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| Science & Technology | |
| America Revives the Assault Gun | |
| 2006-09-06 | |
| September 1, 2006: The U.S. Army has received the first of its MGS (Mobile Gun System) vehicles. This is a Stryker wheeled armored vehicle with a special turret that mounts a 105mm gun. There are two machine-guns (7.62mm and 12.7mm). The 12.7mm machine-gun is controlled from inside the vehicle. The 105mm gun is a modified version of the one used on the M-60 series of tanks. This gun has an autoloader, and carries 18 rounds of ammo. There are four types of ammo available; Sabot (armor piercing, using a depleted uranium penetrator that can take out most tanks) HEAT (anti-tank, using a shaped charge, like ATGMs and RPGs), HEP (a high explosive round that either blows a hole through thick walls, or causes concrete or metal to come—at high speed-- off the inside of the wall) and canister (like a shotgun shell). The most useful round in Iraq would be HEP and SABOT, for blasting buildings or bunkers the enemy is in. The vehicle carries 400 rounds for the 12.7mm machine-gun and 3,500 for the 7.62mm machine-gun. The 21 ton MGS is otherwise similar to other Stryker vehicles. There will be three MGS assigned to each infantry company. In effect, the MGS is a return of the assault gun, a turretless tank developed during World War II for infantry support. After World War II, the assault gun was dropped by most armies, to be replaced by tanks or self-propelled artillery. But that has not worked out as well as the assault gun, because during World War II, the assault gun was considered an infantry weapon, and "belonged" to the infantry. The MGS "belongs" to the infantry company it is a part of, will train regularly with the infantry, and thus be a lot more useful to the infantry. The MGS had a lot of development problems, and is over a year late. The 105mm gun makes a whole lot of noise (bad for any nearby infantry), and initially caused lots of vibration problems inside the MGS when the gun was fired. The MGS contains a lot of electronics, and a very capable fire control system. MGS gunners regularly put 105mm shells through window size targets at 1,000 meters or more.
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| Posted by:Steve |
| #11 Shield. When I was a grunt, the company antitank weapon was the 106mm recoilless rifle. It was mounted on a M113 for the mech guys, a jeep for the legs(they lost a lot of vehicles by cornering at over about 2mph on the way to the range), and on the mechanical mule for the airborne. The mechanical mule was a large motorized coffee table. I got temporarily--about eighteen hours--and informally drafted into the 82d in 1970 for the Jordan alert. We didn't go. I heard the Syrians had sent 500 tanks and a reasonable number of SPs and mech infantry. I think we would have had about twelve 106s. I don't think we'd have had 500 rounds. Yeah, the Stryker is a good idea if they keep it some hundreds of yards back. If any clown with a RPG can whack it, it needs to be back someplace. The Sovs had a 14.5mm MG for armor, and as far back as WW II, they had a heavy rifle on a bipod chambered for that round for infantry antitank work. Churchill once supposed a lightly armored TD could prevail by "speed and cunning manuvers". I think it did, by having lots of replacements, too. I'm just thinking about the possibility of making this a fat target. The best antitank weapon is a good tank. The Stryker is using a high velocity gun, not the best for bringing HE on troops in the open. Sometimes the round won't even explode, hitting the ground at too shallow an angle. I hope they tried the 105 howitzer when they were putting this idea together, and the 152, and the previously mentioned engineer gun. Apparently the main weapon against infantry in the open is the 7.62, same as the M1, and if they have it connected to that good fire control, it would be terrific. Maybe that's the plan. Look up NLOS. They don't have much armor, since the active defenses are going to shoot down even sabot rounds incoming. Maybe the next generation assault gun will have the same thing. Beginning to sound like Hammer's Slammers. |
| Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2006-09-06 22:04 |
| #10 A lot of Rangers died in Somalia because the US lacked an intrinsic infantry support weapon such as this. While it is true that the MGS is not designed to go head to head with a M-1 Abrams, as an ex-infantry anti-tank missle gunner, I can tell you that I would have felt a hell of a lot safer with the Stryker armour around me, than the open-backed jeep I got to use for a missile platform. Also, this is absolutely perfect for COIN in MOUT operations : light, fast, relatively quiet, survivable, and makes a big mess on the other end. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2006-09-06 20:17 |
