winning battle against, however slowly, tbh. The idea that we can win a war of attrition is anathema after the psychological and moral damages caused by the post-Cold War U.S. Army (including Desert Storm) "victories" from Iraq to Bosnia and back again, but there are a few very brave people in DOD who put their careers on the line to say "yeah we can probably do it".

Same goes for some of its allies.
It is correct to anticipate attrition, but if one expects a frontline to be dynamic, then the platforms and weapons must also be mobile.

The frontlines are not mobile. They are static. There is a large number of reasons to believe the U.S. Army would be ineffective in combat against a ground force like the PLAGF, and an equally large number of reasons to think the opposite, but none of the reasons in favor are because the U.S. Army is "maneuverist" and "mobile".

That's something people expect the Chinese or Iranians to be doing.

Our biggest issue is that we lack the capacity to produce weapons on the scale of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Our second biggest issue is that we think we need to be able to do this alone, because our allies are flaky in Ukraine, so they'll be flaky in the Pacific too.

You said it yourself - the crew of a manned howitzer is excessively large. The more sophisticated, the less crew is needed. But also the more it becomes dependent on a platform.

I literally don't know what this means. It's a mechanical rammer and picker. One for shells, one for bags. This is incredibly basic, simple, foundational stuff. There is literally nothing in here that matters beyond "it's a new thing so it's scary" I guess?

Mechanization makes things simpler, not harder, to a point. In general, there is a lot to be mechanized in a howitzer literally dating back to the Korean War though. The idea that M109 is some magically mechanized automatic machine is actually insane thinking. It's a glorified M7 Priest. The Archer Artillery System would be significantly cheaper to operate than M109, if we replaced them with it, once we built up sufficient spare parts.

Closest thing I saw to a sophisticated towed gun is the Elbit ATHOS, which is huge and heavy and impractical.

Nobody is considering ATHOS. NGH is between five vendors and most of them are going to roll out things already in production or previously proposed to DA. Archer, RCH 155/AGM, K9 are on the table. I forget the rest.

 

[yeetmahboi]

What you say is largely true for Ukraine, but if we look at Ukraine, it is not a typical war at all

The war in Ukraine is a conflict between two Soviet oriented decaying armies, one has allies right up their tail like Vietnam and the other a sustainable demographic and MIC. As western trained and oriented forces account for a minimal fraction of all the world's armies, it's pretty representative of any future local conflict.

That is because the war in Ukraine is largely static, and that is something every western armed force should invest heavily to avoid.

Peer to peer HIC would be inherently slow and the FLOT static, until a side gains total AirSup.

 

[jsport]

Army launching self-propelled howitzer competition in mid-February, after globetrotting evaluation tour - Breaking Defense

Under the new plan, the service could potentially begin fielding a mix of self-propelled howitzers in 2030, according to Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean.

breakingdefense.com

If all goes as planned, that second round of downselects will occur in early FY27 ahead of initial fielding in the 2030 timeframe — but possibly with “multiple” self-propelled howitzer lines of effort, as the Army reexamines its force structure.

 

[Kat Tsun]

The war in Ukraine is a conflict between two Soviet oriented decaying armies, one has allies right up their tail like Vietnam and the other a sustainable demographic and MIC. As western trained and oriented forces account for a minimal fraction of all the world's armies, it's pretty representative of any future local conflict.

Peer to peer HIC would be inherently slow and the FLOT static, until a side gains total AirSup.

Neither the US nor PRC have sufficient industrial advantage to gain air supremacy. It will be isolated and temporary pockets of air superiority, probably for limited offensives, and a general air parity over theater.

Analogous to Ukraine 2024 and Britain 1940.

 

[Big_Zukini]

I don't know whether any future fight for the US will be more or less static on the ground, or not. But I know I'd rather have a system that's mobile and doomed to take higher rates of attrition, than one that cannot participate in maneuver warfare as effectively.
When you have long, grinding, static warfare, you can make adjustments to make your force more efficient, but when you have an opportunity and can maneuver, you need a lot of things to come together to make it happen and I'd rather not have a piece of kit that's inherently prohibitive.

I do acknowledge some advantages of towed systems, but I think that overall if it takes a truck to slice a crew in half, that's worth doubling attrition.

 

[Kat Tsun]

I don't know whether any future fight for the US will be more or less static on the ground, or not. But I know I'd rather have a system that's mobile and doomed to take higher rates of attrition, than one that cannot participate in maneuver warfare as effectively.

Then you're wrong and, thankfully, nobody listens to this kind of nonsense in DOD. There's going to be a very close industrial war, assuming we don't avoid the war outright, and we may very well lose that war. Maneuverism is dead, unless you fight an army that was already defeated, but this has always been the case, and the PLA is very much alive and able.

Taking higher loss rates for slightly better tactical and identical strategic mobility is how you lose against a demographically and industrially superior opponent.

