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C3 Howitzer Replacement

Yeah every trial we ran with eplrs was brutal....not to mention ripping the antena off the trails a few times.....

Now if they got rid of the GPS integrated into system and just rolled with the inertial navigation that would fix a ton of issues as well.
 
Problem is, it was only designed to send PA information for US vehicles. We bought it because Raytheon said they could push lots of data with it, and make it highly reliable. It was never designed to do what we want it to do.
 
PuckChaser said:
Problem is, it was only designed to send PA information for US vehicles. We bought it because Raytheon said they could push lots of data with it, and make it highly reliable. It was never designed to do what we want it to do.

Man if I had a nickel for every time we said that about a piece of Army equipment I would have a shit load of nickels
 
sidemount said:
Yeah every trial we ran with eplrs was brutal....not to mention ripping the antena off the trails a few times.....

Now if they got rid of the GPS integrated into system and just rolled with the inertial navigation that would fix a ton of issues as well.

The UK did go with a Inertial Navigation only system some time ago, called PADS (Position and Azimuth Determining System), but since it required calibration points "sprinkled" about the AO, they've since gone to GPS based systems, supported by INU backup, instead.
Regt Survey used to be responsible for putting those RSCP (Regimental Survey Control Points) out, but Canada no longer has that capability within its Arty Regts, and I doubt very much MCE would be able to support it either.

The GPS component of GMS does have flaws, and vulnerabilities, but if people trained with it more often they'd know how to deal with those limitations better. I don't think we should adopt the UK approach for the 105 fleet though, which would be to abandon all optic sights and go with an APS only; we never seem to have any depth to our procurement to support such a concept, so we need to have a "soldier proof" backup system for the gun
 
Forgive me for a land navigation war story. A million years ago (actually in 1967) I was the battery recce officer in A Bty in Germany. Before the last practice camp before I rotated home to go on the IG Course our recce vehicle, a M37 3/4 ton cargo truck, was fitted with a NAVAID. This was a rather bulky and not too mechanically reliable Canadian designed land navigation system that used a gyroscope for orientation and an analog system for distance traveled geared to the odometer. John Simons, the recce sgt, and I decided to give it a fair trial and to adapt to its limitations. A major limitation was that the gyroscope had to be started about an hour before the vehicle moved off in order for it to settle down. It, of course, oriented itself on true north so we had to input the lat and long to convert to grid bearings.

We also used to pick way points along our route in advance and correct the indicated grid references the NAVAID produced. As time went on it began to become more accurate, but I can't really explain this. We also tested it for accuracy on recces for live firing and had accumulated enough data that we would have been comfortable originating the battery grid from it. We actually did that on a night recce for a night deployment, but had time after first light to do conventional battery survey to confirm the orientation and fixation of the gun troops.

From time to time we would drive to each troop gun position, record the grid of troop centre, and then return to our point of origin, usually the battery director. If the grid of the point of origin matched the one when we started, we would have been able to use the troop grid references for firing.

It, of course, could not be used for orientation.

Maybe this was a tiny glimpse into the not too distant future.
 
The errors dont usually stem from people not trained on it. Only issue that way is people not loading crypto properly or not knowing how to recognize it not loaded.
The main problems ive encountered as a tech is the gps failing but the system doesnt revert back to inertial navigation. Which as we all know can create a huge issue where the gun thinks its pointing compared to where its actually pointing.


I had a ton more written out but I think id be running into opsec so i left it out.

Either way the gps is a good idead but the software package wasnt designed for it and is very glitchy
 
PuckChaser said:
It was never designed to do what we want it to do.

sidemount said:
Man if I had a nickel for every time we said that about a piece of Army equipment I would have a shit load of nickels

Doesn't the procurement system just assume that anyway?

I thought it was designed to reject anything that did what it was supposed to do.
 