| #9 JKM. You obviously have productive things to do with your time. If you spent more of it looking at WW II pix, you'd see the Germans had field pieces mounted on tracked chassis early on the Eastern Front. Field artillery used to be considered direct-fire, while heavy artillery and howitzers were indirect fire weapons. Today, all field artillery is indirect fire. One reason is the Brits' experience in WW I. Their 25 pounder was to be employed in direct fire at infantry using shrapnel from forward, exposed positions. The German howitzers, hiding behind terrain features, wiped them out. The first assault guns were field guns mounted on some kind of chassis. The US had a 90mm TD named the Scorpion which looks as if they'd taken a 90mm towed and welded it on a tractor chassis. As time went on, the assault guns got armored all over, as you point out. They differed from self-propelled artillery, but all were used when tanks were scarce. My father was an Infantry platoon leader in the ETO and says he saw all types up close and personal. His platoon took severe casualties when an SP fired at a range of about zero, putting the muzzle directly into the window of a building where the guys were sheltering. The point is the Germans used anything that rolled as tanks when they needed tanks and didn't have them. The temptation will be strong to do the same with the Stryker, and if it happens, a lot of people are going to be sorry. |
| Posted by: Unomorong Pheamble6341 2006-09-06 11:13 |
| #8 This had a number of problems, one being the assault guns didn't have turrets and so their field of fire was limited unless they moved the entire vehicle and the other was that they were lightly armored and sometimes open topped. What you are describing is self propelled artillery not assault guns. Self propelled artillery stays way behind the front lines and uses indirect fire. Assault guns accompany the tanks and infantry, have closed tops and use direct fire. The weight and cost saved by the lack of turret allowed to have more powerful guns and thicker armor than on tanks based on the same chassis (see Panther vs Jagdpanther or Tiger vs Jagdtiger, ditto for the Soviet AGs) but they have a slower reaction time, fare poorly in rough terrain (teh need of shifting the entire vehicle really sucks there) and are more vulnerable to assaults by enemy infanry (cf Kursk where the nearly invulnerable Elepehants where easily dispatched by a few soviet soldiers armed with flmethrowers) |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-09-06 08:34 |
| #7 You'll like this site. http://www.tankmuseum.ru/p1.html The "Object 279 (1957) Troyanov super- heavy tank with double treads." Looks AWESOME. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2006-09-06 08:27 |
| #6 An Iraqi RV? |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2006-09-06 08:17 |
| #5 The Sovs had the JSU-122 and its successors. They used them when they took Berlin, among other occasions. |
| Posted by: Fred 2006-09-06 08:07 |
| #4 This report has the slow insidious stench of ordure. Not that I know, but ask the grunts. |
| Posted by: pihkalbadger 2006-09-06 07:56 |
| #3 The Germans made a lot of assault guns for WW II. They were essentially field guns (artillery used in direct fire as opposed to indirect fire) mounted on tracked chassis. They were most useful. The problem was, when the Krauts ran out of tanks, or needed to do one of their doctrinally-required immediate counterattacks and swept whatever they could find, they ended up using assault guns in the tank role. This had a number of problems, one being the assault guns didn't have turrets and so their field of fire was limited unless they moved the entire vehicle and the other was that they were lightly armored and sometimes open topped. The Stryker's downsides would be less of a problem as long as they were used as assault guns and not in place of absent tanks. The RPG is, as the article says, everywhere and in large quantities. But if you can keep the RPG guys more than a couple of hundred yards from the Stryker--which is to say keep the thing in its intended support role--it should be okay. The old Sheridan had a gun/launcher which fired a great big ol' whump-gun shell of 152 mm. If you made that a shaped charge, it might take out practically every tank around, and its HE use would be substantially increased. I don't know why they didn't ask me. |
| Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2006-09-06 07:52 |
| #2 One addition I would make: add an under-barrel for a low-explosive round. With very limited range, an LER does not blow a hole through a wall, it pushes the wall over--sometimes very useful to infantry. Being used to seeing the effect of HE, LE is something else to see. There is a real difference in the battlefield if you want to blow a building up, or bowl it over. Ironically, it is so exclusively used by Engineers, that most other combat people have never seen it used--but when you want that effect, only LE will do. But in past, it was so valuable that the Engineers had unique armored vehicles to use it. Very recognizeable because of their oddly short barrels. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-09-06 00:55 |
| #1 Sturmgeshutz redux? |
| Posted by: borgboy 2006-09-06 00:41 |