So i know humidity, temperature and all of that matters and this information comes from external sources, but do modern artillery systems with artillery computers have a function where you can basically click on a map, the computer does all the calculations for you and all you have to do is aim, if even that?
Or is getting rounds on target still connected to a lot of manual calculations and stuff.
howitzers shooting unguided ammo are as you speak, you click on a map and the gun laying system aims the gun to his that spot on the map. for rocket artillery the location you selected is also transmitted to the GPS/INS guidance system of the rockets (same with guided howitzer rounds)
Impressive, thanks.
So these guided rounds know where to go and they can counteract external forces like wind by themselves, that's pretty neat.
The rounds are heavy as frick. Unless there is a storm, the impact of wind, humidity etc. is almost 0, even on long distances. Those factors are only relevant to smaller caliber rounds, like sniper rifles etc.
Take the difference of a golf ball and ping pong ball, for example. Both have about the same size, but different weight and means of propellant. Ping pong balls are only effective at short distances, while golf balls can be shot a lot further at more severe conditions.
I see, i always assumed that it was external meteorological factors that made the main impact on accuracy, because i've read once that unguided 155mm shells had a CEP of over 250 meters "at max range" although i don't know what max range is here, like if it's a normal shell which i think has roughly 40km range or a rocket assisted one with 60km-70km range.
So what's the deal here, aren't they able to make propellant charges consistent enough to get almost the same muzzle velocity every time?
>So what's the deal here, aren't they able to make propellant charges consistent enough to get almost the same muzzle velocity every time?
Yeah, that is pretty much the design goal and quite achievable these days. But you can have variables such as setback, barrel wear, temperature, bad QA on the projectile or charges etc etc that can give slight variations over time.
This is not much of a problem on modern systems using modern charges, and was way more problematic before.
Just to give an example, the Archer-system had massive problems with this during its development.
It has a really fancy autoloader that does everything on its own, but it suffered a bit from not pushing the shell far enough in all the time.
What this in practice did was to make the chamber a few ccm smaller than expected every now and then.
So when the charge goes of, the gas will expand into a chamber not exactly the same each time, and i think they could have upwards of 100 m/s difference between the fastest and the slowest round in a given salvo.
Ofc this gave interesting results in the impact area
As far as I know some guns, not necessarily artillery, measure the muzzle velocity of each shot so the computer can adjust it on the go.
USN battleships in the 40s were able to fire one gun from a turret, track the round going out and adjust the next shots before the first round landed.
Wind will absolutely affect the rounds moron.
Like over 30-70km they can move the rocket literally a mile across in moderate wind.
But these things have GPS correction as they fly with the ability to counter wind and trade height for speed more efficiently if they have to, and the MLRS will have had weather data to angle it beforehand anyway to usually counter the wind before it even happens if it's lateral.
Headwind can absolutely reduce and increase the range of your shells even with how aerodynamic they are.
Tailwind increases* sorry.
Pingpong ball and a golfball have totally different densities you idiot
The biggest impact on the flight of an artillery shell comes down to the projectile speed.
Stuff like air density etc can affect it, but as
says they are quite heavy.
Having consistent muzzle velocity is more important, as a few meters per second difference can give quite an effect when the flighttime is measured in over a minute at long ranges
There are major hazards with these rounds though. If a tail fin breaks off you have a wild round, which happens more often than you think
its the same as any other guided munition, however i think guided 155mm howitzer rounds are less common. 155mm howitzers are mainly used because their regular ammo is very cheap so any army can stock up on it in massive quantities. its less accurate but if you need to dump 1000 bombs on a city block occupied by enemy troops its better to use something you have a frickton of.
rockets on the other hand are more commonly guided in modern armies
The US made guided buses that reduce CEP down to 50m on otherwise unguided shells. Quite an improvement over the standard 100+ of dumb artillery, nothing close to the 5m of purpose built guided rounds though
Thats mainly becuase making a electronics that can recieve GPS and then run guidance with the m tend to be fragile to the point of shattering like glass when doing 5000g acceleration from a tube hence why they are expensive. Rockets dont pull inane G's and can have more conventional electronics
i remember a talk by the guy who wanted to build a hydrogen space gun. surprisingly most electronics can handle high acceleration with no problems or G-hardening them is trivial.
>Or is getting rounds on target still connected to a lot of manual calculations and stuff.
Its kinda like with land nav. You are expected to know how to do it all manually with a map and compass in case of an emergency, but everybody operationally uses GPS.
>pzh
There's a Bundeswehr interview with their top general discussing why it took so long to get the pzhs into action.
He said the Ukrainians loved driving it, but there are difficulties running it as the system because it gives you error codes and stops working if something is not optimal.
And they had to learn what the error codes mean, and how to do the software/hardware workarounds to resolve each of them.