Chinese Supergun?

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Deleted member 13312

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Yes, but with a large ramjet cannon, you'd be looking at something like Atomic Annie, which was pretty darn mobile.

A vertical gun could be fired at a decent rate ( come to think of it, if a 127mm vertical gun with unpowered shells could achieve a range of 180 km, a 203mm ramjet shell could probably do 400-600 km).
The Atomic Annie weights in at 83 tons, that is just the gun and carriage alone. How on earth is that considered mobile ? That is more than what a C-17 can carry. In contrast, a modern 155mm gun weights just shy of 6 tons in most cases, while a complete SPG with full ammo and fuel weights around 30-40 tons and can be transported by air,sea or rail and on its own powerplant.
How fast a artillery can be fired depends on the weight of the shell in conjunction with what kind of loading system it has. A modern 155mm with automatic loading can fire on average 10 rounds a minute sustained. The only modern heavy artillery in service which is the 2S4 M-1975 Tyulpan (240mm caliber) fires just shy of 1 round a minute and that is with automatic loading already. So we cannot expect a similar size cannon to fire any more faster than that.

And again, range is dependant mostly on propellant, not size of the shell. A 127mm with similar ramjet and propellant charge can fire just as far as a 203mm shell.
 

Skywatcher

Captain
The Atomic Annie weights in at 83 tons, that is just the gun and carriage alone. How on earth is that considered mobile ? That is more than what a C-17 can carry. In contrast, a modern 155mm gun weights just shy of 6 tons in most cases, while a complete SPG with full ammo and fuel weights around 30-40 tons and can be transported by air,sea or rail and on its own powerplant.
How fast a artillery can be fired depends on the weight of the shell in conjunction with what kind of loading system it has. A modern 155mm with automatic loading can fire on average 10 rounds a minute sustained. The only modern heavy artillery in service which is the 2S4 M-1975 Tyulpan (240mm caliber) fires just shy of 1 round a minute and that is with automatic loading already. So we cannot expect a similar size cannon to fire any more faster than that.

And again, range is dependant mostly on propellant, not size of the shell. A 127mm with similar ramjet and propellant charge can fire just as far as a 203mm shell.
Atomic Annie with its two tractors (one at each end) was able to achieve road speeds of 35 mph, and it was light enough to go on the streets of Washington DC for Eisenhower's inauguration parade. And that's using 1950s technology, and assuming you keep the ammunition at 280 mm, instead of going down to 203mm for a vertical gun set up (which would likely simplify weight as well).

And why does a large ramjet cannon need to be air mobile? The PLA would probably be happy with it staying in Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong province. A 203mm-240mm vertical gun could probably be easily had for 40-50 tons, especially if you have the ammunition and autoloader kept in a separate vehicle, which would feed the vertical gun when parked behind or alongside it.

The Tulypan's autoloader is constricted by the size of the Tulypan itself.

In any case, a 1-3 rate of fire per minute for a vertical gun is perfectly acceptable, since there are likely to be multiple vertical guns (and the point of cannon artillery is to keep sustained fire).

Now a vertically launched, ramjet powered 127mm shell will definitely go further than a 203mm shell, but a 203mm ramjet, vertically fired shell will go further than its 203mm, and by a pretty big margin (probably twice as much).
 
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Deleted member 13312

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Atomic Annie with its two tractors (one at each end) was able to achieve road speeds of 35 mph, and it was light enough to go on the streets of Washington DC for Eisenhower's inauguration parade. And that's using 1950s technology, and assuming you keep the ammunition at 280 mm, instead of going down to 203mm for a vertical gun set up (which would likely simplify weight as well).
You are mistaking speed for mobility, do you honestly expect 80(maybe 40-50 tons if we assume modernization helps shave off some weight) plus ton cannon alone to manage soft and uneven terrain ? Or are you honestly expecting that in the event of a war the PLAN would have the luxury of vast stretches of well paved roads that are completely untouched by enemy attacks ?
And why does a large ramjet cannon need to be air mobile? The PLA would probably be happy with it staying in Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong province. A 203mm-240mm vertical gun could probably be easily had for 40-50 tons, especially if you have the ammunition and autoloader kept in a separate vehicle, which would feed the vertical gun when parked behind or alongside it.
It may not necessarily have to be air mobile, but it will sure as hell need to be mobile enough to pack and unpack within mere minutes to escape enemy counterfire or air strikes. That is the main draw back for huge guns, they are often too big and too unwieldy to be of much use in modern combat.
Seperate vehicles for ammunition and autoloading increases the logistical chain and the footprint of the unit using them which in turn demands more infrastructure support.
The Tulypan's autoloader is constricted by the size of the Tulypan itself.
And you expect your 203mm cannon to be different in that regard ? Autoloaders are almost always built into the gun itself for streamlined process, if you build a autoloader that is seperate of the main gun it will need to be placed at just the right spot beside the cannon for it to work and that itself is a significant labour of precision.
In any case, a 1-3 rate of fire per minute for a vertical gun is perfectly acceptable, since there are likely to be multiple vertical guns (and the point of cannon artillery is to keep sustained fire).
A slow rate of fire means that you will not be able to get enough shells on target to significantly damage it before the target moves out of the area if it is mobile, and trying to put more will increasingly exposes the gun to counterfire. The PLA can do better in that regard by having long range MLRS like a boosted AR-3 that can fire 8 rockets within mere seconds up to a range of 500km or more. While the 155mm guns blitz pass the 203mms with their 10rpm sustained
And if the 203 cannon can have multiple guns firing, then the AR-3 can have multiple MLRS working in conjunction, which still puts the RPM in favour of the AR-3.
Now a vertically launched, ramjet powered 127mm shell will definitely go further than a 203mm shell, but a 203mm ramjet, vertically fired shell will go further than its 203mm, and by a pretty big margin (probably twice as much).
You don't get it yet, it is never the diameter of the shell that determines the range. It is the propellant, get it ? It is the amount of powder charge and ramjet fuel that the shell have that will determine it's range. If you give a 203mm and 155m shell the same amount of propellent AND ramjet both of them will go the same distance.(In fact the 155mm might go even future because the propellent and ramjet would have to push a much lighter weight) But it will be easier to make and handle smaller 155mm shells with more propellent and ramjet fuel that 203mm shells of the same make. Get it now ?
 
