Chinese mechanised brigades artillery choises

It really is a shame artillery is getting sidetracked in modern armies. But with the lack of a big enemy who you might fight in a costly and long war, quality over quantity, even at an expense of a great financial strain, does seem to reign supreme. In case of a large scale ground war, I am pretty sure artillery would prove it's worth, after large portions of cruise missile and guided bomb stocks have been used up.

Greatest advantage of towed artillery is it's small weight. Even though on the battlefield itself it's less maneovarable than SP, making quick short to medium range transfers by helicopter or packing in dozens of artillery pieces in a C-17 for example is something not achievable with SP artillery.

Thing is, SP artillery through history, and this counts in even modern wars like the gulf war, has rarely been used to maximize its advatages. A battery of guns gets deployed and then it remains at station, firing rounds just like towed artillery would. Yes, deployment time is shorter than towed, protection is greater, but over the average time such a battery is engaging the enemy the number of projectiles is more or less the same as it'd be with towed artillery pieces.

Basically, towed artillery has its uses and i don't see it disappearing. It is on the commander and the strategists to decide which artillery would be more useful in which situation.

A question for the Fin. While i see the logic behind repair vehicle being more expensive in a SP artillery battery, why do you say the command vehicle and especially the ammo supply vehicles would be so much more costly than their counterparts in a towed battery? I mean, 6.6 mill compared to 1.1 mill?

A question for the Fin. While i see the logic behind repair vehicle being more expensive in a SP artillery battery, why do you say the command vehicle and especially the ammo supply vehicles would be so much more costly than their counterparts in a towed battery? I mean, 6.6 mill compared to 1.1 mill?

Well in the calculations it was assumed that all the vehicles in the Sp battery are tracked, so thats the main reason. Also whit the towed battery the command vehicle is typicaly command version of the general APC wich is also being used as hauler and the supply vehicles where just normal trucks...tough when i did my military service our batterys bran new command post vehicle based on the XA-200 series ACP went bit offroad and we had to use these comon cargobox converted to serve as commandpost and be hauled whit normal truck. Also our guns where never hauled by the APCs but plain cross-country trucks and im pretty sure that even in wartime some of the towed batteryes are fitted similar ways. That way the cost of the towed battery is even lower...touhg these kind of "low-tech" batteryes and battalions would be assinged to the lowthreat units and not in the FEOBF.

Still, i don't think it's necesarry to have tracked, heavy vehicles as ammo carriers, unless the point is to have all the vehicles in the battery armored. SP that use tracks use them cause they're too heavy. A truck that carries ammo would not be in the above 40 ton range, so it'd do, capable to follow the artillery vehicles. Only exception could be really soft marshe like ground.

Also, what about wheeled self propelled artillery? modern south african systems, french, swedish, czech for example - they're all long barelled, heavy 155mm on a truck chassis. even the british self propelled m777 based system was to be wheeled. We could definitely use the proposed 1.1 mil supply vehicle for those.

So, using simpler wheeled vehicles, for command supply the wheeled self propelled battery would cost little under 30 million. (with the 6 SP systems going for 20 mill, i'd say that's a safe cost cut, since a wheeled vehicle is simpler and lighter than a tracked one)

Also, what about wheeled self propelled artillery? modern south african systems, french, swedish, czech for example - they're all long barelled, heavy 155mm on a truck chassis. even the british self propelled m777 based system was to be wheeled. We could definitely use the proposed 1.1 mil supply vehicle for those

yes another trend thougth not battle proven and wery little have come to my way about the true benefits if these guns, but basicly they offers the same ammout of protection as typical APCs so they usually simplyfies the towed gun solution. but, maybe they are futures choise against heavyer armoured/ tracked platforms, i cant really say as i havent operated one or seen one in the action??

Only faults that comes to my mind if that the truck that carryes the gun brokes, it means the same as whit other SP systems buth in traditional towed gun, you simply get another truck to haul and the gun itself can be used...