Old Sweat said:
Forgive me for a land navigation war story. A million years ago (actually in 1967) I was the battery recce officer in A Bty in Germany. Before the last practice camp before I rotated home to go on the IG Course our recce vehicle, a M37 3/4 ton cargo truck, was fitted with a NAVAID. This was a rather bulky and not too mechanically reliable Canadian designed land navigation system that used a gyroscope for orientation and an analog system for distance traveled geared to the odometer. John Simons, the recce sgt, and I decided to give it a fair trial and to adapt to its limitations. A major limitation was that the gyroscope had to be started about an hour before the vehicle moved off in order for it to settle down. It, of course, oriented itself on true north so we had to input the lat and long to convert to grid bearings.

We also used to pick way points along our route in advance and correct the indicated grid references the NAVAID produced. As time went on it began to become more accurate, but I can't really explain this. We also tested it for accuracy on recces for live firing and had accumulated enough data that we would have been comfortable originating the battery grid from it. We actually did that on a night recce for a night deployment, but had time after first light to do conventional battery survey to confirm the orientation and fixation of the gun troops.

From time to time we would drive to each troop gun position, record the grid of troop centre, and then return to our point of origin, usually the battery director. If the grid of the point of origin matched the one when we started, we would have been able to use the troop grid references for firing.

It, of course, could not be used for orientation.

Maybe this was a tiny glimpse into the not too distant future.

Likely the accuracy improved as the gyro settled down and self -corrected the precession which as i recall starts to align with the motion of the planet. What we found on the ships is that gyros need a stable voltage supply otherwise they can fall off, which is why we used to check the gyro against the magnetic compass every 15minutes or so in my day.

and please do not stop posting on the "old stories" as they are very interesting and add flavour to these conversations.
 
This thread is getting away from C3, but rest assured our gryo and GPS skills are solid.

Old Sweat, rest assured, a modern gyro spins up in much less than an hour!  :)

 
GnyHwy said:
This thread is getting away from C3, but rest assured our gryo and GPS skills are solid.

Old Sweat, rest assured, a modern gyro spins up in much less than an hour!  :)

Well to this point we have beaten the horse to death on the C3, and LG1, until we get some sort of news about a replacement or more info from the inside not much more to discuss
 
GnyHwy said:
This thread is getting away from C3, but rest assured our gryo and GPS skills are solid.

Old Sweat, rest assured, a modern gyro spins up in much less than an hour!  :)
Haha yes indeed. The laser ring gyro on the m777 takes 10 min to align.
Forget what it is to spin up the gyro on the glps but its fast.....and man that is a sweet piece of kit. Huge glps fan.
 
MilEME09 said:
Well to this point we have beaten the horse to death on the C3, and LG1, until we get some sort of news about a replacement or more info from the inside not much more to discuss
Didnt the horse used to tow the  C3.....:D
 
sidemount said:
Didnt the horse used to tow the  C3.....:D

nope they were in short supply, had to use a large number of privates, sorta like now a days
 
MilEME09 said:
nope they were in short supply, had to use a large number of privates, sorta like now a days
This sort of thing, but with more green, less wood?  :)
 
Colin P said:
Part of the detachment commanders course was all about learning to "walk" a gun  8)

The dread cry of "Without drag ropes, prepare to advance."

In real life, as a recruit in the RCA Depot manhandling a C1 Howitzer across the Shilo Ranges for a few hundred metres which is much different from doing it on the level concrete floor of the gun park. Don't ask me why.
 
I always made walking the gun over open ground part of the drills, somethings need to be done for real and doing it slowly and carefully during daylight, means less chance of people getting hurt.
 
Colin P said:
I always made walking the gun over open ground part of the drills, somethings need to be done for real and doing it slowly and carefully during daylight, means less chance of people getting hurt.

At one stage we were having difficulty getting over a hump. SSgt Hooper, the AIG and a big man, lay across the muzzle of our C1. This took all the weight off the trails and we were able to rock the gun over the hump very easily. Lesson learned.
 
Old Sweat said:
At one stage we were having difficulty getting over a hump. SSgt Hooper, the AIG and a big man, lay across the muzzle of our C1. This took all the weight off the trails and we were able to rock the gun over the hump very easily. Lesson learned.

Knowing the 'Center of Balance' is important.  [:D
 
Not to mention "Left brake on", "right brake off" , "Trails right", "right brake on", "Left brake off", "Trails left" to get over a bit of a hump. Ah yes my gun crew just loved me...... [lol:
 
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