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Deleted member 13312

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And then there is the cost to be factored in as well. If we take the M777 lightweight howitzer that significantly lightens the weight of a traditional 155mm cannon while retaining slightly weaken capability. We can see that the cost per gun totals up to at least 6 million dollars (India proposed to buy 145 guns for 885 million). 6 million dollar could have netted India the K9 SPG with money to spare (K9 costs 3.9 million market price).
So why should the PLA consider the prospects of a 203mm ramjet artillery when it can get a souped up MLRS like the HIMARS/AR 3 that will be much cheaper and have an edge over the 203mm in terms of rate of fire and mobility?
Technologically speaking, there is no benefit for artillery shells to go above 155mm.
 

Skywatcher

Captain
You are mistaking speed for mobility, do you honestly expect 80(maybe 40-50 tons if we assume modernization helps shave off some weight) plus ton cannon alone to manage soft and uneven terrain ?
Why would you need to take it off road? Another thing about vertical cannons is that they're actually somewhat more lightweight than conventional cannons, due to having less moving parts in general. The SRBMs and LRSAMs of the world seem to do fine being road vehicles.

Or are you honestly expecting that in the event of a war the PLAN would have the luxury of vast stretches of well paved roads that are completely untouched by enemy attacks?
The Rocket Force certainly thinks they do, especially in the mountainous terrain of Fujian, Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces.

It may not necessarily have to be air mobile, but it will sure as hell need to be mobile enough to pack and unpack within mere minutes to escape enemy counterfire or air strikes. That is the main draw back for huge guns, they are often too big and too unwieldy to be of much use in modern combat.
Seperate vehicles for ammunition and autoloading increases the logistical chain and the footprint of the unit using them which in turn demands more infrastructure support.

And you expect your 203mm cannon to be different in that regard ? Autoloaders are almost always built into the gun itself for streamlined process, if you build a autoloader that is seperate of the main gun it will need to be placed at just the right spot beside the cannon for it to work and that itself is a significant labour of precision.
Not much more work than what you'd have to put into a DF-16 launch units (a ramjet vertical cannon would likely have the same range), which has its own decently sized logistics tail, and seems to be reasonably mobile (these are corps level assets, at the very least, they don't need to be more mobile than a HQ-9 battery).

A slow rate of fire means that you will not be able to get enough shells on target to significantly damage it before the target moves out of the area if it is mobile, and trying to put more will increasingly exposes the gun to counterfire. The PLA can do better in that regard by having long range MLRS like a boosted AR-3 that can fire 8 rockets within mere seconds up to a range of 500km or more. While the 155mm guns blitz pass the 203mms with their 10rpm sustained
And if the 203 cannon can have multiple guns firing, then the AR-3 can have multiple MLRS working in conjunction, which still puts the RPM in favour of the AR-3.
By that logic, the PLA should have phased out all its 122mm howitzers in favor of more 122mm MRLS. Rocket and tube artillery are complementary (rockets can provide shock through a burst of fire, tube provides for sustained rates of fire. Vertical guns would be used to provide continual harrassment of transportation nodes (i.e. airports and ports, to prevent traffic (especially civilian) and disrupt attempts to repair them), as well as other fixed sites. Rocket artillery would be used to run the day of concentrations of enemy forces, like armor battalions and air/missile defense sites.