Great essay, gollevainen. I believe you have to look at the future progression of the PRC military and their continued ideas of modeling the current U.S operational art “in some cases” I believe the PRC fully understands that in order to “win” conflicts you must gain air supremacy . I believe that once air supremacy has been achieved the battle will then shift to fixed wing and helicopter gunship which can have “eyes on” target while at the same time delivering very heavy fire power. I think the days of a mass 40 tube 155mm arty fire mission are coming to a end. I think you will see the PRC deploy its new attack helo with PRC special forces working in conjunction with those aircraft while at the same time using smaller 120mm mortar fire with laser designators with GPS assist. I have a very close friend who is a CAV scout who works with forward aircraft controllers. His opinion based on direct engagement with enemy forces are that it is much easier and effective to talk with a Attack Helo pilot as they both look at the same enemy from different view points on the battle field while engaging them. Like I have mentioned before many of the U.S army 155mm arty bats are being converted at least manpower wise to other military occupational specialties which are more effective in this new and progressing age of air/land battlefield unification. So, in closing I believe it would greatly benefit the PLA to expand its use of attack helo with the combined use of special forces and smaller more mobile units of indirect fire…….cheers ute

Well, i'm not so eager to dig the grave for PLA artillery. The developments in USA doesen't have so much effect on china as PLA isen't able to do those kind of reforms...yet. Attack choppers and more improved groun attack ability is propaply at the pipeline, but in chinese scale it isen't enough to totally surpass the artillery.
There propaply will be quite big reforms in PLA artillery, but mainly by changing from mass-ex-soviet tubes to more modern 155mm pieces whit sophisticated fire controll and location devices. I'm itching to see when PLA will field a true APU powered 155mm/52 cal. Gun/howitser whit TALIN-type (the aiming& location device in our K98s...made by raytheon) systems.

the development of the U.S armed forces has a huge impact on what the PRC does with its future development of its armed forces. Believe you me that the PRC is working as quickly as possiable to field and deploy a smaller, more professional and LETHAL fighting force. I firmly believe within 3 to 5 years you will see a PRC military that has the same war fighting ability for local conflicts that could match to some extent the abilitys of the U.S military. The down sizing of large cumbersome Arty and older tank Bats are a huge part of this. I believe the air surpemacy part of the PRC plan is for the most part in place. I think you will see now the deployment of fixed wing and helo that will deliever the PGMs for the 70-100% situaltional awarness conflict.

Well but its already evident in chinese miltary, all these new 'rabid reaction troops' and modern mechanised brigades. And not to drift so far away from the topic, the US military devolpment hasent got SO straigth influence for those new chinese formation's artillery choices...

In general, I think that a Brigade can only move as fast as its slowest unit.
Therefore, the deployment of towed guns could significantly reduce the mobility of the entire unit.
So, general mobility is, in my eyes, one of the defining criteria for a proposed candidate.
The 2nd Criteria is the firepower. With Firepower i mean the product of distance, impact and rate of fire of the vehicle.
The 3 Criteria is, can the thing "shoot and scoot" or not.
In this case, there are 3 possible classes:
1: Towed guns, there shoot and scoot abilities roughly equal the ones of a drunken reeindeer.
2: "Old" SP-Howitzers like the M109A3-5. These vehicles can shoot and scoot under speicific conditions, which, amongst other things, consist of good training and the absense of fire finder radars on the other side.
3: "Really Shiny" SP-Howitzers like the PZH-2000. The ability to shoot, hit and move out without beeing tracked by fire finder radars is certainly fun, as is the ability to take "some" hits (A PZH needs a direct hit, most other SP-Artillerys can be taken out by inderect bomblet fire).

I would propose the following:
Equip some elite brigades with "really Shiny" type howitzers. By going like that, they wont limit the speed and maneuverability of the brigade.
In addition, these brigades would also have a distinct advandadtge against comparable american forces, which could turn out beneficial.
They could be rapidly deployed and pose as the "Rapid reaction force" of China.

