A single Battery available to each Brigade.
Whether one Battery of SPHs was permanently attached to the artillery Regiment in each Plan Beersheba Brigade or was centrally held and allocated to the Brigade when deployed is irrelevant. The reality is that each Brigade would have had a single Battery of SPH attached when deployed, along with two Batteries of towed guns under the original plan to buy 35 M777s and 18 SPHs.
In a non Plan Beersheba Army, presumably 1 Brigade would have had three Batteries of SPHs and the other two Brigades would have had the towed guns.
But in the future world of uniform Brigades each Brigade would have had only a single Battery of SPHs.
No, the fire support assets would be allocated to the deployed taskforce as deemed fit to meet the operational need. As we always do. The difference of course being, that IF we don't operate the capability to address these requirements, then obviously it can't be deployed...
I agree for the purposes of this dicussion it is semantics whether a capability is held within a Regiment or disbursed as our M1A1's are going to be under Beersheba, but the capability is the important factor, not the 'admin' arrangements.
Army wants effects.
If the ability to hit targets at 70 km is now an Army requirement then an investment in the Standard Guided Projectile is likely to provide that capability for less than the likely $1 billion plus cost of a HIMARs buy.
Bingo, and what if Army's requirement is to hit targets at 300k's using it's own fire support assets? That was important earlier because we have the ominpresent Super Hornet / JSOW capability to fulfill that mission apparently, but now only the 70k range figure matters?
But what your extended range munition won't do (assuming of course it is actually developed, unlike ERGM for instance which died a spectacular death, after promising too much and delivering far too little) is give us any greater firepower capability than we already have, it will just guve us more range. It is a single tube launched round. It quite likely has multiple simultaneous impacting round capability, but so does rocket artillery.
Greater firepower, longer range and a greater variety of effects on target within a single fire mission, is exactly why fellow M777A2 users employ the HIMARS / MLRS system alongside traditional artillery.
Your billion dollar figure is a curious one though. Singapore bought 18 launch / mobility systems, support, training and warstock for $300m. One can only imagine the enormous warstock that would have to be acquired to meet the $1b figure...
No
I think if you re-read the thread it was actually you who raised the idea of JDAM kill boxes and eliminating all artillery and then threw in the Carlo reference in an attempt to discredit by association.
I raised the question of whether a small HIMARS capability was worth the effort and pointed out that it is possible to achieve all of the same effects WITH long range 155mm ammunition and Super Hornet ordnance.
No it isn't possible to achieve ALL of the same effects. What your alternative solutions may provide is some of the effects, some of the time, if conditions work out as envisaged. I mentioned Carlo, because arguing against Army capability on the basis it can under some circumstances (the remainder of course being conveniently ignored) be replicated by extent systems, is EXACTLY the type of argument he made with his F-111 / kill box nonsense.
Super Hornets are severely range restricted carrying 4 air launched weapons of the size of JSOW, because they require ordnance stations the Super Hornets would normally use for extra fuel. So we need more Super Hornets to get the extended range strike and similar numbers of rounds on target per sortie or more refuelling assets, both of which similarly up the cost of having more strike capability just as HIMARS does, but lets just imagine such inconvenient facts aren't true for the purpose of erudite discussion shall we?
Our fighter jets are primarily intended to provide air defence, strategic strike, maritime strike and then battlefield interdiction / CAS. Directly supporting Army is a LONG way down the list of priorities for our small (relatively speaking) fighter force, but hey lets just imagine they are available ALL the time, under any geographical or geopolitical circumstance, for everything we might ever want to use them for...
But I guess that line of thinking taken to it's natural conclusion has the potential to save a ton of cash, because we could argue we don't really need subs then either. We can just have Super Hornets with JSOW-C1's killing all our enemy ships and the ISR stuff can just be done by the Growlers...
There's about $30b in savings there, no need for Son of Collins...
No, just Growlers, the HARM/ AARGM training system and RAAF crews currently being trained on HARM tactics, techniques and employment in the US.
But I get your point, none of this in any way indicates that the Government has any intention of acquiring a HARM/AARGM capability.
No stated or written intention, no. What it has, is an intention to acquire an EW capability and a latent SEAD capability should we ever need to acquire one. Which is WHY no 'warshots' are apparently being bought.
But one wonders why you'd bother looking at HARM / AARGM? I mean afterall, weren't you just telling us air defence systems are helpless in the face of the standoff capability of JSOW and using that as a justification as to why you wouldn't bother acquiring another capability to do a (perhaps) similar role?
Out if interest, are you at all bothered by the fact that ADF's kinetic air defence capability for medium or longer ranges, resides soley in Navy's missiles or RAAF's fighters, when virtually every other 'medium' or 'greater' power employs medium or long ranged ground-based air defence systems, as well as Navy SAM's and fighter aircraft?
It seems to me a very similar argument to the one we're having here...
Curious.
