Whiffs found at shows

[Scotaidh]

The navy tried that with the Zumwalt class and couldn't get it to work.

It worked but the ammo is very expensive, $800,000 to a $1,000,000 per round, and it has nothing in common with any 155mm gun used by anybody.

They wanted over-the-horizon range, super accuracy, and a ten round per minute rate of fire, all of which they got but it came with a huge bill.

I'm talking about M284s with autoloading and lengthened barrels as the guns used in the turret.

Just put 3 Bandkanones in a line astern on the foredeck, and if you need more firepower then put two more side-by-each (as they say here) on the poop deck.  With the proven ability for each tube to put up to five rounds TOT*, they'd pretty much be able to obliterate any map-point ... 

Stagger the firing times and you could pretty much empty the magazines (the big, in-hull magazines of the battlewagon) without over-heating the guns ...
Put a couple of laser-designators up high, maybe radar-directed to cover local threats, and the aft guns could be using those laser-guided rounds to neutralize those ...
'Course, it'd be cheaper to start with small calbre systems, like the .50 cals or 20- to 30-mm, working up through the 40mm systems to the 76mm systems ... but if the 76's can't deal with it then I'd go right for the 155s ...

*Time-on-target - firing rounds at different elevations so all the shells arrive at the same time

[Weaver]

The navy tried that with the Zumwalt class and couldn't get it to work.

It worked but the ammo is very expensive, $800,000 to a $1,000,000 per round, and it has nothing in common with any 155mm gun used by anybody.

They wanted over-the-horizon range, super accuracy, and a ten round per minute rate of fire, all of which they got but it came with a huge bill.

I'm talking about M284s with autoloading and lengthened barrels as the guns used in the turret.

And the reason the rounds were so expensive was because the USN cut the programme back to three(?) ships, so the non-recurring costs of setting up specialized 155mm production had to be amortized over far fewer rounds.

[Weaver]

The navy tried that with the Zumwalt class and couldn't get it to work.

It worked but the ammo is very expensive, $800,000 to a $1,000,000 per round, and it has nothing in common with any 155mm gun used by anybody.

They wanted over-the-horizon range, super accuracy, and a ten round per minute rate of fire, all of which they got but it came with a huge bill.

I'm talking about M284s with autoloading and lengthened barrels as the guns used in the turret.

Just put 3 Bandkanones in a line astern on the foredeck, and if you need more firepower then put two more side-by-each (as they say here) on the poop deck.  With the proven ability for each tube to put up to five rounds TOT*, they'd pretty much be able to obliterate any map-point ... 

Stagger the firing times and you could pretty much empty the magazines (the big, in-hull magazines of the battlewagon) without over-heating the guns ...
Put a couple of laser-designators up high, maybe radar-directed to cover local threats, and the aft guns could be using those laser-guided rounds to neutralize those ...
'Course, it'd be cheaper to start with small calbre systems, like the .50 cals or 20- to 30-mm, working up through the 40mm systems to the 76mm systems ... but if the 76's can't deal with it then I'd go right for the 155s ...

*Time-on-target - firing rounds at different elevations so all the shells arrive at the same time

The Germans tested a 155mm howitzer at sea by literally parking a PzH-2000 on the deck of a destroyer.

[jcf]

The navy tried that with the Zumwalt class and couldn't get it to work.

It worked but the ammo is very expensive, $800,000 to a $1,000,000 per round, and it has nothing in common with any 155mm gun used by anybody.

They wanted over-the-horizon range, super accuracy, and a ten round per minute rate of fire, all of which they got but it came with a huge bill.

I'm talking about M284s with autoloading and lengthened barrels as the guns used in the turret.

And the reason the rounds were so expensive was because the USN cut the programme back to three(?) ships, so the non-recurring costs of setting up specialized 155mm production had to be amortized over far fewer rounds.

The LRLAP round was ridiculously complicated and was never going to be as cheap as Lockheed
claimed, even if the gun had been used on more Zumwalts, or other ships. Both the gun and the round were too overspecialized, the AGS couldn't use anything else and nothing else could use the LRLAP round.
It was an ill-conceived attempt at trying to make a gun perform like a guided missile.

[Rick Lowe]

Yeah, when you mentioned 'Lockheed', I went 

Seems some things take a long time to change...
Desiring all-singing-and-dancing kit that keeps having mission-creep and all.
The Big Business, too... 

The Germans tested a 155mm howitzer at sea by literally parking a PzH-2000 on the deck of a destroyer.

Now that's the sort of thing that'd get you accused of Photoshopping it... but yeah, after the snickering died down, I can see the merits in the thinking.
Why make something bespoke for a test, when that sort of lash up will get you the results you're looking for?

I also recall the Army 37mm gun tied down on the PT-109, so there's historical precedent...

[Dizzyfugu]

The Germans tested a 155mm howitzer at sea by literally parking a PzH-2000 on the deck of a destroyer.

They even did not change the camouflage... 

[Weaver]

The Germans tested a 155mm howitzer at sea by literally parking a PzH-2000 on the deck of a destroyer.

They even did not change the camouflage... 

Wasn't there an earlier test where they parked the whole thing on deck though? It might have been a logistics/test ship rather than a destroyer, come to think of it.

