Revisiting artillery v. air support

Reader Steven Mitterer, a former cavalry trooper (gosh, he must be old! . . . kidding!), takes me to task for this posting:

Explain to me how exactly the Crusader would have helped in Afganistan. It's too heavy for every cargo plane in our inventory, so it would have had to have been shipped there.

First, let's remind readers that the Crusader 155-mm howitzer was only in development, not production, when Secretary Rumsefeld cancelled the program. It first fielding was scheduled for 2008. Second, Steven is correct that the Crusader system is heavy, but an Air Force C-17 would carry it. So it would not have to go by sea.

Besides, the problems you mention are command and control. It would have taken just as long to sign off on an artillery strike as for an aerial strike. If the ROE [Rules of Engagement] allowed for free fire, the response time would be the time it takes a bomb to fall from fifteen thousand feet.

Yes and no. If the troops were getting some air support in just a few minutes, that means there was no problem with clearance for those kinds of attacks. It also means that the targets were immediately dangerous to our own forces. Hence my statement that five minutes is too long and that artillery could bring steel on target in two minutes or less.

As to what to replace Crusader with, we need something that can be loaded on a C-130 and delivered anywhere in the world. Last time I looked, the RSA was producing some pretty good wheeled artillery. The Crusader is a weapon for the last war, we need weapons for the next one.

Well, we have artillery pieces that can be loaded onto C-130s. The old M-102 105 could be loaded and its replacement can be too.

The problem with lightweight artillery cannons is that they still need to be moved around, and more rapidly in modern warfare than we have done in the past. The automotive section of a artillery piece is called the prime mover. A jeep or a Humvee can tow wheeled 105 guns, but so what? You still need to carry ammunition, and ammo is heavy. 105 projectiles weigh 35 pounds each, not including propellant. And the rounds and the propellant are both bulky. So the prime mover in my 105 unit was a truck.

Larger calibers compound the problem - 155mm rounds weigh 95 pounds each; the propellant cans are larger than the rounds and weigh about 30 pounds, I think.

That means that ammo transport is the tougher nut to crack than the artillery piece itself. No matter how light the cannon is, the prime mover/ammo carrier must be hardy enough to carry a goodly amount of ammo.

In the 101st Airborne Div., the cannons and ammo are carried by helicopters. I wonder why they weren't used in Afghanistan.

Closing thoughts: it is probably true the clearance to fire for some targets was slow. And the Crusader is or was heavy, heavy, heavy. I posted other Crusader thoughts here and here.

Steve, thanks for reading and writing!