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I'm curious to see your opinions regarding emplaced artillery vs. self-propelled on a future battlefield. Would the emplaced artillery be viable when there are anti-gravity self-propelled artillery vehicles?

Yes, why? Because big guns will always be cool.

Mobile or dead.

Counter battery utilizing radar is just to damn accurate to be anything but mobile.

1 or 2 slavo's and you better be gone or your going to be pulverized.

Guns hidden deep inside the earth or behind force fields should still be viable. Someway to cloak or conceal an emplaced battery would be ideal.

I donno, in the future they might be switched over to cruise missiles for all artillery.

starbomber109 wrote:I donno, in the future they might be switched over to cruise missiles for all artillery.

Well yes, but as you know, many of us play a wargame where 38,000 years in the future people land on planets to swordfight.

starbomber109 wrote:I donno, in the future they might be switched over to cruise missiles for all artillery.

So, your entire IG and SM force will consist of 1 deathstrike missile and an Orbital bombardment? Save a mint on buying all that boring infantry and armour, and gaming rules should be easier: Bad guy, deploys on North edge of table. Good guys< whoosh, whoosh, whoosh,kablam! Game over.

starbomber109 wrote:I donno, in the future they might be switched over to cruise missiles for all artillery.

At least as far as we can see. Back in the mid-1800s everyone thought the future of naval warfare would be ram ships, because cannons were either inaccurate at long range or couldn't penetrate iron armor. Then they invented smokeless gunpowder.

We'll probably have something crazy instead like earthquake machines or robot swarms.

starbomber109 wrote:I donno, in the future they might be switched over to cruise missiles for all artillery.

And each cruise missile will be bristling with as many swords, flails, and axes as we can shove on it.

avantgarde wrote:

starbomber109 wrote:I donno, in the future they might be switched over to cruise missiles for all artillery.

At least as far as we can see. Back in the mid-1800s everyone thought the future of naval warfare would be ram ships, because cannons were either inaccurate at long range or couldn't penetrate iron armor. Then they invented smokeless gunpowder.

We'll probably have something crazy instead like earthquake machines or robot swarms.

Imagine you've been born on a planet somewher in the Empire in 40k. Having survived to puberty you have choices to make:

1) Stay at home, hoping you'll avoid the draft, local environmental hazards and wildlife, marauding aliens, disease etc etc

2) join the PDF, at least you get to stay on your Home planet

3) The Emperor requests your assistance in protecting the Imperium-- you're drafted, pal.
Now, you're off on your travels, probably never see home again, and like soldiers since time immemorial you'll be sent somewhere where someone or something wants to kill you.

Would you prefer to hear a cruise missile for the few seconds before it hits, or would you prefer the camaraderie (and back up) of that battery of Basilisks (3 guns, 1 command/observation trak, say 16 men with lasguns, plus the vehicles' weapons) ?

avantgarde wrote:earthquake machines.

THUMPER!

Ontopic: Well, a heavy gun emplacement will probably be bunkered up, and I think that it will be rare for an attacking army to have something like that.

But then again we might have guns that can hit you from a continent away, who knows.

More cruise missles means less me to man the guns....just saying

Thank y'all for the enlightening replies. I was curious about this because I'm deciding for my setting, Inceptum Terminus, will have emplaced and self-propelled artillery or just self-propelled artillery.

The tech level of IT is roughly the equivalent of Renegade Legion with anti-gravity tanks, gauss and laser weapons, and other hard science fiction equipment. No shields though, but they do have holographic projectors mounted on the vehicles for camouflage.

only if it could be hidden or Protected by a force field of sorts.

Eh, mass acelerators are probably the future of emplaced and mobile artillery. They are a crapload cheaper than cruise missile have the same range (in theory) and a much stronger impact than anything short of Nukes. They can also be put in the center of the US and then strike things in Africa, so I would assume that thats the way things will be going.

On a side note they also move too fast to be intercepted by conventional anti missile missiles and airplanes and probably lasers as the rounds would be rather small.

Everything I've read in regards to mass accelerators points towards them wanting the weaponry to be orbital based. Restricts time on target sure, but gives a hell of a lot more options if you've got a network of them.

Wouldn't that be a bitch on the recoil though? And the power necessary to run a mass accelerator is huge. Not to mention the vulnerability of satellites.

Yeah, but mass accelerators are direct LOS weapons that require a lengthy corridor to accelerate the projectile. It's why the experimental railguns they're talking about would basically run the entire length of the ships they'd be mounted on, and would require the ship to be aimed directly at the target.

It's why a satellite would work best for that kind of deployment.

What happens when someone launches a rocket filled with shotgun pellets at the satellite?

Thats my point, the ones Im talking about are large artillery pieces set up in the US with a retardedly long range. If you want an example you could look up some of John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata series. They aren't rail guns per se but the set up and use is the same.

I remember the Germans tried a similar concept with their V-3 cannons.

They needed a ridiculous amount of space and personal to operate the stupid things, plus the engineering problems involved with firing anything that fast that far.

It depends.

If your fighting an enemy with no means of counter battery fire then, yes.

If two large well equipped combatants go at it then at first, no.

The high tech armies would probably find themselves in a come as you are type of war. If the war dragged on, then much of the high tech gear could get use up with not much to replace it. As things degenerate into a war of attrition trenches and emplaced artillery might be found to useful again.

Basically large strategic artillery will most likely be either ship mounted or ground based but far away, as the targets they will want to hit will be either slow moving or unmoving.

