Blackstone
Brigadier
The guns had limited tactical value, because they were fixed in place and easily destroyed. If Israel hadn't destroy them, then the US would have done so in the second Iraqi war.
Chinese Supergun?
- Thread starter AssassinsMace
- Start date
The guns had limited tactical value, because they were fixed in place and easily destroyed. If Israel hadn't destroy them, then the US would have done so in the second Iraqi war.
Tactical value entirely depends on how easy they are to destroy.
A Chinese supergun would just be another asset hidden beneath the PLA's burgeoning A2AD and IADS.
If the supergun is also road mobile... Well..
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
the super guns of the world wars were nowhere near as advanced as those of Mr. Bull, the world war two weapons designed as scaled up howitzers the Bull guns were designed based around space launch alternatives and offered more range and power.
the critical factor for these guns is reload. The larger the gun the larger the shell the longer the reload. A mobile version would have to IMHO have a set of either full sized tailors or additional at least two additional trucks. One with the loading equipment likely mechanized, the other with extra rounds.
Blackstone
Brigadier
Bull's space gun was not at all mobile, and a fixed piece of high-value military gear would get lots of attention from war planners.
The German Army fielded two mobile superguns (Dora and Schwrer Gustav) on double-tracked rail carriages. The guns were commanded by a Lt. General and supported by thousands of personnel. The barrels had service lives of a few dozen rounds, and the guns had travel back to Germany for barrel sleeve replacements. Dora was used in the siege of Leningrad, but played no decisive role. Most of the military historians I've read say the superguns were bad financial and tactical investments, because the resources could have been better used elsewhere. For all practical purposes, they were white elephants.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Although it's still going to be big, comparing them with WWII technology is a joke. China could make an underground system that shuffles them around from opening to opening to fire. China already has those nuke tunnels. Why not for this? If it truly has a 600km range, that just makes them even harder to locate.
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Yes but an application of similar technology can be scaled to a size where it can be mobile.
The German Army fielded two mobile superguns (Dora and Schwrer Gustav) on double-tracked rail carriages. The guns were commanded by a Lt. General and supported by thousands of personnel. The barrels had service lives of a few dozen rounds, and the guns had travel back to Germany for barrel sleeve replacements. Dora was used in the siege of Leningrad, but played no decisive role. Most of the military historians I've read say the superguns were bad financial and tactical investments, because the resources could have been better used elsewhere. For all practical purposes, they were white elephants.
The V-2 rockets were only useful as terror weapons, but the basis of their function led to the ICBM. Restrictions of contemporary technology will always limit execution of good ideas. V-2s combination of lack of sufficient guidance and small warheads made them virtually useless against military targets. The XB-49 was scrapped as a USAF bomber, but its defining feature, the flying wing, would come into its own with the B-2 and advanced fly by wire technology.
Similarly, large superguns were used in both WWI and WWII, to little effect as you said. But recent artillery innovations could definitely make them viable weapons for the modern day.
Of course, the usefulness of even a well executed technology can only be exercised if the rest of your military can defend and support it.
So I think the benefits of a PLA supergun are definitely worth considering. If hurdles can be overcome, and if it can be procured at an acceptable cost, mobile superguns could potentially be a gamechanger in a taiwan or even a wider first island chain conflict scenario.
If you want to deliver a payload across 600km it would be better to use a SRBM.
An MRLS for that range is probably not cost effective, not to mention it'll be a massive easy to intercept target, and will be difficult to reload. MRLS is designed for a surge in transient firepower, not for consistent, protracted bombardment which gun artillery can do
A supergun could potentially be much easier to reload, its shell would have a small cross section, be able to do sustained fire for longer, and probably be cheaper as well (e.g.: 1 shell versus 1 SRBM vs 1 super MRLS rocket)
The PLA are definitely looking into railguns, but that would be separate in function from a conventional propellant supergun project, if such a project exists.
You wouldn't fit a 100 ft long gun onto a ship unless you want some kind of battleship, and a land based railgun would be hindered by its requirement for large amounts of electrical energy which a mobile system can't provide, thereby making it very vulnerable.
MwRYum
Major
What strikes me as weird is that, something like that has been going on for very long time (especially considering that ABM artillery project that was more than 30 years ago) and the site is in the open, but why only now it was "discovered"? Is there any way to confirm the site is an active one, or just some defunct facility and whatever just lay in the open exposed to elements?
Think somebody need to order a high-res satellite photo to confirm the state of the site first.
Think somebody need to order a high-res satellite photo to confirm the state of the site first.
If you google pictures of the original ABM supergun, I think it's definitely a separate project from this, given their different calibres.
That said, it may well be this site was first tested a long time ago and has been left defunct. The tests could have been completed and they saw no reason to remove the equipment. Of course that leads to the question, were the tests successful and has there been funding for further development of the technology into a viable weapon?
The site was only "discovered" because it's literally a piece of dirt in the middle of nowhere.
Simply zoom out a few rolls to check out the surroundings.
Kudos to SOC who originally found it.
Who knows how many other mystery sites in China there are?
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