Comments on: Fire for Effect!

By: a tired old vet

a tired old vet — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:46:06 +0000

I have spoken with several Iwo Jima vets about battleships at that battle. When I asked, “Would it have helped if your battalion had your own private battleship with an on call delivery time of less than 20 seconds whenever you needed fire?” The result was always the same. The old vet would tremble in silent rage before yelling, yes, YES, YES. If you follow the island campaigns it becomes overwhelmingly obvious. THE MARINES NEVER GOT THE ARTILLERY SUPPORT THEY DESERVED! People have often called me a coward because I have no desire to tough it out and trade the lives of my men for the lives of a deeply dug in enemy. So be it. I will gleefully use technology to defeat numbers and fortification if I have a technological advantage.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 21:01:12 +0000

Why isn’t that enough fire support for Marines who rarely assault beaches these days?
Because if we need the firepower we’re going to need it very very badly.
Ask the Israelis about airpower — they shorted themselves on tubes and bulked up on aircraft after 1967 — just in time for the Russians to give Egypt and Syria the world’s best anti-air systems for the 1973 mess. Oops.
The Marines are not numerous and nobody loves them — if they don’t have fire support they’ll tough it out. But that will cost a bucket of dog tags.

By: James

James — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 02:09:25 +0000

The DD(X)‘s AGS system is really a budget excuse. Why build a shore bombardment ship that is stealthy? When you fire your rounds you reveal your position.
Anyone with half a brain knows you can only do so much with a 155mm shell. The EGRM is going to cost too much to be a casual shot round, more over the DD(X) is only going to house no more then 300 rounds in total (used to be 600 but budget cuts ya know).
Rail guns? right. Despite the scifi aspects a rail gun has a lot of problems and will not go live till 2025 at the earliest and even then, will not address the Marine support fire option.
IMO the best option is put about 4 billion into a battle wagon to bring it up to speed. Its the ideal fire support platform.

By: J.B. Zimmerman

J.B. Zimmerman — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:48:26 +0000

Pedestrian: The issue isn't cost, it's size of payload. If you're attacking a target that either is relatively hard (a bunker with decent overhead cover, heavy armor, etc.) or a long/wide area in an attempt to kill vehicles, you don't want unitary frag warheads that can be packed into a 5" round. In the prior case, you want larger/penetrating munitions, and the in second case you want submunitions for dispersal. Say you want to hit a crossroads to interdict a column of light armored vehicles which are moving to engage your Marines. You have scouts out who can tell you when, roughly, they'll hit the crossroads, but not lase them. Say you're talking about a column of IFVs, moving at around 30kph. The lethal (mission kill) radius of a 5"/54 round fragmenting warhead against an armored vehicle, even a relatively thin-skinned one like an IFV, isn't that large. It's on the close order of ten meters, and that's being generous. If you have a CEP of 20 meters at 43 miles with the ERGM (which is really good), and you need to get with ten meters, then in order to get a decent damage expectancy vs. that IFV you're going to have to pop off a *lot* of ERGMs. This doesn't even address the complications of a navigating weapon vs. a moving target and/or incomplete/bad information. Even if we assume the ERGM manages to pull off the 2m CEP of the full performance DGPS version, if the target is moving, remember that the shell has to travel 43 miles to get there. An IFV moving at 30kph is moving at 8.3 m/sec, which means that it will travel the lethal radius of that shell in just over *one second*. The muzzle velocity of the 5"/54 mount is such that the shells traverse a mile in approx. 2 seconds. Thus your targets will have 86 seconds of time after launch to get out of position - by 691.7 meters if you've aimed at its current location. Let's take the road case. If that group of IFVs continues to rumble along at *exactly* the same speed along a road whose course you know, then boxing an IFV with four ERGM (for a 20x20 meter kill zone) isn't that bad. But let's say the IFV varies speed? Or pauses? If, over those 83 seconds, the target were to decrease its speed by 10% (maybe they suspect an ambush) then it will end up 69 meters short of its predicted location - far outside your lethal radius. A 10% speed variation isn't much. Of course, we can deal with this by firing more rounds to make a bigger grid...but remember, a modern AEGIS combatant only carries around 500 rounds of 5"/54. If we want to cover a 100 meter section of highway, we're firing ten or twenty rounds (depending on width and accuracy) for a single fire mission. 16 IFVs might take up a half kilometer of road if they're on the move. Those 500 shells don't look so impressive anymore.

By: Solomon

Solomon — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:29:35 +0000

Arsenal ship was killed off by the “carrier mafia” if you think the fighter mafia is effective, then you should read how those guys operate. the real problem with extended-precision-naval gunfire is that it begins to encroach on the carrier wings turf. As long as you have entire fleets formed around aircraft carriers i just don’t see this getting off the ground. i hope Christian is right but Ward’s old buddies on deck might keep it from coming to light. take away close air support for embarked Marines and one of the premier missions for naval aviation goes away.

By: pedestrian

pedestrian — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 19:02:52 +0000

>If you’re talking about hitting fixed targets
>(bunkers, intersections, etc.) for fire support
>at 40–60 miles, then suddenly tactical tomahawk
>and ATACMS start making much more sense.
ERGM will still be the option in that case, as long as ERGM would be cheaper than using missiles. That’s probably why why the Asernal Ship never made itself to enter service.

By: Solomon

Solomon — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:37:22 +0000

what about wt of fire you still would have to lob a whole lot of 5 inch shells to equal jut one turret from the old battleships…and i know about precision fire being an equalizer but you can’t beat mass —what does the Corps say about that

By: CAMPBELL

CAMPBELL — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:33:13 +0000

“.…American Sailors against their Marine brethren“
hey. distant relatives, maybe. At best. The only “brother” I’ve got that’s a sailor, is my corpsman!
heh heh!
SEMPER FI!

By: Christian

Christian — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:15:28 +0000

Norman,
Thanks for the comment. Yes, I know it’s the F/A-18 (C,D,E,F,G…whatever)…Just wanted to keep it simple.
As I stated, the Marine Corps views naval surface fire support as a key element of its doctrinal “fire support triad.” That need has not gone away from the perspective of Corps planners at MCCDC. Rocket systems, etc. are a part of their organic land-based fires plan. But as long as I’ve been reporting on this issue, Marines have been asking for a naval gun that can provide volume fires in the littoral.

By: J.B. Zimmerman

J.B. Zimmerman — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:03:23 +0000

Quick addenda: Davids — the problem with the 155s is that they’re not rifled, and you need rifling to spin the shell for both power and guidance inputs to the front component.
Also, re: lethality — the ERGM appears to be a unitary blast warhead, fuzed for airburst, meaning it won’t do all that much good against armor. There had been discussions about using it as a submunitions carrier, but it didn’t have the payload.
I note that current ERGM propaganda shows it having fins and onboard power (battery) so the bent-ogive and motor generator apparently is no longer en vogue.