When you have long, grinding, static warfare, you can make adjustments to make your force more efficient, but when you have an opportunity and can maneuver, you need a lot of things to come together to make it happen and I'd rather not have a piece of kit that's inherently prohibitive.

Modern wars are attrition wars because nobody has the industrial capabilities, demographics, or sheer finances to actually conduct the kinds of buildup we saw in WW2. The USA and PRC are the British Empire and the Third Reich. There's no America out there in the world ready to bolster either side, unless space aliens show up. There are also issues with TTPs and such in dealing with drones. Nobody knows how to respond to them. It'll be a period of the French walking into machine guns for about a year or two.

Let's try to not make it worse and at least use Napoleonic skirmisher tactics as opposed to Napoleonic line tactics for our August 1914.

I do acknowledge some advantages of towed systems, but I think that overall if it takes a truck to slice a crew in half, that's worth doubling attrition.

Then we lose to the PLA because they have more 17-44 year olds (the demographic share of people who were able to be brought into the Iraq War at the height of the surge) than the United States has an entire population. It's still very close, even accounting for ROC, Japan, Korea added into that whole population metric, too. Something like 450 million. Any war that causes us to lose a similar rate of people, or lose men instead of equipment, is a war we lose.

The ideal is actually a towed gun that has a crew of three but so far nobody has been able to perfect this holy grail of gunnery.

Very hard to kill and very hard to inflict casualties on crew, but also the crews are tiny, so even if they all die from an Excalibur or something it's not that big of a deal compared to a 7-9 man crew of an M777.

 

[Big_Zukini]

Then you're wrong and, thankfully, nobody listens to this kind of nonsense in DOD.

You mentioned NGH in your comment. Are you aware NGH calls for a self propelled howitzer? Has NGH been since altered and now calls for the so called "less vulnerable" towed howitzer?

There's going to be a very close industrial war, assuming we don't avoid the war outright, and we may very well lose that war. Maneuverism is dead, unless you fight an army that was already defeated, but this has always been the case, and the PLA is very much alive and able.

The US fought countless wars since WW2. Can we really raise any example where maneuverism was "dead"?
The 1973 Yom Kippur War and ODS which you mentioned are both opposite cases of Ukraine. They were fast wars (weeks - months), without any well defined front line.

Then we lose to the PLA because they have more 17-44 year olds (the demographic share of people who were able to be brought into the Iraq War at the height of the surge) than the United States has an entire population. It's still very close, even accounting for ROC, Japan, Korea added into that whole population metric, too. Something like 450 million. Any war that causes us to lose a similar rate of people, or lose men instead of equipment, is a war we lose.

Why are you bringing the PLA into a discussion about artillery?
Any realistic fight between the US and allies vs the Axis, would require little to no ground element involvement.
Particularly in the defense of Taiwan, who in their right mind would support a land invasion into China? In that case, a massive industrial ramp-up is assured.

The ideal is actually a towed gun that has a crew of three but so far nobody has been able to perfect this holy grail of gunnery.

So you're proposing vaporware?

Very hard to kill and very hard to inflict casualties on crew, but also the crews are tiny, so even if they all die from an Excalibur or something it's not that big of a deal compared to a 7-9 man crew of an M777.

Which is exactly why I'm rooting for the halved-crew self-propelled variants.
Basic wheeled SPH have a crew about as large as towed SPH, while more automated but larger ones have a typical crew of 0-4. That is, they can even be operated remotely to reduce exposed manpower.

 

[Firefinder]

I find it Hilarious that people are pointing to Ukraine for the use of Tow Artillery...


When all the damn studies point to the fact that tow crews have the highest attrition rates of the Artillery types.

The gun might survive a hit but the crews, the most important part...

Are not.

Hell Ukraine admits that shot and scoot tactics are what keeping the casualties for the Ceasars and like down.

 

[Big_Zukini]

I find it Hilarious that people are pointing to Ukraine for the use of Tow Artillery...


When all the damn studies point to the fact that tow crews have the highest attrition rates of the Artillery types.

The gun might survive a hit but the crews, the most important part...

Are not.

Hell Ukraine admits that shot and scoot tactics are what keeping the casualties for the Ceasars and like down.

Can you please point me to recent stats on attrition rates for artillery and their crews? I didn't know such were publicly available.

 

[GTX]

Somewhat related:

Exclusive: US Army to Procure 689 M109A7 Howitzers Through 2050 as Part of Major Artillery Modernization Effort

Exclusive: US Army to Procure 689 M109A7 Howitzers Through 2050 as Part of Major Artillery Modernization Effort

www.armyrecognition.com

 

[jsport]

Towed artillery has reached ‘end of the effectiveness,’ Army four-star declares - Breaking Defense

The service has not yet released its new tactical fires study, but officials have begun previewing possible artillery changes.

breakingdefense.com