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43 Mile Bullseye!

Is the projectile fired out the barrel then a rocket motor takes over?
 
Nope, not disabling my AdBlocker. No disrespect intended towards the military, but with all the money spent on the military, I wanna start seeing rainguns and LASER weapons being tested more often. Lobbing ordnance in the air from miles away from a gunpowder powered canon is archaic.
 
Is the projectile fired out the barrel then a rocket motor takes over?
Yup. Long existed. Skipping many other fun things like base bleed, this is using the XM1113 (presumably will drop the X sometime) Rocket Assisted Projectile.

Looks like a normal round on the outside
155mm-XM1113-Rocket-Assisted-Projectile-RAP.jpg


Inside, you loose some of the payload to rocket propellant. Once downrange a bit, rocket takes effect:

original.jpg

(Though this neat photo is actually an electro-thermal propulsion system we may see in some future world).

If anyone wants to compare to a BB projectile, this has some nice cutaways and open source summary stuff: https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2011/gunmissile/Tuesday11528_Nguyen.pdf
 
They've had those for a while.
View attachment 7511010

LOL raingun! You know, I'm not gonna even edit my post to fix that, but rather offer a new weapon idea for the military. The Rainman Gun! A gun that fires weaponized autism hundreds of miles away. God help the toy train stores in a vicinity of ground zero. :D
 
LOL raingun! You know, I'm not gonna even edit my post to fix that, but rather offer a new weapon idea for the military. The Rainman Gun! A gun that fires weaponized autism hundreds of miles away. God help the toy train stores in a vicinity of ground zero. :D
How would one trigger such a weapon?
 
Lasers are line of sight and to some degree are being used. Not going to happen at ground level across the curvature of the earth. Lobbing artillery is still an effective methodology.
 
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Hunter will make sure the Chinese have one of these soon.
 
Yup. Long existed. Skipping many other fun things like base bleed, this is using the XM1113 (presumably will drop the X sometime) Rocket Assisted Projectile.

Looks like a normal round on the outside
155mm-XM1113-Rocket-Assisted-Projectile-RAP.jpg


Inside, you loose some of the payload to rocket propellant. Once downrange a bit, rocket takes effect:

original.jpg

(Though this neat photo is actually an electro-thermal propulsion system we may see in some future world).

If anyone wants to compare to a BB projectile, this has some nice cutaways and open source summary stuff: https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2011/gunmissile/Tuesday11528_Nguyen.pdf


Gyrojet technology may have flopped with small arms ammunition but that type of propulsion system has an extremely wide range of potential with larger projectiles and possibly even space payloads... ie, envision large spacecraft/mothership bound for Europa accelerating itself to an optimal velocity and then launching crew/equipment vessel out through it's front like a torpedo. Mothership's velocity + booster on smaller ship can shorten length of interplanetary trips by a large amount...
 
Gyrojet technology may have flopped with small arms ammunition but that type of propulsion system has an extremely wide range of potential with larger projectiles and possibly even space payloads... ie, envision large spacecraft/mothership bound for Europa accelerating itself to an optimal velocity and then launching crew/equipment vessel out through it's front like a torpedo. Mothership's velocity + booster on smaller ship can shorten length of interplanetary trips by a large amount...

If you were traveling through space at 3000fps and shot another projectile at 3000fps. Would that projectile be traveling 6000fps?
 
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Once employed, the dumb fucks will be killing their air support with this shit. Damn near got taken out over Iraq by Army theater ballistic missiles. And those needed air coordination to be fired. Give Arty this shit and fire at will, no thanks.
 
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Yup. Long existed. Skipping many other fun things like base bleed, this is using the XM1113 (presumably will drop the X sometime) Rocket Assisted Projectile.

Looks like a normal round on the outside
155mm-XM1113-Rocket-Assisted-Projectile-RAP.jpg


Inside, you loose some of the payload to rocket propellant. Once downrange a bit, rocket takes effect:

original.jpg

(Though this neat photo is actually an electro-thermal propulsion system we may see in some future world).