Tactical artillery on the other hand will probably be missiles or rapid mobile artillery. Once you get space ships and have viable control of the gravity well artyillery is kind of obsolete, as is air power and to some extent ground power. Once a nation or power gains an unshakeable hold on the gravity well they will effectively control all military actions in the world short of submarines. (and possibly even that too)

It depends a bit on how the damage vs protection race goes. Historically this balance have been moving back and forth. For example, and very imprecise:

The metal weapon is created. It deals damage through any hardened leather armors or shields. Damage leads the race so combat is very mobile because it's more effective to get out of the way than to armor against the hit.
The metal armor is created. Race is even again. Combat become more static because huge defence is worth it.
The stone fortress is created. Defence leads. Starving not violence becomes the favorite way to win such battles where stone fortresses are involved. Combat is very static.
Gunpowder weapon is invented. Metal armor becomes less important. Stone fortress is still useful, but outside of them combat is more mobile.
Explosives and shooting weapons are improved. Fortress becomes much less important since they cannot hold up. Most combat needs to be mobile.
Nuclear weapons are refined (it hurts my mind to use such a positive term about them, but you understand what I mean). Damage leads by a huge margin. Mobility and counteroffence is everything since no protection can stand up against the damage.
This is where we are today. Looking at human history it seems likely that a defence against nuclear weapons will be developed eventually, and then things might turn back to a very static fighting again.

I'll make a sci-fi guess: The forcefield that protects against any nuclear damage and any other form of ranged explosives is developed. Unfortunately it requires loads of power and a very stable rig, so it needs to be at static positions. In this scenario huge stationary guns protected by forcefields would be very useful, and combat would be more sieges again.

Ratbarf wrote:Thats my point, the ones Im talking about are large artillery pieces set up in the US with a retardedly long range. If you want an example you could look up some of John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata series. They aren't rail guns per se but the set up and use is the same.

The value of towed, or emplaced artillery lies in its low cost and ease of deployment; both of which are negated by major increases in size. Counter battery fire is a worry, but the only future environment in which I can see anything other than a small niche for such weapons is one in which ADS systems have evolved to a point where saturation fire has become more effective than precision. However, given the high ROF available in projected self-propelled applications, such a point may be moot.

Any kind of magnetic accelerator weapon would be incredibly difficult to use in an artillery capacity, given the ranges over which trajectory and target location would have to be calculated to intersect. Of course, that doesn't mean its impossible, and the savings in terms of projectile costs, along with decreases in the susceptibility to interception, make it something well worth investigating. Still, in this instance we're talking primarily about replacing things like cruise missiles, rather than conventional artillery, due to the ranges involved. Such a weapon would also have to be mobile simply due to massive size involved. It seems like it would be much easier to turn a ship, than construct a giant turn table to provide for targeting.

in regards to John Ringo's books, the Planet Defense Centers are enourmous stationary rail guns built deep into the mounts and are pounted sky ward to stop invaders from landing. So in that sense yes stationary artillery could work. I forget which posters had it right when they said strategic artillery will still be there as well point defense artillery. I.E. small stationary flak guns that are a last ditch defense. In a fight, stationary artillery is a goner. After a few shots they are located an eliminated. Again John Ringo's books illustrate this fact well. This is especialyl true if the enemy in question has control of the air or low orbitals of the planet.

Oh and in the immortal words of green lantern: I've said it time and again, space based weapons destabilize planets.

in the arguement of sp vs towed artillery.

SP has the advantages of mobility and high technology, the disadvantage that it is a mechanized vehicle which requires a huge support base for fuel and repairs its also expensive to produce. SP has a lot of cool gizmos, lots of cool gizmos = more opportunity to break.

towed is CHEAP and simple, has the same fire power based on size of the weapon, and quite possibly more since it does not required the suspension of the vehicle to be able to take the recoil. Also towed can get to places that SP can never get to, see the opening battle of vietnam against the french base dien bein fu i think, the vietnamese hauled the guns up the side of a mountain by hand, SP could never get there. Towed can be carried by helicopters to anyplace that is big enough to put it.

also keep in mind that SP has some vulnerabilities that towed does not, like EMP. An SP hit by an EMP might be knocked out and worthless, a towed hit by emp still can fire as the electronics required in the SP might be affected, but a towed has no such electronics, and the soldiers manning the artillery are not either.

counter battery fire people say is a problem for static artillery, but if you can field 10 static for every sp, static will win the counter battery fight assuming equivilant technology/ROF. Also considering that we currently have artillery shells that are smart enough to just be fired in the general area that an armored vehicle is in and they self home to the vehicle, the mobility vs counter battery is pretty even.

people have said alot of things about military technology making something obsolete, but we still train soldiers to kill the enemy with their bare hands, because no matter how much technology you have, it will always break, and the common soldier still has his hands.

^ That is until Robots come into it, I mean, robots can still break, but then again, so do Humans.

The US army's current make over strategy says that its going to be using a lot of mobile missile battaries. Basically they have a mible launch pad with 8 missiles in side that they drop from parachute or helicopter. Observers can then mark a target and the missile goes after it. It takes the role of air strike, and basic arty barrage all in one expensive as hell go.

Static fortifications/artillery met it's end in WW2. Airpower and mobile artillery will always have the edge.

The 105's seem to be doing the job in Afganistan.

While the heavy stuff will need to be mobile as discussed, or even completely replaced with Air/Space resources I think that there will always be a niche for static light batteries, either for defence or support of slower moving formations.

Another additional question I would pose is whether the gun will be completely replaced by missile/air deployed munitions?