Come to think of it some more, a vertical gun is more of a cheap way to launch large volumes of smallish ramjet/scramjet shells.

You don't get it yet, it is never the diameter of the shell that determines the range. It is the propellant, get it ? It is the amount of powder charge and ramjet fuel that the shell have that will determine it's range. If you give a 203mm and 155m shell the same amount of propellent AND ramjet both of them will go the same distance.(In fact the 155mm might go even future because the propellent and ramjet would have to push a much lighter weight) But it will be easier to make and handle smaller 155mm shells with more propellent and ramjet fuel that 203mm shells of the same make. Get it now ?
Wait a moment now, since when does a 155mm shell and 203mm shell (powered or not) share the same amount of propellant mass?

It's pretty much impossible to do so with a ramjet shell, since the 203mm shell itself could have at least double the mass of the 155mm shell. I don't think any munitions engineer (at least the sane ones) in the world assume that a larger diameter shell for the same cannon type would not by definition have a larger powder charge, and thus more range.
 
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Deleted member 13312

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Why would you need to take it off road? Another thing about vertical cannons is that they're actually somewhat more lightweight than conventional cannons, due to having less moving parts in general. The SRBMs and LRSAMs of the world seem to do fine being road vehicles.
Because having a big bloody cannon sitting on the tarmac is just waving a great big neon sign to the enemy airforce saying "shoot me please"? Or that blowing up a road means stranding the cannon in the middle of nowhere ? And what kind of vertical cannons are you talking about ? If you are talking about mortars then these weapons will have even lesser range then conventional howitzers due to their build and make, which negates the range advantage touted. And if you have been looking at pictures of any worthwhile military force, you can see that their SRBMs and LRSAMs have all practiced drills on rocky, soft and other variety of terrains. Not just hard tarmac.

The Rocket Force certainly thinks they do, especially in the mountainous terrain of Fujian, Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces.
2 problems with this assertion of yours
1) The Rocket Force still practices off road drills so that disproves your assertion that they have such expectations
2) Certain kinds of rockets they operate are strategic assets with intercontinental range, so they can be deployed deep inland with infrastructure, now before you jump on this fact let us consider that even the biggest kind of their ICBMS are still capable of offroad terrain as they need to escape an enemy decapitation of counter strike, something that your cannon cannot even hope to achieve if it wants to reach even half their range. And secondly these missiles are strategic assets meaning that they will only be deployed in the most extreme of situations. Tactical missiles like the DF-16 are deployed much closer to the frontlines with much less expectations of sound infrastructure.
It can if the designers wants it to be so. There are multiple 20mm caliber shells out there, but not all of them have the same length in cartridge to store propellant, as a result some of them have longer rangers than even larger caliber cannons. Take the WW2 Japanese Type 99 and the German's MG 151, both have different sizes in catridge, and both have drastically different range performances.
Same thing goes with larger caliber howitzers. A 155mm shell designed to have as much propellant as a 203mm shell will assuredly fly longer then the latter.
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Not much more work than what you'd have to put into a DF-16 launch units (a ramjet vertical cannon would likely have the same range), which has its own decently sized logistics tail, and seems to be reasonably mobile (these are corps level assets, at the very least, they don't need to be more mobile than a HQ-9 battery).
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First off, stop. Just stop. A DF-16 has a maximum stated range of 1000 km .There is no way, no way on earth that a supergun hoping to match that kind of range will come in at any level of usable mobility.
The closest example would be the ramjet shell by Nammo, stated to have a max range of 96km for a 155m caliber. To scale that up to the DF-16's range it will have to be by a crude estimate a 1550mm shell. Now trying picturing a gun big enough to fire that, not so mobile now is it ? And you are mistaken to think that a HQ-9 battery is any less mobile being a corps level asset. Most units are capable of moving out in less then 10 minutes of firing.

By that logic, the PLA should have phased out all its 122mm howitzers in favor of more 122mm MRLS. Rocket and tube artillery are complementary (rockets can provide shock through a burst of fire, tube provides for sustained rates of fire. Vertical guns would be used to provide continual harrassment of transportation nodes (i.e. airports and ports, to prevent traffic (especially civilian) and disrupt attempts to repair them), as well as other fixed sites. Rocket artillery would be used to run the day of concentrations of enemy forces, like armor battalions and air/missile defense sites.
Of course I am not suggesting that the PLA should drop all its gun based artillery. Did you ever see me making such a post here ? But the idea of a supergun is ludicrous as they come because of the simple reason of cost, mobility and logistics they would have to have to match the capabilities of ballistic missiles. Firing a ballistic missiles loaded with cluster bombs/mines once every so often at an airfield is a far more affordable method that lugging an apartment sized gun around.