However, anti insurection duties and fights against significantly weaker opponents can be done as well by towed artillery, actually, the ability to be airmobile (which f.e. a PZH2000 or AS-90-Braveheart does not have) enable them to be more mobile on the strategic scale.

Therefore, I think that towed and SP-Artillery are for pretty different things, and should be employed according to the specialisation of their brigades.

A military as big as the Chinese should have enough room for that kind of specialisation.

Sorry to not reply earlier, been bit busy elsewhere...

It seems that we both represent the too major schools in artillery, towed, o SP both having served with the corresponding type of the school that we hold better.

What comes to the mobility and the the fact that Brigades speed depends on the lowest unit in fact towed guns have far greater benefit over SP guns. SP guns are often tracked system, so their speed is far slower than those moving on wheels. Basicly the SP systmes are so low that they need special trailers to move them along which is highly expensive and still much more slower than towed guns. You see towed guns are, like the name indicates, a towed systems so they need a hauler. Hauling truck can haul the towed gun actully far faster than many other mobile unist in average mechanised brigade. From personal expereince I can tell that the 14 ton 155K98 can be towed over 110 km/h althoug not recommended. In general normal roadspeeds of 80 km/h can be ahcived.

I agree with your criterias and here's few add form my own wievs...

Like I said above about the fist criteria, SP guns do however have an advantage in this field and thats the tactical mobility. As beeing tracked systems, they have better off-road abilityes and deployment is easier as they are if looked as purely mobile platforms much more simple than towed gun and hauler combination.

The criteria two is unrelevant to comparising SP and towed systems as they both can have the same tubes and use the same ammunitions. The actual weapon is the heart of all artillery systems and it's doesen't matter which platform they are fitted. The rate of fire is another matter, but the presence of APU can give the towed guns similar autoloader capabilityes as SP sytems.

The third criteria is the most important in the face of SP and Towed systme comparison. Shoot and scoop. It's true that SP systems have a great avantage in this field, or at least the had. The APU (auxiliary power unit) fitted in modern towed guns pretty much eats the advantage of SP systems to very minium.

The shoot and scoop tactic is important when facing enemy with counter battery radars. So firing and getting out of the firepositions is highly important.
So lets look this form the Towed APU fitted guns spectrum, 155K98 for example:

The APU enables the gun moving around by itself for short distances with soem 12 km/h. It also gives power to various hydraulic systmes which reduces the time needed to put the gun in action and taking it off. The deployment to the fire position is the most time consuming phase of the entire artillery operations. 155K98 as able to be deployed in about 5 mins when arriving to the fire position. The gun itself, changed from the driving mode to the shooting mode is made in 2 minutes by three to four mens. The most timedraining task is to spade the gun down to the ground (tough some singaporean towed guns have found spadeless solution to stabel the gun). But the deployment is rahter irrelevant as the counter battery fire is only isseu when you have fired your first rounds. The disaseemble of the gun is the more relevant matter.
155K98 can be disasembled and driven out from the fire position propaply faster than oldest SP guns. In few minutes. It's slower than let say PZH2000 but still quite faster than non-APU guns like D-30, which needs about 10 minutes. I don't know exactly how fast is the counter battery firing, but asemble the ammunitions and charges plus aiming the gun needs few minutes at least so the time is just enough...

Lets look at another important priority still unmentioned, the ability to give continious fire support (which is the main task of all artillery)
The lower cost of towed guns ables 6 gun batteries and 18 gun battalions. This gives the posipility to rotate the guns deployment and shooting rate more than in 4 gun SP batteries and 12 gun battalions. Lets look this more closely form one batterys eyes:

The batterys two fireplatoons are disperenced in such a wide area if enemy counter battery fires at one platoon, the other is safe from the hits. THe first paltoon comes to the position and fires a quick burst of few rounds each and then scoops out as fast as possiple. Then when the firts paltoon is on the move or already deplying to next pre-selected fire positions, the seccond platoon does the same thing and so on. In battalion level the rotation can be made that one battery fires and other is on the move. The ammount of tubes firing have considerable effects on the very effectivness of the artillery fire.

