The new artillery piece is good news. But is this fully correct?
While the United States had over 2,400 M109s in service in the late 1980s, when the Cold War ended, now the army can get by with about twenty percent, or less, of that number. In the 1990s the growing use of smart bombs and the post-Cold War reduction in armed forces sharply reduced the need for the M109. After 2000 new tech reduced the need for artillery still further with the introduction of GPS guided artillery shells and rockets. There were also a lot more ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) in infantry units and lacking tanks to shoot at the ATGMs proved to be life-savers when used against enemy forces in buildings or fortifications. For aircraft and helicopters the lighter 48 kg (hundred pound) Hellfire missile replaced larger and heavier ones as well as a lot of artillery support. In short, there was a lot less demand for conventional (unguided shells) support.[emphasis added]
Yes, you need to be armored on the battlefield to survive peer enemies.That is certainly a lesson from Russian-Ukraine combat in the Donbas region since 2014.
The Russian use of artillery was sobering. So I learned this lesson contrary to my expectations reflected in that Strategypage post highlighted above from listening to the account of artillery use in that post:
[We need] much more artillery. Precision rounds aimed at point targets are no replacement for precision targeting combined with massed area fire or massed precision strikes. I was wrong to think that precision eliminated the need for volume of fire. Grant me that I concluded that pre-Ukraine.
If there are unarmored units on the battlefield--and there will be even in combat formations let alone combat support and combat service support units--massed precise dumb rounds are devastating.
Seriously, go to that post about Russian artillery use (and more). I watched it again and still had to go change my underwear.
