Combat Camera Video: Howitzer Call-for-Fire Drills, Helmand Province, Afghanistan

[P2KK]

YouTube Video

The US should be investing in ARCHER Artillery System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


only include the part after v= within the youtube brackets. - Okita
so [youtube ]TuvPL5GxEnw[/youtube ] without the spaces

[Cpl.Small]

Originally Posted by P2KK

Fixed for you

[BloodBane611]

That doesn't look fun at all....

I was expecting more *BOOM*, less shoveling. Very interesting to see though.

[[R-DEV]Ninja2dan]

Originally Posted by [R-COM]BloodBane611

That doesn't look fun at all....

I was expecting more *BOOM*, less shoveling. Very interesting to see though.

CFF Drills are also known as dry-fire drills, crew training in between actual fire missions to keep the cannon crews on top of their game and ensure the equipment is always in working order. No boom until the actual missions though.


And yeah, it looks real fun. And people wonder why I went SP.

Originally Posted by P2KK

The US should be investing in ARCHER Artillery System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Don't really need it. Our M109A6 Paladins can do much more weapon-wise than the Archer system, and the Paladins are still air-mobile. We do have one wheeled artillery system in use though, the HIMARS. It's the little brother of the M270 MLRS, carrying a single stack instead of duals.

The recent incident in Afghanistan with a bad rocket was fired from the HIMARS, which means it should be getting a lot more attention for a while. It's not because the system is flawed, it was probably either a rocket malfunction or could have even been weather-related.

[Pariel]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]Ninja2dan

CFF Drills are also known as dry-fire drills, crew training in between actual fire missions to keep the cannon crews on top of their game and ensure the equipment is always in working order. No boom until the actual missions though.


And yeah, it looks real fun. And people wonder why I went SP.

Self-propelled for the win.

Don't really need it. Our M109A6 Paladins can do much more weapon-wise than the Archer system, and the Paladins are still air-mobile. We do have one wheeled artillery system in use though, the HIMARS. It's the little brother of the M270 MLRS, carrying a single stack instead of duals.

The recent incident in Afghanistan with a bad rocket was fired from the HIMARS, which means it should be getting a lot more attention for a while. It's not because the system is flawed, it was probably either a rocket malfunction or could have even been weather-related.

300 meters due to weather? Seems like something that should have been programmed into the system, in that case.

[[R-DEV]Ninja2dan]

Originally Posted by Pariel

300 meters due to weather? Seems like something that should have been programmed into the system, in that case.

Without access to the AAR, it's impossible to know the exact cause of the incident. Weather would be a very unlikely cause, but still possible. Freak sandstorms or other factors, even a minor human miscalculation, could have contributed. But most likely not.

From my experience working with the M270 crews, I know that those rockets rarely miss. There is always a small chance that the rocket itself had some issues, and at the standard engagement ranges of the 270mm, even a slight glitch in the system could cause a 300m deviation. Very rare, but still possible.

You also have to consider the chance that one of the vehicle crews keyed in a wrong digit somewhere, but that is even less likely because everything is usually cross-checked via software prior to launch. It would take multiple errors from various sources to cause such an error to occur without some type of misfire error popping up at the gunner's controls. So my personal assumption is rocket system failure.


And no matter how the system failed, it was an accident. Things like that happen in combat, even with all the high-tech toys we use. Blue-on-Blue and civilian hits are a lot less common than they were years or decades ago, but they are impossible to make 100% preventable. The artillery being used on the current battlefield is much more accurate than what we were using even back in the Vietnam era. This is especially more so when using smart munitions like BATS, BONUS and Excalibur rounds.

[Pariel]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]Ninja2dan

Without access to the AAR, it's impossible to know the exact cause of the incident. Weather would be a very unlikely cause, but still possible. Freak sandstorms or other factors, even a minor human miscalculation, could have contributed. But most likely not.

From my experience working with the M270 crews, I know that those rockets rarely miss. There is always a small chance that the rocket itself had some issues, and at the standard engagement ranges of the 270mm, even a slight glitch in the system could cause a 300m deviation. Very rare, but still possible.

You also have to consider the chance that one of the vehicle crews keyed in a wrong digit somewhere, but that is even less likely because everything is usually cross-checked via software prior to launch. It would take multiple errors from various sources to cause such an error to occur without some type of misfire error popping up at the gunner's controls. So my personal assumption is rocket system failure.


And no matter how the system failed, it was an accident. Things like that happen in combat, even with all the high-tech toys we use. Blue-on-Blue and civilian hits are a lot less common than they were years or decades ago, but they are impossible to make 100% preventable. The artillery being used on the current battlefield is much more accurate than what we were using even back in the Vietnam era. This is especially more so when using smart munitions like BATS, BONUS and Excalibur rounds.

That was more along the lines of what I thought -- human error is generally a cause in situations like this. See the F-18 crash a couple years back that killed four people on the ground. Could have been prevented with a little more responsibility taken by people in maintenance, as well as the pilot.