Project Artillery

[ArmySGT.]

M102 Howitzer, Towed, 105mm.

[ArmySGT.]

Name M102 Howitzer
Crew 6
Length 21 ft 10-1/2 in. (6.7 m)

Width 6 ft 4 in. (1.9 m)

Height 5 ft 2-3/4 in. (1.6 m)
Ground Clearance
Turning radius same as tractor
Max road speed Super highway ....45 mph Improved roads ...35 mph Cross country ... 10 mph
Max. towed load. N/a
Water Speed N/a
Fording depth same as tractor
Gradient same as tractor
Side slope same as tractor
Vertical obstacle N/a
Trench .5 M
Armor class
Armament 105 mm Rifled cannon
Ammunition None stored

M102 Howitzer.
Maximum range .................................................. .................................................. .. 11,500 meters
Designated prime movers .................................................. .............1-1/4 ton and 2-1/2 ton truck
(1) Is a lightweight, towed weapon, which has a very low silhouette when in the firing position.
(2) Can be airlifted, dropped by parachute, or towed into position.
(3) Employs a roller assembly and firing platform assembly permitting a 6400-mil capability.
(4) Has a variable recoil system which eliminates the need for a recoil pit.

Ammunition for your M102 howitzer is of the semi-fixed type. Most of these rounds have an adjustable propelling charge
for zone firing, and the complete round is loaded into the weapon as a unit. The High Explosive Plastic (HEP) and the
Target Practice (TP) rounds are exceptions and do not have adjustable charges. Semi-fixed ammunition is issued fuzed
for all projectiles except HE, and sometimes WP rounds. Draw separate fuzes for these rounds.

In Project use, the M102 Howitzer fulfills a defensive role protecting large scale assets like bases, depots, supply dumps, and refugee centers by forcing hostile groups far out of their effective range for small arms and light crew served weapons. Additionally the planners prepared for the howitzers to assist in civilian missions such as avalanche control and destroying ice dams preventing flooding issues. Illumination missions are prepared for to assist in dangerous, but timely rescue or recovery operations, in addition to support of MARS personnel disrupting hostile actors plans. Tactical CS is also considered as a method of turning refugees away from areas highly contaminated by radioactive fallout. The CS can be felt, whereas the harmful gamma rays are undetectable with proper meters.

[ArmySGT.]

Model. Abbreviation. Type. Use.

XM546* and M546* APERS-T Flechette-loaded, aluminum projectile Antipersonnel(effective in dense foliage) *Dispersion pattern for XM546 and M546 set on MA (muzzle action) and time.

M1, HE, High explosive-bursting.Antipersonnel,blast, mining

M60 H/HD Bursting, chemical mustard/distilled mustard Antipersonnel, persistent

M360 GB Bursting, chemical- sarin Antipersonnel, non-persistent

M327 HEP/HEP-T High explosive, bursting/high ex-plosive, bursting, tracer. Defeat armor (effective against concrete and timber targets).

M314 series-ILLUM Base ejection projectile, parachute candle. Illumination.

M60A3 Smoke,WP Bursting chemical. Screening, spotting incendiary.

M84A1 Smoke,HC Base-ejection projectile with canisters-for use with M548, M565, M577 series, or M762 fuzes. Screening/target identification,signaling.

M84B1 Smoke, HC/colored Base-ejection projectile with canisters for use with M501 series fuze only. Screening/target identification,signaling.

M444* ICM High-explosive bouncing grenades. Antipersonnel * Expect a higher submunition dud rate when M444 is fired at charges 6 and 7.

M67 TP/TP-T Inert projectile/inert projectile w/tracer. Training.

M548 HERA High explosive rocket assisted. Antipersonnel,blast, mining.

M629 Tactical,CS Base-ejection projectile w/CS canisters. Riot control.

M14 Dummy Completely inert round Training

[Gelrir]

I feel the 81mm-armed V150 is pretty much as artillery-ish as the Project needs to get. It can serve as a expedient APC/cargo vehicle, and it uses tires and spares common to other Project vehicles.