Come to think of it some more, a vertical gun is more of a cheap way to launch large volumes of smallish ramjet/scramjet shells.
Yeah right, so can you try to tally a bill on how much it will take to built a gun of more than 300mm caliber in size ? As well as to calculate the cost need to effeciently transport it without breaking up tarmac roads and whatnots ? Expecting something to be cheap does not make it actually cheap.

Wait a moment now, since when does a 155mm shell and 203mm shell (powered or not) share the same amount of propellant mass?

It's pretty much impossible to do so with a ramjet shell, since the 203mm shell itself could have at least double the mass of the 155mm shell. I don't think any munitions engineer (at least the sane ones) in the world assume that a larger diameter shell for the same cannon type would not by definition have a larger powder charge, and thus more range.

It can if the designers wants it to be so. There are multiple 20mm caliber shells out there, but not all of them have the same length in cartridge to store propellant, as a result some of them have longer rangers than even larger caliber cannons. Take the WW2 Japanese Type 99 and the German's MG 151, both have different sizes in catridge, and both have drastically different range performances.
Same thing goes with larger caliber howitzers. A 155mm shell designed to have as much propellant as a 203mm shell will assuredly fly longer then the latter.
 

Skywatcher

Captain
The US Army has its own 1000mi supergun (well, more like a low cost launcher for missiles), and reasonably mobile (presumably in an European campaign).

  • One Army weapon, not yet officially named, would be a high-performance
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    , tearing through missile defenses at Mach 5-plus to kill critical hardened targets such as command bunkers.
  • The other, the Strategic Long-Range Cannon (SLRC), would use a
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    to launch cheaper, slower missiles at larger numbers of softer targets like radars, missile launchers and mobile command posts.
That’s why the Strategic Long-Range Cannon will fire larger numbers of more affordable projectiles. As the name says, it’ll launch missiles from a cannon barrel – probably a new design, not the standard 155 mm howitzer – which allows a smaller and cheaper rocket motor on the projectile itself. It’s still a supersonic, maneuverable precision weapon that has to survive an explosive launch with its electronics intact, but it’s not as hard as hypersonics.

“It’s evolutionary in some ways,” Rafferty told me. “We have rocket-assisted projectiles right now that are cannon-launched. “So it’s not that big a leap to imagine you could do that at longer ranges with a larger cannon.” How much larger? It won’t be huge like John Bull’s infamous supergun, he said, but something that can fit on a road-mobile vehicle, both to deploy and to take cover from enemy fire.

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Deleted member 13312

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The US Army has its own 1000mi supergun (well, more like a low cost launcher for missiles), and reasonably mobile (presumably in an European campaign).
"As the name says, it’ll launch missiles from a cannon barrel – probably a new design"
Just going to highlight these parts here. What the US is basically trying to do is to skirt around the restrictions set forth by the INF treaty. The Russians did that by intentionally designing a missile that has a maximum range just a little over the restricted range which means that in reality it is almost going to fall into the stated range, it is an act of exploiting a legal loophole.
What the US is attempting to do here is no different in that regard, though in this case I am taking this with a wee bit of salt because while not on the level of the Russians, the US too has it's own history of bombastic claims on futuristic weapons. Like how their supposed "cheaper" ammunition for the Zumwalt ended up being more expensive then a Tomahawk missile.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is most probably a duck despite the owner claiming it to be a goose. China having never signed the INF can just simply resort to its intermediate ranged missiles instead.
 

Inst

Captain
The SLRC is a program in development, and seems positively retrograde compared to the Chinese electro-magnetic missile launch assist system that's going to see service soon. More than anything else, it's a chemical system, when EM types are already ready for deployment.
 

Skywatcher

Captain
"As the name says, it’ll launch missiles from a cannon barrel – probably a new design"
Just going to highlight these parts here. What the US is basically trying to do is to skirt around the restrictions set forth by the INF treaty. The Russians did that by intentionally designing a missile that has a maximum range just a little over the restricted range which means that in reality it is almost going to fall into the stated range, it is an act of exploiting a legal loophole.
What the US is attempting to do here is no different in that regard, though in this case I am taking this with a wee bit of salt because while not on the level of the Russians, the US too has it's own history of bombastic claims on futuristic weapons. Like how their supposed "cheaper" ammunition for the Zumwalt ended up being more expensive then a Tomahawk missile.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is most probably a duck despite the owner claiming it to be a goose. China having never signed the INF can just simply resort to its intermediate ranged missiles instead.
Assuming that it's mobile, the SLRC will have a diameter bore of at least 300mm, and shooting out a powered 30cm diameter munition to 1000 miles is a pretty impressive feat (otherwise you'd need a far larger ballistic or supersonic cruise missile), which greatly lowers costs.

Though details are annoyingly vague about it (the Colonel quoted in the BD piece says its rocket powered but below hypersonic, which doesn't make any sense, since any non airbreathing munition going through that range is almost certainly going to be hypersonic).
 
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