Speaking of AFV turrets on ships, there was a cancelled RN project in the 1950s called CFS-2 which was a naval turret for the Centurion's 20-pounder. Vickers later developed the idea into something called the Autonomous Patrol Gun, which used the 105mm L7 and much of the Centurion's turret (don't know if it was armoured though) to make a gun that could be just bolted to the deck of any ship with minimal support except a power line. The idea was more for a surface-to-surface, anti-torpedo-boat gun than an anti-aircraft or shore-bombardment weapon. Thjey never sold any, of course.

The Russians have a long history of putting tank turrets on river patrol boats, and the North Koreans still have some river/inshore craft with T-34/85 turrets on them.

[Dizzyfugu]

Yes, a whole Panzerhaubitze 2000 was strapped(!) onto the deck of the fregate Hessen... 

[Weaver]

Yes! That's the one I'm thinking of - thanks Dizzy.

[jcf]

Yeah, when you mentioned 'Lockheed', I went 

Seems some things take a long time to change...
Desiring all-singing-and-dancing kit that keeps having mission-creep and all.
The Big Business, too... 

The Germans tested a 155mm howitzer at sea by literally parking a PzH-2000 on the deck of a destroyer.

Now that's the sort of thing that'd get you accused of Photoshopping it... but yeah, after the snickering died down, I can see the merits in the thinking.
Why make something bespoke for a test, when that sort of lash up will get you the results you're looking for?

I also recall the Army 37mm gun tied down on the PT-109, so there's historical precedent...

Lockheed was the contractor and all they did was design to the Navy's requirements for the round. The AGS was originally designed by
United Defense. UD were purchased by BAE Systems in 2005 and work continued under the aegis of BAE Systems Land and Armaments,
now known as BAE Systems Land Platforms.

Of course the war industry is "Big Business", nobody else has the necessary engineering resources. The design and construction of warships
by governments went away a long time ago for numerous reasons, the biggest being cost.

[Joe C-P]

How on Earth did the adjust for the motion of the ship?  Would software be enough to control the turret angle and gun elevation? 
The other issue is such units are land-based and thus not adapted for the salty air of the sea. 

I did build a US Army modified-Spruance DD with an Army SPG mount in place of the forward turret.  It might even still be posted here somewhere.

[Wardukw]

How on Earth did the adjust for the motion of the ship?  Would software be enough to control the turret angle and gun elevation? 
The other issue is such units are land-based and thus not adapted for the salty air of the sea. 

I did build a US Army modified-Spruance DD with an Army SPG mount in place of the forward turret.  It might even still be posted here somewhere.

Joe the electronics inside the Panzer 2000 are state of the art when it comes to extreme long range shooting and id it was say a permanent mount of the ship ..the turret would be the easiest way to go of course ...it would most probably be used with GPS guided rounds like Excalibur which wouldn't really care that much about the motion of the ocean .
Normal HE and cluster rds would need the ship to be pretty stable but still using a satellite unlink they'd be able to get daamn close rounds on target quite easily and with how well the recoil is contained  when that gun fires there would be bugger all recoil forces felt in the ship .
I've seen the Panzer 2000 fire a full power charge and mate it was kinda boring to watch ..the recoil is absorbed so well it's not funny 

As for the salt ..that wouldn't much of a problem..the 2000 is fully NBC sealed so salt wouldn't get inside it anyway and the hatches would be closed most of the time anyway ..they'd just have to give it a clean now and then and the muzzle would be covered when not in use.
The steel isn't a issue at all ..military grade metals like AR500 and AR600 steel is very hard are it would take many yrs for it to really suffer from salt water .
If it was a permanent thing it would be painted in a protective paint anyway to match the ships colour so they have it covered there 😉

[Old Wombat]

How on Earth did the adjust for the motion of the ship?  Would software be enough to control the turret angle and gun elevation? 
The other issue is such units are land-based and thus not adapted for the salty air of the sea. 

I did build a US Army modified-Spruance DD with an Army SPG mount in place of the forward turret.  It might even still be posted here somewhere.

The simple answer is "The same way they always have".

A permanent installation would have been modified to be fit for purpose & linked to the ship's fire control system, whether that be mechanical, electro-mechanical, analogue electronic or digital electronic*.





[*: Most, if not all, modern systems are digital electronic.]

[jcf]

How on Earth did the adjust for the motion of the ship?  Would software be enough to control the turret angle and gun elevation? 
The other issue is such units are land-based and thus not adapted for the salty air of the sea. 

I did build a US Army modified-Spruance DD with an Army SPG mount in place of the forward turret.  It might even still be posted here somewhere.

The simple answer is "The same way they always have".

A permanent installation would have been modified to be fit for purpose & linked to the ship's fire control system, whether that be mechanical, electro-mechanical, analogue electronic or digital electronic*.





[*: Most, if not all, modern systems are digital electronic.]

It would be a lot more complicated than "hook it up" because the SP gun doesn't have a stabilization system and the fire control system is entirely different. Land based and ship based artillery systems have had little in common for a very long time as the requirements started to diverge in the later decades of the 19th century.

[Wardukw]

Also the 2000 has a semi automatic loading system which means loaders still have to load the charges and rounds by hand ...unlike the old Swedish Bandkanon which was fully automatic.
If anything the Archer would be a much better system for a ship mounted artillery weapons system.
That is fully automatic.