The idea that 105mm artillery is obsolete because of drones is a truly batshit crazy armchair-general opinion.
Yes range matters but people need to stop obsessing over range as the only salient variable here, it is amateur as hell.
The L119 105mm howitzer is the best light infantry support weapon on earth and it isn't really even that close unless you factor in bleeding edge soft-recoil artillery systems.
M119 is lighter and has a more rapid rate of fire than its predecessor, the M102. The maximum rate of fire is six rounds per minute for the first two minutes. The sustained rate of fire is three rounds per minute for 30 minutes. It has a standard firing range of 14,000m and a maximum range of 19,500m can be achieved with rocket-assisted shells. A standard crew of seven is needed to prepare the howitzer for firing.
https://www.army-technology.com/projects/m119a1-a2-howitzer/
^ Doing the math that is a sustainable rate of ~ 90 shells in half an hour with no robotics or complex machinery. It is more useful to think of the L119 as an indirect fire "machine gun" than a traditional artillery piece, obsessing about range stats here misses the point entirely. Also other howitzers can compete with that rate of fire too, sure, but they are far heavier.
The K105A1 also sounds like exactly the kind of solution Ukraine needs. Clever, inexpensive and made from readily available "obsolete" parts.
https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/modern/south-korea/k105a1-evo-105/
5 Comments
Salamanderwizard@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 8d
Drones are only as scary because there is no real counter to em. Give it a while, and we'll have satellites that make A.D.D (anti drone dome)
Tanks were scary and unstoppable. Planes were scary and unstoppable.
It's just the new weapon, there will be counters to it eventually, and then it'll slowly slide its way into the oversized toy bin of humanities cruel talent for war.
altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 8d
The fear about range comes from assumption it would be there in the next ten minutes. Highly mobile howitzer that bombs predefined targets and then moves around is very annyoing. It's not hard to triangulate their location, but by the time it's done, they may as well be elsewhere preparing for another shot. While drone fleet seems to be the new meta, they are no artillery, and mobile howitzers strikes the balance between having big shells and being vulnerable.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz · 7 pts · 8d
The fear also comes from an implicit assumption that war can be atomized into a series of individual discrete interactions between pairs of units in one on one fights.
To put it another way most people think war works like an Advance Wars match or a Chess game.
It is not, what matters isn't only the range stat of a howitzer versus the range stat of an enemy drone, what matters is how well your side integrates howitzers AND drones together and how well they communicate in efficient and fast paced operations.
I don't know why this concept of Combined Arms warfare is so hard for people to understand who only started paying attention to war once drones came into the picture or why they are so confidently wrong about it.
Sunshine@piefed.ca · 2 pts · 7d
South Korea and Japan must help Ukraine more!
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 7d
At the very least South Korea and Japan are capable of making some wild medevac robots I am sure and they could be designed from the start to be poor weapon systems (no good place to mount a hardpoint for a weapon say) that were purposefully unarmed and entirely focused on saving lives and evacuating injured.
Hard to see how that violates any principles and with AI tech stock volatility in South Korean markets and what that might entail more broadly about AI tech stocks I would think practical but still bleeding edge applied robotics for lifesaving in extreme environments would be a great safe haven investment for stable long term growth and relevance. After all, lifesaving robots don't have to be just used in war, climate change provides enough crisises as it is...