Posted 8/24/2009 3:00 am
Artilley is awesome. It cannot be jammed, blocked, defeated or recalled. Once it is fired, it's a done deal. Until you have seen a full battery 6-8 guns at work, you have not lived.
Depends on the shell. Probably costs more to ship it to the battlefield than it does to produce it. Much of the ammo for artillery and even iron bombs for aircraft are pre-Vietnam vintage. I think they finally used up all the old MK84 bombs from the 50s-early 60s.
Actually, a modern artillery shell is upwards of $5K each. If you want it to something more spectacular (like blow up about 50 feet off the ground), it's closer to about $8K each. Cruise missles are around $500K each, but are a more precision weapon designed to minimize colateral damage. Artillery is used when you have ass-tons of taliban up in the hills with MANPADS (like the one in that link) and you don't want to jeapordize your bombers. Lob a shit-ton of those into the hills, suddenly Haji wants to leave the area. If you use a denial of area round (e.g. - CS tear gas), you can really make him miserable.
However, we definitely have a reduced need for conventionl weapons such as artillery and tanks in the modern schema. That being said, when you do need it, it's a good thing to have it... I believe the saying goes that it's better to be present with 10 men than absent with 10,000.
Not the ones I saw. I have seen MLRS salvos, I think they have GPS of some kind.
Regular old 155mm artillery is just scary as fuck. I mean, unless you have seen some of those rounds go off pretty close, you have no idea. Airburst is super scary.
I love the concussion of big rounds. The THUMP.
I could not imagine being on the other end of that outgoing mail.
Posted 8/24/2009 3:15 am
Rounds I saw in Afghanistan, that were in wooden crates, were late 1960s vintage rounds. 1967-8. 155mm and 105mm. Never got close to the battery we had, that was not in my little area and wanted to stay the fuck away since they had monster piles of rounds ready to go. They stayed out of our shit, we did the same for them.
