Question for Army, edweird, devildog, etc. . . .

[Steelrat]

I'm sure the Army is a big organization, but the AF and Navy aren't exactly book clubs...


Googled it, found this
Army has about 3,000 helo's (down from 7900 back in '91.)

AF has 2,400 Fighters, 200 bombers, 750 heavies (judging from a graph), 560 tankers, and about 1, 200 trainers for a total of 5110 aircraft.
Figures from here I couldn't find numbers for the AF's helicopters. And I didn't count the UAV's the listed.

Wow, the Army was closer than I thought and I bet it was true back in'91. My mistake, but when you said aircraft, I wasn't counting helos, they aren't aircraft in my book. (Their wings go faster than their fuselage, that's just CRAZY!)

Just think of helicopters as rotary-wing aircraft.

[txaggie08]

Helos have to be counted as aircraft since the army was banned from fixed wing attack aircraft programs thanks to our friends in the airforce, who promptly stop building close airsupport role fighters(with the exception fo the A-10, and theuy didnt want that).

[TheAngryDrunkenRussian]

Kosmo one thing I remember about being in the Corps and training in 29 Palms is when you hear "Fire for Effect" come over on the radio get small. Arty will still out beat planes, helicopters, and tanks for a precision mass of indirect fire that is accurate. In Iraq airframes are limited to there payload and overtasked. Tanks are very few in numbers they are mostly used for convoy's and only particpate in larger battles. Yes Arty batteries are a logistical nightmare. But with out heavy guns on the battlefield is like going to a baseball game with out a bat.

[kosmo]

Depending on aircraft is dangerous. In a low intensity conflict, you always seem to have some loitering around. Now try a full-on battle, with massed AAA and SAMs facing your aircraft. Depending on them is just going to get a lot of people killed. And again, MLRS is no replacement for artillery. It has its uses, but cannot fulfill all the roles of traditional artillery. In additonal to being able to fire more accurately, the MLRS really just has 2 types of "rounds." Can't do smoke, can't do illumination, etc etc.

In a full on battle with massed aa and sams facing our aircraft we can hit them with mlrs, cruise missiles, stealth aircraft, etc. Especially with ATACMS, youd need a lot less MLRS to do the job of traditional arty batallions because their range is so much greater. Mortars do smoke and illum just fine. Now Im not saying we dont need arty, Im saying we dont need the big guns. 105s do just fine. The logistics for them is 50 billion times easier than for 155s. They can handle area suppression decently, but no where near what mlrs can do. But then no traditional arty system can.

Artillery is dead? Please inform the Artillery branch about this, we have heard the same incorrect statements concerning armor.

I dont have to inform them, theyre well aware of the fact. Why do you think they cancelled crusader? Probably not because it was useful.

[thecavemankevin]

Artillery is dead. The jobs it used to do are more effectively handled by mortars, mlrs, or aircraft. The only role it has left is counter-fire, which doesnt really need super technology and armored sparty.

Now i learn most of my stuff from google/history & mili channel so i dont have first hand knowledge like many of you.....but i dont think Arty is dead.

meet the excalibur

[Steelrat]

A guided artillery round is really nothing new. We've had Copperhead for about 2 decades or so. And we have had rocket assisted projectiles (RAP) for quite a while to. The trouble is that even with this new-fangled stuff, we are out ranged by almost everything out there. The Germans, the British, heck even the South Africans have artillery that outranges ours, and there are plenty of others that can shoot further than ours. There is no excuse for it, and it is an embarassment that our NEW fcs NLOS system traded range for the ability to fit in a C-130.

FCS is a joke anyways, since it began after the problems deploying for Kosovo. The main problem being that Kosovo was a very small low intensity conflict. Focusing our efforts on that kind of stuff is only going to lead to us getting our butts kicked in a major war. We already have light infantry and stryker units to deal with that stuff, lets try and maintain some semblance of heavy armor and artillery.

[Recon by Fire]

Well, not too surprising that the USAF has more aircraft than Army now, back when I was informed of the numbers in question, it was afterall back in late 80's.

Artty is alive and well though. Say what you wish. It is still widely used outside of civilians towns in Afghanistan and Iraq and is a mainstay of our combined arms doctrine. A friend of mine has a contract with the Army to provide howitzer recoil springs, he's done this for years. In the years between Gulf War 1 & 2 his annual profit would range from $150K-$400K a year (not a bad living, huh?). His profits currently since GW-2 are off the charts. Doesn't sound like an inidication that artillery is dead to me.

[Steelrat]

Well, not too surprising that the USAF has more aircraft than Army now, back when I was informed of the numbers in question, it was afterall back in late 80's.

Artty is alive and well though. Say what you wish. It is still widely used outside of civilians towns in Afghanistan and Iraq and is a mainstay of our combined arms doctrine. A friend of mine has a contract with the Army to provide howitzer recoil springs, he's done this for years. In the years between Gulf War 1 & 2 his annual profit would range from $150K-$400K a year (not a bad living, huh?). His profits currently since GW-2 are off the charts. Doesn't sound like an inidication that artillery is dead to me.

Yeah, but we're fighting guys using light mortars. I talked to guys who served in artillery during GW1 and 2, and they had to deal with the fact that some Iraqi artillery outranged them. Thats just pathetic.

[TheAngryDrunkenRussian]

Yeah, but we're fighting guys using light mortars. I talked to guys who served in artillery during GW1 and 2, and they had to deal with the fact that some Iraqi artillery outranged them. Thats just pathetic.

yeah but have you seen or heard of Iraqi's setting up long range arty?

[Steelrat]

yeah but have you seen or heard of Iraqi's setting up long range arty?

Now? No. I'm talking about the initial invasion, when they DID use artillery.

[SCpoloRicker]

Lol at Kev blowing the cliche.

[TheAngryDrunkenRussian]

Now? No. I'm talking about the initial invasion, when they DID use artillery.

For those poor souls that did I'm sure they are buried in the sand somewhere.

[kosmo]

I give up. All of your peoples combined educations in googling/the history channel is obviously more than I could have ever hoped to learn serving 4 years in military intelligence, 2 of which in artillery units. I bow to your collective expertise in awe. Never mind the fact that the government and military obviously agree with me, which is why theyve developed light weight and easily deployable 155s and abandoned heavy armored artillery pieces. Its not like they have any experience in the whole war thing anyway.

[IronCore]

kosmo, how do you do counter fire exactly? just curious

[kosmo]

Theres radars that pick up and track incoming rounds and in theory will tell you right where they came from. Or you can do the old fashioned way of crater analysis, which is looking at the crater of the impacted rounds and getting an azimuth of where it came from. That doesnt tell you distance though so you need more than one crater to find where the lines intersect. Thats generally not acceptably accurate enough for counterfire though, especially in urban areas.