Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnews!cbnews!military From: saugus!leverich@rand.org (Brian Leverich) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Weapon selection Message-ID: <1991Mar18.001515.19967@cbnews.att.com> Date: 18 Mar 91 00:15:15 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (william.b.thacker) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 86 Approved: military@att.att.com From: saugus!leverich@rand.org (Brian Leverich) > > From: "DRCOA1::LENOCHS" > > The amount of tube artillery and/or rockets that would be needed to > equal an air strike is *enormous*! A Mk-82 iron bomb is a 502 pound > warhead. An F-15E can carry 24 of them (total throw weight = 12,048 > pounds). Even with a 200 pound warhead on a 155mm (which I doubt), it > would take 60 rounds to equal one F-15E run. (Artillery experts, > please step up and take your spot on this one.) A B-52 can carry over > 100 Mk-82s. That is a throw weight of 50,200 pounds. You'd need a > *lot* of tubes to put all those rounds on the target in the same amount > of time. > Actually, most analysts expect the of munitions the Air Force would deliver in a hot war to be a small fraction of the amount that would be shot by the Army. Estimates vary, but most analysts believe that unconstrained heavy division augmented with the usual corps assets would shoot 2000-3600 tons per day fighting a heavy defense. That's well over 100 B-52 sorties per division day. The primary reason for the Air Force bombing mission is that the really lethal conventional Army munitions have historically had very short ranges - less than 30 miles. This may change with the advent of ATACMS (the Army Tactical Missile System, a MLRS-launched missile with a range many times 30 miles). > Granted, once set up, the arty can continue firing, but return fire > limits the amount of time any one gun will remain stationary (of its > own free will!!). Counterbattery fire may be rate-limiting to tube artillery, which shoots at a fairly low tons-per-minute rate and may have to scoot before they've really done much damage. This should be less of a problem for MLRS (multiple launch rocket system) batteries, because MLRS can ripple- fire 12 rockets (which is a lot of tonnage) and scoot. > >If multiple shells are going to be fired at a target, I would expect > >them to arrive in a single-modal, bi-variate x-y Gaussian > >distribution; the number of rounds used to destroy a target being > >calculated using the methods of quality-control for a stationary > >single target, or operations research (OR) to incapacitate a dynamic > >or multiple-point target. > > ?!?!? What'd he say ?!?!? Yes, sort of. There is an extensive literature describing mathematical modeling of interior and exterior ballistics, and how munitions interact with targets. The sophistication of the mathematics has really been a bit absurd in the past, at least in terms of describing how many rounds are consumed in combat. First of all, firepower (especially artillery) is used for all sorts of things besides killing targets; for example, denying terrain, pinning dug-in troops, reconnaissance by fire, etc. Because you can do so many wonderful things with fire, a trivial model of real-world ammunition consumption is that consumption = capacity of the log system. Second, with respect to artillery consumption, the observer calling in the fires historically hasn't known his (and, consequently, the target's) position within half a klick or more (many times the circular error probable of the gun itself). What happened in the real world is that the observer would walk the fire to the target, perhaps spending far more rounds than a naive accuracy-of-the-tube model would predict. (Perhaps the models will fit better now that position finding is becoming more sophisticated ...) Third, and continuing the effects of dynamics, fires are being made sequentially. Once you hit the target, the observer can tell you to move on to another target. The opposing force can return fire, causing you to have to scoot. Your targeting priorities can be changed. Etc. And there's more, but it's not worth wasting bandwith on. Cheers, B. "Simulate it in ROSS" Brian Leverich | Post: Resource Management Department Voice: (213) 393-0411 x7769 | The RAND Corporation Internet: leverich@rand.org | 1700 Main Street UUCP: uunet!randvax!leverich | Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138