Tube Missile Artillery: How do they find their targets?

DF-31 Driver

Just Hatched
Registered Member
I was looking at some of the tube artillery and was wondering how the aiming systems worked. Do they fire blindly or are the missiltes themselves guided by some sort of laser system, are they heat seeking or are they manually guided? The specific type that I am interested in is the A-100 long range.

Note:Since this is my first topic, if this is a repeat, please close this and direct me to a better thread.
 

rommel

Bow Seat
VIP Professional
Well, depending of the kind of rocket, but most of the artillery rocket use a inertial guidance system. A inertial guidance system is a inertial measurment unit combined with the control of the rocket, will guide the rocket onto position.

How it work, it's the inertial measurement unit (IMU) is composed of accelerometers, altimeters, motion meters and other sensors. In fact, the IMU is a calculator that calculate the position of the rocket by determining the variation from the initial position. But this kind of guidance is prone to error, because all the instruments are never exact and also the fact that the rocket is moving cause error also. But a IMU is far less costy than a GPS Guidance System. So that's why we use this kind of system for artillery rocket, it's mainly lost cost because rocket artillery are design to hit a zone, not a accurate target.

If you have more question, just ask.
 

DF-31 Driver

Just Hatched
Registered Member
So it is basically a computer in the missile, or is it guided from the truck?

Anyways, thanks for the info. Considering that they are not very accurate, are they really that effective in a war? I mean if they are just aiming for a general reigion, wouldn't they be more like ly to kill civilians than actual important targets??

Thanks for all of the info.
 

rommel

Bow Seat
VIP Professional
Yes, it's basically a computer/supercalculator in the rocket...

Well, for the cost, their are really effective, and also, their are used to hit a concentration of troops mainly, or a big wide position. There's also a moral effect since you never fire those rocket alone, you will always fire a volley with at least an entire battery. So imagine, a few dozen or hundred rocket hit your position, and rocket sometime have more payload than an artillery shell, so it's devasting... To give you some fact, the CPE (circular propable error) of an artillery rocket is around 5m-40m depending on the model, it's not accurate. Well, it's sad to say, but weapon and military equipement was not designed to be convenient with the civilian, they are conceived to kill and be the most efficient possible... yes, if there's a civilian in the sector, he could be hit too...To give you some idea, a 40-tube 122mm rockets BM-21 (Russian) truck can easily bombard the equivalent of area of 2 soccer field with 1 volley of 40 rockets... And normally, a russian rocket battalion is made of 18 truck, that mean each volley will be of 720 rocket... Normally, NATO's combat doctrine don't use those rockets in urban warfare and in any situation were you need poinpoint support, because it destroy the entire area... It's very effective...
 

duskylim

Junior Member
VIP Professional
Dear Sirs:

In college I volunteered (yes! how stupid can you get?) for field artillery. Here's what I remember.

Artillery, whether conventional tube or rocket, is an area-denial weapon. Although pin point accuracy is desireable it is not always neccesary to do the job properly. Accuracy is expressed in terms of circular-mils as a fraction of the weapons' range. Essentially two figures are given: one expresses the weapons dispersion in range (in the direction of the shot) and the other laterally (from side to side). Generally the lateral dispersion is smaller by a factor of two or more. As you can see, the closer the target, the smaller the dispersion and the better the accuracy. As you shoot farther, accuracy diminishes and shot dispersion increases.

Guns or launchers are grouped together in units called batterys, comprising from four to eight guns. Targets are assigned to each battery and each is attacked as a "fire mission" wherein a certain number of rounds are fired to assure destruction of the target. Most large ballistic rockets are both fin and spin stabilized. They are fired succesively one after the other in "ripples" so as not to affect each others tragectory. As an example the BM-21 takes 15 to 20 seconds to fire all forty rockets.