If anyone wants to compare to a BB projectile, this has some nice cutaways and open source summary stuff: https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2011/gunmissile/Tuesday11528_Nguyen.pdf

Yep. Its pretty awesome and expensive. I was a 13D (Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System Specialist) with 3rd Brigade 2nd Infantry Division from June 07'-2011'.
We were the first unit (1-37 Field Artillery, Charlie Battery) to field the M777A1 in the Army. We were also the first unit to field the RAP round. I think the guys at Raytheon quoted like 75K a round. We could hit within 10 meters of any 10 digit grid we aimed at. It was a tremendous round that offered alot of potential.
Right after I got out, my unit deployed yo Afghanistan and was credited with over 300 kills. Most of them with RAP rounds. I was told by unit buddies they fired over 200 that deployment along with a thousand or so HE and Illum rounds.

Man I miss it some times...
 
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Third shot was nothing more than proper neck tension and perfect seating depth. Wonder if they use Range Buddy Pro Global edition?
 
Yup. Long existed. Skipping many other fun things like base bleed, this is using the XM1113 (presumably will drop the X sometime) Rocket Assisted Projectile.

Looks like a normal round on the outside
155mm-XM1113-Rocket-Assisted-Projectile-RAP.jpg


Inside, you loose some of the payload to rocket propellant. Once downrange a bit, rocket takes effect:

original.jpg

(Though this neat photo is actually an electro-thermal propulsion system we may see in some future world).

If anyone wants to compare to a BB projectile, this has some nice cutaways and open source summary stuff: https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2011/gunmissile/Tuesday11528_Nguyen.pdf
Does it have electronics/gyro/gps on board for updating/steering?
 
Once employed, the dumb fucks will be killing their air support with this shit. Damn near got taken out over Iraq by Army theater ballistic missiles. And those needed air coordination to be fired. Give Arty this shit and fire at will, no thanks.

The problem is that the airspace would typically belong to the Air Force, and it should belong to the Army.

Personally I think that this is a waste. It’s much cheaper to build a guided rocket because the acceleration is so much less.
 
The problem is that the airspace would typically belong to the Air Force, and it should belong to the Army.

What airspace, exactly, are you talking about? The Army typically gets about 1500-3500 feet depending on location. That takes care of helos and regular artillery/mortar systems. Are you saying the Army should control the whole battle space? If so, have fun without any air support. There’s a reason Air Force is a separate service. And I was about 35,000 feet when I read US Army down the side of the missile. This kind of artillery goes WAY up and transitions everyone’s altitude on the way up and on the way back down. These advanced artillery have been deployed several times over the past 2 or so decades, and every time it is shown air support (independent of service or delivery type) is superior in every way. We just continue wasting money on artillery lovers wanting to be the best Napoleon.
 
@Crewdog135

The Army should control all airspace under the maximum ordinate of rocket and cannon artillery for a certain distance around all units. 50-100km forward has been proposed. I’m unsure who was asked, the people I know preferred Close Combat Attack (it’s called something stupid now) to anything else, and specifically disliked air strikes because an Air Force aircraft can’t generate and attack its own targets near friendlies, and if ground troops have the target located they can have artillery and mortars smash it anyway. Artillery has a high OR rate and unlimited loiter time. The Army relied on aircraft so much in the recent war in large part because they wanted to use their artillery units as provisional infantry.

The Air Force was created to prevent the diversion of aircraft to support ground operations in a combined arms model. They mistakenly believed that conventional munitions on aircraft are strategic (able to break the enemies will at a national level) and still haven’t figured out that strategic airpower is nuclear air power (which they no longer prioritize) and that missiles have been the future of airpower all along.

Back to the original question. Of course air space over and in front of the Army should belong to the Army. The ATO cycle is 72 hours long, fit it in somewhere. Meanwhile the Army can summon a rocket from more than 50km in minutes, from the call for fire to impact.
 
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@RyanScott , I’ll have to respectfully disagree with you, pretty much in totality. This kind of Big Army centric thinking lead directly to the unmitigated goat-rope at the Whales Hump, when 10th MTN thought they could just conquer Afghanistan all by their lonesome. And you may want to reconsider just how effective (and vulnerable) artillery can be against an organized force without air support.
And while I agree that theater missile trumps the super artillery in pretty much every way, pointing to a 72 hour ATO cycle as a restraining factor is nonsense. The ATO can be assigning DPIs, like nights 1-3 in Iraq, but it is usually placing and arranging assets into the theater-most without assigned targets, for dynamic tasking. The Army has shown, time and again, that it doesn’t have the skill sets to effectively utilize air assets ( not a knock, no one would want Air Force moving boats or Navy in charge of battalions). Trying to own the battle space from dirt to space is poor military leadership, terrible operational control, and strategically infantile.
 
