[Red Badger]

Have gun. Will travel.
Wire
Paladin
San Francisco.......

[headstamp 2]

Keep thinking how efficient and deadly the German 88 crews were against mobile armor.

[FlingWingFlyer]

We may have a smaller Army but it’s going to be the most FABULOUS Army in history once everyone recovers from their sex change surgeries.

[PAR35]

Maybe they should upgrade to the Panzerhaubitze 2000.

[Vendome]

Want...

[Jeff Chandler]

I hope it’s as good as the Hover Tank.

[Nifster]

Swell

[Mariner]

If we are ever in another ground war where hundreds or even thousands of guns are lobbing rounds at each other, our Air Force will have failed.

Miserably.

Keep the A-10. Build some more if necessary. We should have at least 300 deployable at all times.

[Pipe Dog]

[Molon Labbie]

The Paladin is a shoot and scoot system, its not supposed to be around to get hit.

It gets a mission, stops, loads, fires, and moves. All in two minutes.

Static systems like towed arty are in danger of counter battery fire and truly dinosaurs against a nation that has competent artillery capability.

[wideminded]

The Paladin M109A7 PIM — the latest in America’s line of tracked artillery pieces

I thought I remembered hearing that Rumsfeld cancelled the Paladin. But apparently the cancelled program was another self-propelled howitzer called Crusader that was supposed to replace the Paladin.

[bravo whiskey]

“a danger to its crew.” That’s a bit of a stretch. I was in A2 missile tanks. We had combustible cartridges on the main gun rounds some of which were stored in the turret. We didn’t think it was a danger to us. We took the usual safety precautions but its an armored fighting vehicle, not a frigging Mercedes Benz. Geez

[Squantos]

Must have missed that 1992 war..... Mine was 90 for Desert Shield and 91 for Desert Storm.....

[ABN 505]

Yes all that is well and good but does it have enough room so any female warriors can [ahem] have enough privacy if the occasion arises?

[CurlyDave]

...Perhaps most worryingly, the PIMs keep the same 155-millimeter gun as with earlier Paladins. The cannon has a maximum range of 22 kilometers, ranging up to 30 kilometers with rocket-assisted rounds. That’s well below several foreign self-propelled guns — and Russia’s new 2S35 Koalitsiya-SV mobile gun could significantly outrange the PIM.

This is because the Paladin has a barrel which is 39 calibers long, the German Panzerhaubitze_2000 has a barrel which is 51.6 calibers.

I am certain that there are trade-offs, but in general a longer barrel means higher velocity and greater range.

[Chainmail]

It’s an OK article but typical narrow focus - probably written by some guy who makes fire extinguishing systems. The army and the Maines are stuck with the Fort Sill mentality: minimal budgets, labor-intensive firing and logistic systems, and solving precision issues with quarter-million-dollar-per-shot (and vulnerable) guided munitions.

The last big solution from Fort Sill was the 50 ton plus Crusader and they’ve been sulking ever since that pig was cancelled.

The future is highly mobile (fire on the move), very precise (advanced fire control, computer-controlled, MET-Sensing) ballistic systems with no gun crews. If the damn thing is hit and burns, you’ve only lost the machine.

The artillery gurus lost out when their existing systems were too heavy and too difficult to support in Afghanistan and the Iraq counterinsurgency. Now artillery is a backwater and the fossils are still teaching ancient history instead of current fire support.

[jumpingcholla34]

I love all your posts. Planes! Tanks! Fighting ships! Cool stuff!