Still is problem, for that gun, small range...they need to go in different direction and produced malka in great numbers but with koalitia guns not MstaS gun...Malka still have small range compair to the nato wheeled arilery...26km.is short for today standards...they need at least 35-40km.range for their arilery if they wanna make hell for ukrainians....
Nah... they are working on very long range shells... up to 180km... which would require subcalibre HE with guidance and possibly ramjet boosting... so if that is the case then a MSTA based gun should be able to reach 80-90km with said round for the counter battery role, but most of their targets wont be anything like that far away.
Shooting at enemy artillery that is trying to engage you is ignoring the drones they will have found and tracked you with... destroying those will make their counter battery fire rather less effective and anyway... lets be honest... suicide drones are rather more effective than artillery most of the time anyway... huge range is easier to achieve too.
Malva has MSTAs gun because it will be cheaper to make and cheaper to actually use in enormous numbers, which will make it effective.
They have a wheeled version of Coalition already and that is another vehicle they will likely operate with Boomerang and Kurganets units...
It actually looks smaller and lighter than Malva to be honest... though with that turret and autoloader I probably isn't.
Malva is essentially a cheap numbers vehicle that can be adopted in large numbers and not have high operational costs even if you use it excessively... the guns will be cheaper to make than Coalitions gun and being a wheeled vehicle its operational costs will be lower than any tracked model.
They want to replace the 2S1 Gvozdikas with the 2S18s, neither has a better range than the other, so it's not a downgrade. Albeit with modern technologies perhaps they can improve the 2S18s performance.
But the BMP-3 chassis is standard and could be replaced later with a Kurganets chassis for tracked operations and perhaps the turret on a Boomerang for a wheeled model for the future.
Of course the 152mm 2S18 will hit much harder than the 122mm 2S1.
The 2S18 also offers a larger calibre, although no doubt less round capacity.
They have ammo vehicles for Coalition... an ammo vehicle for the 2S18 would not be impossible...
Well, it has a better range than 2S1, comparable to 2S3 - but it was considered not enough back then. Or they just have runned out of cash, who knows
They might have thought it lacked range in the 80s and 90s but with experience of conflict in the Ukraine and Syria, perhaps tactics could help or changed their views.
New long range ammo might not go as far as it would if fired from Coalition barrels with Coalition propellent but in standard guns a ramjet powered guided shell is going to extent range too.
The GPS guided version of Krasnopol reaches 43kms... now it is only 20kgs which explains the extra range from a standard MSTA gun barrel but with a guided shell 20kgs would be plenty against point targets that it actually hits.
40kgs to 50kg HE rounds are best for area targets to fill a space with fragments and boom, but against a specific target guidance is more important because even the heaviest warhead that is no where near the target is useless, while a 2kg bomb landing within 1m of a human is probably a kill... and a 5kg HEAT round landing on the roof of an Abrams or Leopard or western artillery vehicle has a good chance of destroying it too.
You don't get something for nothing... these western wonder guns everyone wants to out range are only good for 100 rounds a day or they start to fall apart... that shows the compromises made to get such range, and in this conflict using the wrong ammo means it wont even achieve that anyway.
That's a valid point either - hull production is at a full swing.
Later they can shift to Kurganets or Boomerang...
All things being equal its also more preferable to go for tracked over wheeled. Kind of hard to provide proper fire support if you can't keep pace with the tanks.
Over time they can shift to the new vehicle family chassis which means they can choose tracked (Kurganets) or wheeled (Boomerang) as they prefer.
Tractors actually do rather well in deep mud... despite being wheeled.
Instead the Russians are making a strategic choice to streamline logistics by taking out redundant calibers. And unfortunately the 122 mm is one: for the more common fire missions within 10 km the rifled mortar is more than adequate, and the 122 mm simply lacks the range to compete with the 152 mm in counter-battery missions.
Yes, they have 100mm and 120mm and 122mm and 125mm as well as 152mm.
The Hosta was supposed to replace the 122mm with a 120mm gun/mortar system that can fire 120mm mortar rounds (russian and western) and also 120mm shells developed for NONA with HE and HEAT rounds available... but the D-30 is very mobile and light and handy and rather popular.
If you wanna hit hard enemy from safe distance you need batter range, you need modern FCS not old scool targeting, you need system taht recons and. PBL can send wia satelite you coordinate withc you will use instant...Russian to not have that yet....
The Russians know what they are doing and have all that... and drones as well...
And they still stuck with L47 gun with range of 27-29 km max with rocket propelant, most of the rounds they use is standard with range of 24km....with L52 gun they have it in small numbers, because most.of the modernizes Mstas is M2 version not SM2 version...
Only one role of artillery is counter battery fire... for which 300mm smerch rockets would be much better suited to than gun tube artillery... even the old models from 1990s with 90km range were pretty good for that job...
They would have thousands of guns sitting still doing **** all if they had 200km range 152mm guns because how would they find targets 200km away and organise a shot that arrives in time before the target moves?
Not to mention the cost of 200km range will be that the HE rounds have a 2kg payload and the gun is made of titanium alloys that cost two million dollars a barrel that is good for 20 shots before you have to replace it.
They have developed a system called Hermes.
It is a guided missile with a 30-57kg payload depending on the model... it has a range of 100km in the first model but after experience in Syria and Ukraine they have decided to change the design of a large solid rocket booster that delivers an unpowered payload section that falls on the target with its payload because experience shows such a weapon would be too easy to shoot down. So they have delayed the design and are introducing a propulsion system to the terminal stage so it can manouver to hit moving targets and also evade enemy air defences... I would suggest a single truck with six such missiles on the rear could accompany your artillery vehicles along perhaps with a Tiger or Typhoon with a 30mm cannon equipped gun turret with LIDAR and air burst 30mm cannon shells for engaging enemy drones and perhaps some SOSNA SAMs for drones at greater ranges (up to 20km) and perhaps even a laser and EW jamming system also to deal with drones.
Enemy drones can be engaged by the Typhoon vehicle and enemy artillery can be responded to using the Hermes vehicle... while the artillery vehicles hit enemy positions and targets like they are supposed to.
Trying to make the artillery do everything is silly and wasteful, though and air burst anti drone shell might be useful too at some stage.
The shorter the range of the shells the heavier you can make them and against some targets the heavier the better.