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If you were traveling through space at 3000fps and shot another projectile at 3000fps. Would that projectile be traveling 6000fps?
Yes. Speed is relative. Would it be moving 6000fps relative to the earth? No.
 
If you are traveling at the speed of light and turned on your headlights, would you see the beam? Would they be going twice the speed of light?
 
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@Crewdog135

The Army should control all airspace under the maximum ordinate of rocket and cannon artillery for a certain distance around all units. 50-100km forward has been proposed. I’m unsure who was asked, the people I know preferred Close Combat Attack (it’s called something stupid now) to anything else, and specifically disliked air strikes because an Air Force aircraft can’t generate and attack its own targets near friendlies, and if ground troops have the target located they can have artillery and mortars smash it anyway. Artillery has a high OR rate and unlimited loiter time. The Army relied on aircraft so much in the recent war in large part because they wanted to use their artillery units as provisional infantry.

If you're taking contact, would you rather have an A-10 or a couple arty rounds? I'm willing to bet most will choose the A-10, and that's coming from a former artilleryman (artilleryperson nowadays :rolleyes:)

And you're absolutely right about arty being used as infantry! I "visited" both sandboxes, and had to walk around a bunch. Not exactly what I signed up for lol
 
The extreme range is not down to some ballistics magic but in addition to high MV generated by huge charge in a long tube the round was GPS guided with a bunch of fins and canards its not on a purely ballistic curve. Rocked boosted artillery rounds have been around for decades , its the guidance element that is new, Excalibur duds and remnants from warzones are likely already in hands of both Russians and Chinese so this advantage might not last long..

''Range extension is another discriminator used by Raytheon to describe EXCALIBUR’s capabilities.Regardless of gun barrel calibre, we extend the range over conventional artillery, with precision, by about 25 percent,” the company director noted. '

''The Army’s Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) system under development hit a target 43 miles away — or 70 kilometers — on the nose at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, Dec. 19, using an Excalibur extended-range guided artillery shell, according to the general who is overseeing the service’s Long-Range Precision Fires modernization''

Powder charge for these shots is anything but practical in size
ElWFj3QXYAMDjab
 
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If you were traveling through space at 3000fps and shot another projectile at 3000fps. Would that projectile be traveling 6000fps?
If a vehicle is traveling at the speed of light and someone turns the headlights on... What happens? :LOL:
 
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@RyanScott , I’ll have to respectfully disagree with you, pretty much in totality. This kind of Big Army centric thinking lead directly to the unmitigated goat-rope at the Whales Hump, when 10th MTN thought they could just conquer Afghanistan all by their lonesome. And you may want to reconsider just how effective (and vulnerable) artillery can be against an organized force without air support.
You’re the one presuming that aircraft would disappear.
Point in fact, doctrinally in major combat operations aircraft will be used for AI and not CAS. Artillery will fight an artillery duel on their own. The Army finds air parity over itself to be sufficient for its purposes.

And while I agree that theater missile trumps the super artillery in pretty much every way, pointing to a 72 hour ATO cycle as a restraining factor is nonsense. The ATO can be assigning DPIs, like nights 1-3 in Iraq, but it is usually placing and arranging assets into the theater-most without assigned targets, for dynamic tasking.
Obviously the actual routes and targets come last, but it shouldn’t be a problem to notify the Army before you traverse their airspace. And I’m not talking about just certain types of missiles: the hardened electronics required for Excalibur make it far more expensive than a missile with similar range. That’s my complaint there.

The Army has shown, time and again, that it doesn’t have the skill sets to effectively utilize air assets ( not a knock, no one would want Air Force moving boats or Navy in charge of battalions). Trying to own the battle space from dirt to space is poor military leadership, terrible operational control, and strategically infantile.
I didn’t say that the Army should have the air assets, most of those should belong to the navy, which already has operations from the bottom of the ocean to space. The Army gets about the level of aircraft related knowledge that you’d expect from a service where pilots max at one star.