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A Ukrainian unit fighting near Bakhmut calls their improvised combat vehicle the "Nightmaremobile." Soldiers from Ukraine's 56th Motorized Brigade have added four Grad launching tubes to the truck so it can fire 122mm rockets. They were using the pickup to shell Russian forces in the Donetsk region.
www.rferl.org
I saw this and was reminded of other articles I had seen where the Ukrainians were stripping individual launch tubes from burnt out Grads and repurposing them by mounting them on pickup trucks. To be frank I didn't see the point. I always understood rockets in general and the 122mm in particular to be horribly inaccurate. They had to be used in large numbers and were at least as much a terror weapon as an effective suppressor.
But then I got to thinking about all these cheap guided munitions, including cardboard airplanes and wondered how long it would be before someone came up with a cheap bolt-on guidance kit for the 122mm.
The Israelis got there first.
The Rokar RGK 122 by Elbit does for the 122 what the M1156 does for 155mm rounds.
[...]Read More...
www.northropgrumman.com
The Rokar gives the 122, with a 19.1 kg warhead and range of up to 40 km a CEP of 20m.
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All of this together, along with comments about tanks in general being used as snipers rather than close combat vehicles and the lack of apparentl mass or density in the field seems to add to the ongoing sense of this war as a stand-off war. The best plinker wins.
The Ukrainians have been plinking away at command posts and warehouses with HIMARS.
They have been plinking at bridges.
They have been plinking the ammo caches of Russian batteries.
They have been plinking away at tanks, then at MRLSs, then at howitzers and mortars, now at trucks.
They have been using their tanks, both Russian and Western, at standoff distances to supply direct and indirect fire support to the assault troops.
Even the cluster bombs are used with precision and in small numbers - partly that seems to be due to the lack of viable high-density targets. There are lots of targets but they are small and widely dispersed.
When I was a young pup in 7th Tor RCA, we had a working 25 pdr in the gun park and unofficially "played" around with it. In a pinch I could operate one but the 105mm M2A21 was my first operational gun. Additional fun fact - I'm one of the few people left in the world who knows how to use an arty board for calculating firing data and how to "tune" and use a 42 set as a radio. Also, I did my combat team commanders' course using Centurions.
