Australian Army Discussions and Updates

[Wombat000]

Interesting article would suggest that the A.D.F should consider for its own fleet of various armoured vehicles

Army Wants Cope Cage-Like Armor To Protect From Drone Attacks On Its Tanks

With the threat of drones rapidly changing the realities of warfare, the Army finally requests overhead armor on 1,500 tracked vehicles.

www.twz.com

I would like to suggest that the era of FFBNW is in a practical sense, over.
The new fleet of Armour and high value logistics/engineering assets should be supplied as equipped with passive and active defensive suites.
With regards to vehicles, I think it’s practical to at minimum have them in the Q-store for ready issue and fitting.

With regards to CWIS on vessels, we need to face up and just fit them.
Any presumption that we could rapidly acquire more to furnish the balance of the fleet is likely fantasy, and the operational burden of returning fleet units for fitting of these in times of acute strategic pressure is likely operationally unrealistic.

 

[seaspear]

Can defence installs like Trophy and Iron fist be overwhelmed by continual uav hits in short order before they can reload ?

 

[ADMk2]

So might this mean that 155mm production remains with RM Nioa in Benalla Mulwala but with small scale production. Seems short sighted once again…15000 rounds a year…what capability t increase capacity? I thought we ere heading to over 100 000 rounds a year.

15k is the initial production capacity with an intention to increase this to 100k per year “if required”.

I would probably be keen to see how difficult and how quickly it is possible to ramp up production, before forming an opinion. Let’s face it. Today we have an artillery force of 48x guns, which is growing to a force of 78x 155mm guns over the next 3 years (assuming M777A2 guns aren’t retired when AS-9 is delivered). Until combat actually starts, how many rounds do we realistically need?

Not sure of our annual consumption of live rounds, but if it is more than 100 - 200 rounds per gun I’d be surprised. Even for a 78x strong gun force that 15k per annum production run easily meets that requirement.

 

[ADMk2]

Can defence installs like Trophy and Iron fist be overwhelmed by continual uav hits in short order before they can reload ?

Probably, systems such as Iron Fist Decoupled (that Australia is looking at employing on it’s AFV’s) are typically mounted with only 4x kinetic interceptors (plus an optional laser system) and occasionally defensive RCWS but you are talking about a complex situation where a lot has gone wrong where singular armoured vehicles are being swarmed and are being judged on how many simultaneously attacking threats they can engage against. In saying that, that particular system is reportedly easy and quick to reload, but it requires someone to be outside the vehicle, which is unlikely to occur during these vast swarm attacks you envisage.

If you are watching closely in Ukraine (the most drone intense scenario we’ve ever seen) there are hardly any instances (I have seen) where AFV’s are being “swarmed” with drone threats. They usually have one attack run after another run to deal with, rather than simultaneous attacks. Employing fibre optic control systems likely exacerbates this issue.

It is becoming clear even to the most myopic and doctrinally influenced forces (aka ours) that defence in depth and layered drone, air and missile defences are the absolute baseline for engaging in modern combat, not an optional ‘nice to have’ and relying on a single platform’s last ditch defence system to solve the problem, is probably not what any serious observer is considering…

 

[Bob53]

15k is the initial production capacity with an intention to increase this to 100k per year “if required”.

I would probably be keen to see how difficult and how quickly it is possible to ramp up production, before forming an opinion. Let’s face it. Today we have an artillery force of 48x guns, which is growing to a force of 78x 155mm guns over the next 3 years (assuming M777A2 guns aren’t retired when AS-9 is delivered). Until combat actually starts, how many rounds do we realistically need?

Not sure of our annual consumption of live rounds, but if it is more than 100 - 200 rounds per gun I’d be surprised. Even for a 78x strong gun force that 15k per annum production run easily meets that requirement.

No issue with the annual usage but what about war stocks. But 15k a year …all that production rate would cover is training. 78 guns by 200 rounds a year. It’s not exactly high tempo training.
Any defence related moves at glacial pace. Imagine 15k capacity and we said ok we will half a million rounds in 12 months…( that’s about 500 rounds per gun per month) even 24 months? What’s the chance of that ever being delivered…and if Australia is in that deep a pretty good chance supplier countries are addressing their own needs.

 

[InterestedParty]

There is talk of having war stocks of 155mm ammunition but what is the barrel life of a 155mm gun?
Do we need to have war stocks of barrels and do we manufacture the barrels for the AS9?

 

[seaspear]

There is talk of having war stocks of 155mm ammunition but what is the barrel life of a 155mm gun?
Do we need to have war stocks of barrels and do we manufacture the barrels for the AS9?

I was under the belief the Huntsman as-9 is to be manufactured in Geelong at the Hanwha armoured vehicle plant

 

[Todjaeger]

There is talk of having war stocks of 155mm ammunition but what is the barrel life of a 155mm gun?
Do we need to have war stocks of barrels and do we manufacture the barrels for the AS9?

Barrel lifespan for a 155 mm gun can vary wildly and is impacted by a number of factors. Different guns/barrels have different service life capacities for firing. This then can be impacted depending on the round fired, the amount of charge used as well as the rate or frequency of fires. No idea on what the rating is for the AS9 Huntsman, but the barrel for a M777 should be about 2,500 full charges. However the number of firings before a safety issue would arise might be higher than 2,500 if many of the fires were at shorter ranges/requiring less than a full charge because reduced charges do not typically cause as much barrel wear. Similarly if the artillery fires get spaced out so the barrel can cool, this can reduce wear vs. something like a 6-round fire mission in a minute.

BTW barrel wear is something which happens on any gun, so this sort of issue could impact the M1 Abrams, Army small arms, the smaller calibre cannons used by other Army vehicles as well as RAN warships, and of course the 5"/127 mm naval guns as well.

EDIT: Egads, listed barrel length when actually meaning barrel lifespan or barrel wear!