But like you said both SP and Towed systems have their palce in the battlefield and army the size of PLA sure can afford the both systems. To which unit having which type is the key issue. As the mobility is the number one priority, the selection of the proper artillery system should be made on the fact which type of brigade you have. Amourd brigades tends to have tracked vehicles as a main mobilisation solution so tracked SP systems are naturally the best choise. But these mechanized brigades that orginally were the topic of this thread are another thing. In chinese case they are mostly fitted with the wheeled WZ551 ACPs which are naturally more faster than tracked IFVs and ACPs. So in light of this the towed artilery (with modern systems with APU) is more ideal choise. Sadly, china currently doesen't posses such a systems.

I have to confess that my knowledge on APUs is close to nonexistant, but I could enlighten you a bit about conuter battery fire.
In general, the enemy has to be located, the artillery has to move to aim and to fire.

Ill go in for Tube Based counter artillery first.
Moving Aiming and Firing speeds depend on the artillery system used. A PZH gets the Job done in about 1 minute.
After this minute, the ammunition has to travel to the enemy and (hopefully) hit them. This varies with the distance and (slightly) with the used projectile.

The other side is actually locating the fire.
To do this, there are 2 possible options:
A: Standart (active) Fire Finding radars.
These radars can pick up artillery shells on the fleight (with varying degrees of reliablity), transmit these to their command and than issue conuter battery fire. However, this is an active system, and therefore can be easily detected by counter radar units.
B: Seismic: Another way is to track the kinetics of the rounds when they hit earth. Using sophisticated measures, the direction and distance the artillery shell came from is extractable from the information recorded on the impact.
This system is passive (emits no signs to be traced by the enemys anti radar) but takes a bit longer (enemy position is know when the shell hits, with basic fire finders its known when the shell is fired) and is a bit less reliable (it also relies on semi exact wind/weather data for example).


The detection system for MLRS/MARS like missle artillery are practically the same, they get additional range and a very heavy effect on impact but loose the ability to deliver sustained fire.

On of my gripes with towed artillery is the difficulty in dishing out counter battery fire. It is true that the time to deploy does not count as much during a normal fire setup, but in a CB-Situation this time is critical (well, towed vs. towed artillery is a race who can assemble or disassemble his gun faster).

Of course, a Battalion or Platoon of guns may sit a firing position and wait till the other side exposes themselves, however, chances are that a fast SP-Artillery can still be to fast or to hard for them.
Although I would still rather not been hit, a PZH can theoretically stand Bomblett and not direct HE hits.
In addition, sitting with a towed gun in a firing position is not something you should do if you are up against an actual enemy army.

If going for towed artillery, one may counter this disadvantadge by utilizing rocket systems to compensate, but this would (as, ifrc rocket launchers can be quite expensive).

To sum it up: If you are up against modern (really shiny type) Howitzers, Counter Battery fire can hit in (1 minute for going in and firing, 15 secs for getting information, lets say 20 secs shell flying time) under 2 minutes.
If you are the one counter firing, you can, against towed forces, propably dominate the artillery battle and thus gain a significant advantadge.

Addendum: Regarding the rate of fire, SP-Howitzers can limit the quantiative disadvantadge by spending less time with scooping and thus more with shooting.
Bascially, you fire, get the heck away, go to another position and fire again, this is usually done in 4-5 minutes, compared to the propably quite more minutes towed guns would need.

I do not know how good towed guns are at conducting MRSI (Multiple rounds Same impact, you shoot several rounds with one gun, which, due to some fancy calculating, hit their target at the same time.) maneuvers, but I recon that this propably is a bit more difficult if the firing system is not computerrized
However, towed artillery probaply still has an advantadge in alpha strike (fire everything you got at the same time) situations.

