A Finnish company has developed a novel design for a mobile 120mm mortar; mounting the mortar, fire control gear and a hundred rounds of ammunition in a standard 20 foot shipping container. A three man crew operates the mortar from the container, which weighs about ten tons loaded with the mortar, ammo and fire control equipment. The containerized mortar has been tested operating from the back of a truck, a ship or simply placed on the ground. Firing from the container the mortar can hit targets up to 10 kilometers away and fire up to ten shells a minute.
Rocket assisted shells would have a longer range.
Those would be nice weapons to defend a modularized auxiliary cruiser used for a power projection role as I wrote about in "The AFRICOM Queen," assuming the shells can track moving targets. And in a 20-foot shipping container, that's pretty compact.
A late model CH-53 or a CH-47 could lift that to deploy them ashore; or they could be unloaded to barges to take them ashore to support ground forces with pop-up fire support bases.