If you use an M102 howitzer, and are running around with a single gun, you'll need 6 to 8 people for crew; so that's one vehicle (might be a V150). If you want to take a lot of different kinds of ammunition, and a sufficient amount of ammunition to be useful, there'll be at least one vehicle hauling ammo. Projectiles weigh 18 to 20 kg each; powder charges are 7 kg; let's say 25 kg per round. 200 rounds is thus 5 tons: so your gun needs a 5 or 10 ton truck. If you're operating halfway across the country from your ammo supply point, you'll probably bring several trucks of ammo. You might also need some security around your gun when it's firing ... in case someone sneaks up on foot behind you. So another team of "infantry" comes along, with some vehicle. And, do you stash caches of 105mm ammo all over the United States? Which ... could have been caches of stuff for re-building the country, not blowing it up.

A few howitzers aren't much use across a continent; a lot of howitzers makes a very odd Morrow Project. I think some MARS mortar teams, TOW teams and so forth, plus the MARS-One, should be sufficient for most purposes. Of course, it's your Project -- run your game as you see fit, and to entertain yourself and your players!

[hyppoleonida]

But surely both the new IAI autonomous missile system that this kind of ultralight flying tank you came across are very nice additions to the arsenal of a MP Team, maybe the AT-802U is more adequate for a Recon Team and the Jumper is more likely to support a MARS Team but in every other way, IMHO they shoud belong to a MP Team, since the mission requires survivability in the (presumably) hostile environment of post-catastrophe Earth, more so since the original Mission Directive foresaw the resurrection of the teams in the immediate aftermath of an apocalyptic conflict, not 150 years later, as happens in Morrow Project.

Since the bolthole of each team would have to be equipped with the best that was available at the time of the team's hibernation, considering that - in all likelihood - the average team will have exhausted most of its hi-tech resources in a relatively short time, unless that is, they know how to find somewhere a hidden storage (which also in the official scenarios is more often than not only a wishful proposition), I do not see anything wrong in equipping a team with a little 'big stick', especially if is semi-autonomous, portable and in any case with a (necessarily) limited endurance.

I don't avocate in any way the presence of heavy armor or - as some have suggested jokingly (but are we so sure of it?) - naval vessels, since they are outside the mission's purpose and above all, cool as they may seem at first, they are a real logistical nightmares in terms of resources and maintenance on the medium/long distance, though - as suggested by the examples already in the historic manual TM 1-1 of the 80s - there's sufficient stuff around that can fit perfectly to the need of small units, like MP Teams are.

After all, even with the military planners, there has always been the need to equip and arm elite and/or special forces units with incospicous means to transport and use in air, land and sea, beginning with the modified trucks of the 8th Army's Desert Rats in North Africa during WWII, to the armed (and sometime armored) off-road, air-droppable light vehicles of today.

Just as an example, let's take the case of the AT802U; a thing like that you can see even in the official scenarios, when it comes to the air forces of the KFS and others adversaries of the Project: fixed-wing propeller-driven aircrafts instead of the more expensive and resource-hungry jet-fighter, 'cause they're notoriously less costly to fly, arm and mantain.

My favorite in this regard remain the Skydiver A-1, the P-51 Mustang and P-47 Thunderbolt, by virtue of their relative simplicity, autonomy, load bearing capacity and availability, as even today there are around hundreds of specimens both original and replicas and it is possible that they can survive or be recovered even after a disaster such as that provided in the Morrow Project background.

[LBraden]

When I was setting up a Project Atlantis session (that fell apart due to other reasons) I had given the British teams some old Hurricanes, yes everyone likes the spit, but the Hurricane is more of a workhorse, mostly cloth, dope and linen, it was the simplest form it could be, and was to give more of a "over the horizon" view along with at least being able to strafe a few people, but I had only given the Brit team 3 of them aircraft, near an old RAF base (assuming that 150 years later, no one would go near to an RAF base that had been stripped for about 200 years, and the Hurricane can take off and land on grass fields.

The P47 and P51 are good aircraft, but are more for the US side of things.