You raised good points. In this counter battery fire issue, the biggest thing that intress me is the complete time from the first rounds fired by the enemy artillery, the time of detecting them, calculating the fire and get that information to your own units, repreard the ammunitions and fire them agaisnt the enemy.

Most important in my wievs are the time that it used in your own artillery units to aim the gun and most importantly, reprear the ammunitions and charges. I'm not sure how exactly it is done with the PZH2000 but in both D-30 and with 155K98, the basic idea was that you prepare the ammunitions and make the proper charges when you know where to shoot, in practice the Hq gives you command to prepare 10 number 2 charges for instance.

In counterbattery firing, you cannot know where the target is untill it fires it's first rounds. Then only can the calculators count the needed charges and pass that order to the firing units. Preparing the charges takes, depended on the ammount of need 1-3 minutes. The more rounds you need to fire, the more time you need to prepare more charges.

So it takes at least 5 mins (in my obinion) when the counterbattery fire can be started so that gives at least theoretical changes to APU fitted towed guns to scoop out, as they are in effect a some sort of "self-proppelled guns"...without APU, there is no change against effective counterbatteryfire.

Addendum: Regarding the rate of fire, SP-Howitzers can limit the quantiative disadvantadge by spending less time with scooping and thus more with shooting.
Bascially, you fire, get the heck away, go to another position and fire again, this is usually done in 4-5 minutes, compared to the propably quite more minutes towed guns would need

Thats true as towed artillery, regardless of the APU needs almoust ten minutes to deployment. Getting out of the fire positions can be done in mere minutes if using APU, but getting in the new fire positions needs lot more time. This disavantage can be however compensate with higher ammount of tubes in single battery or battalion.

I do not know how good towed guns are at conducting MRSI (Multiple rounds Same impact, you shoot several rounds with one gun, which, due to some fancy calculating, hit their target at the same time.) maneuvers, but I recon that this propably is a bit more difficult if the firing system is not computerrized
However, towed artillery probaply still has an advantadge in alpha strike (fire everything you got at the same time) situations.

The D-30 used tradditional optical aiming devices, but 155K98 uses Talin-2000computerized navigation, positioning and aiming system. We never practiced that MRSI type of shooting so I cannot say wheter 155K98 can do it.

Some points about the PZH-2000. Please bear in mind, that this propably represents german only technology.

Charges: Although the older British and American Charge Systemns (We called the Beutel or Stabladungen, the stuff everyone else is using) are still in use, the actual system is the "Modulares Treibladungsystem". It consist of up to 8 identical charges, which you can attach on each other like in a Lego Set.

A PZH has some 200 in it, which are just taken out and stitched together.
This drastically reduces the preperation time.

You can just plonk them together, and it can also be done while driving (if its not to shaky). The PZH targetting computer can be directly fed with the targets data and also starts calculating while driving to the firing position.
Once there, the Gunner hits the "Auto-Aim" button and the turret automatically (and pretty quickly) moves where it is supposed to be. The Shell (PZH loads some 70 rounds iirc, and the computer knows which round is where) is automatically loaded, the loader inserts the charge (loading is a matter of 4 seconds per shot) and you are ready to fire.

Under exercize conditions, we needed one minute to fire off, you can add the time intervall for the flying rounds and the time intervall from transmitting the information, but its still fast enough to get someone who needs more than 2 mins to move out.

You can also load the shell (which will propably be Bomblett or HE) before any fire oder gets in and drive around with it in the barrel, gets you another 2-3 seconds.

Its not like with the M109 where you had to manually get the turret into the right angle (which is quite difficult), you drive in, stop, rotate the turret and fire.
This is the actual point for the PZH, counter battery fire in less than 2 minutes, + near immunity to CB fire because of armour/scoot out speed.