Most tube artillery is aimed via a goniometer (or panoramic telescope, the "pan-tel"), that is if the gun is not automatically laid on the target. To use it a line on a map is drawn through the weapon's location pointing to true north, and another through an aiming point and target. Subtract the 1st angle from the second, then dial in the number of degrees, minutes (and seconds!) on the goniometer. Traverse the weapon until the aiming point appears in the goniometer and the weapon is laid in azimuth. To lay the weapon in elevation consult the firing tables, select the ammunition to be fired, the number of charges to be used, the wear on the gun barrel, factor in some meteorological data and read setting off the table, dial it in, and then elevate the gun until the spirit bubble is centered.

Hope this helps,

Best Regards,

Dusky Lim
 

Nethappy

NO WAR PLS
VIP Professional
In college I volunteered (yes! how stupid can you get?) for field artillery. Here's what I remember.

Stupid??? I voluntereed for service since high school, if u think your stupid. What am I?

You Artillery men rock, us infantry love you guy. Same go for you Golly. Our life would be a laughting stock without you guy. When we run in to trouble what do we do? Get on the radio, find some cover then watch the show. :roll:
 

Gollevainen

Colonel
VIP Professional
Registered Member
In college I volunteered (yes! how stupid can you get?) for field artillery. Here's what I remember.

well i did exactly the same mistake in my drafting session...but anywya, welcome to the club, You are only seccond ever artilleryman (after me ) in this forum. Did you serve in the actual gungroup and get to fire them, or just in some HQ branch?

And thanks for the input, it was propaply better that i could have given, as Im not so familar whit the english terms of artillery gizmoes.

expesially about the aiming of the gun...thougth it reaised some questions...Does the goniometer mean collimeter? At least that what we called the device that was set about 3 meters away from the gun and in the aiming we looked trough the aiming telescope to get the numbers and cyrilic letters machs...

Also, i understand from your post that you simply took the location data of the battery ou of map, then positioned the gun barrels into the north, then calculate the degree difference and then fire the guns into that direction???

Sounds rather innaccurate to me, if you compare how we did it with the old soviet guns. We had these dedicated survey teams that meassured known ordinates from known spot and transferred them via simple queue
survey method to the battery's so called 'basic point' of where the data was given to the each guns wiht simple theodolite. But when we played around the new finnish made guns, we simple inputted the known ordinates to the guns firecomputer in the homebase...then drove a 900kms to the north and the gun knew exactly where it were. When we came to the fireposition we just pressed one buttom and the gun sended it's exact location to the HQ battery via radio. The Hq sends the firingdata via the same channel and you just aim the gun looking to the screen and when it says good in horizontal and vertical...So when the data arrives, a good aimer (like Me) can aim the gun in mere secconds...
 

isthvan

Tailgunner
VIP Professional
Nethappy said:
Stupid??? I voluntereed for service since high school, if u think your stupid. What am I?

You Artillery men rock, us infantry love you guy. Same go for you Golly. Our life would be a laughting stock without you guy. When we run in to trouble what do we do? Get on the radio, find some cover then watch the show. :roll:

Agreed, we may be complaining all the time about you worthless artillery f…., sitting on your asses and sleeping while real man are doing dirty jobs but when we are in deep shit we call you boys to save our ass:)
And if we have luck and God decides to help us you even manage to hit what we tell you and not our sorry asses;)
 

Nethappy

NO WAR PLS
VIP Professional
Agreed, we may be complaining all the time about you worthless artillery f…., sitting on your asses and sleeping while real man are doing dirty jobs but when we are in deep shit we call you boys to save our ass …
And if we have luck and God decides to help us you even manage to hit what we tell you and not our sorry asses

Haha, I remember our Captain once said during traning "If it the early in the morining and your in trouble dun bother calling for the artillery cos these lasy ass are still possibly having thier hang over, use your LAW as an artillery."
 

Gollevainen

Colonel
VIP Professional
Registered Member
yeah...in here the artillery is basicly a midd section between 'security classes' in school and prison...and way too often I hear the expression dum, dummer, gunner...
But people in military forums tend to forget that not all military is beeing fighter pilot or some SAS member. Artillery still is the main factor of any conventional land war, in terms of destroying the enemy. Infantry just advances and controll the area after artillery (and in some occasion, air support) have crushed the enemies moral backbone.
 
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