[hyppoleonida]

Very well done, and perfectly in line with my own way of thinking; I always thought that the equipment of a party, not just that of a MP Team, should be consistent with the place of origin / operations of the party, unless, that is, this same equipment is not particularly widespread or international.

Speaking of old aircraft, it seems only natural that, using as setting the UK, we are looking at the classic Spit - or the good ol' Hurricane, for that matter - because I believe there are still many around those parts, in museums or in private hands.

When I mentioned the classic warbirds made ​​in the USA, it is because most of the campaigns MP I wrote / played are set in the States (by the way, I'm Italian) where it is not uncommon to find even today vintage equipment, vehicles and weapons and even where there are immense cemeteries where it would be possible to draw everything and more (for the series: here we don't throw anything away).

Same would apply if there was a Morrow Project beyond the Iron Curtain, because the Russians and their allies and satellites have never thrown anything away, they mostly recycled and resold / distributed their old equipment all around the world, so that would not surprise me at all to find an eastern equivalent of the MP loaded for bear with - just as an example - the Lavochkin-5 or the ubiquitous Il-2 Sturmovik, always to stay in the aircraft field.

However, the use of outdated vehicles and weapons as part of a MP's campaign, as far as I'm concerned, is limited to only two cases: the project teams who recur to salvage and refurbishing of relics in place of their own unusable/destroyed equipment or to replenish the reserves in case of success of the project and widening of the fleet / arsenal, or as standard equipment (more or less) of the various political entities that the team sees / faces ergo of the many agencies against which the Project fight for its own continued success.

It seems only logical to me that a job like the recovery, restoration and conservation is more useful to those who remained in the real world after the war, while the MP teams slept in their cryogenic sleep, unless you feel like assuming that a particular team was outfitted for precise will of the Project or for other reasons, with outdated equipment, although I can't see a purpose in a similar decision right now.

All this talk brings us back to the question: unless you want to take as a point of view, the principle by which the equipment assigned to MP Teams is obsolete simply because the events of the original game took place around the the late 80s of last century, it goes without saying that looking around for the best that exists at the time to equip their teams' boltholes is only natural.

After all, the equipment already included in the manual TM 1-1 was the best available in the years when it was written; just as an example look at the missiles assigned to the MARS teams: in the '80s were the non-plus ultra of military technology.

So, in my humble opinion, unless you want to maintain the principle that the teams, once hibernated, were no longer re-equipped, effectively sealing them in their tombs of concrete and steel (which among other things, I can't remember if it's written anywhere in the manual), I think it's only natural that, at the awakening of the teams you can find ... surprises in the form of weapons, vehicles and equipment that are state of the art today, but didn't exist when the team was put to sleep.

After all, even the ubiquitous V-series armored cars so loved and used by the MP, today are ridicolous at best but in the '80s were perfect for the purpose and they were state-of-the-art light armor at the time.
So it's no surprise to me (and in fact I have done so more than once) to find that in the bolthole our heroes find instead of a V-150 a Renault VBL or a Lince or Puma armored cars, modern and premium vehicles compared to the old Cadillac-Gage's armored cars that have been discontinued for years now, while still in use in many countries, mainly in the Third World.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Gelrir

I feel the 81mm-armed V150 is pretty much as artillery-ish as the Project needs to get. It can serve as a expedient APC/cargo vehicle, and it uses tires and spares common to other Project vehicles.

If you use an M102 howitzer, and are running around with a single gun, you'll need 6 to 8 people for crew; so that's one vehicle (might be a V150). If you want to take a lot of different kinds of ammunition, and a sufficient amount of ammunition to be useful, there'll be at least one vehicle hauling ammo. Projectiles weigh 18 to 20 kg each; powder charges are 7 kg; let's say 25 kg per round. 200 rounds is thus 5 tons: so your gun needs a 5 or 10 ton truck. If you're operating halfway across the country from your ammo supply point, you'll probably bring several trucks of ammo. You might also need some security around your gun when it's firing ... in case someone sneaks up on foot behind you. So another team of "infantry" comes along, with some vehicle. And, do you stash caches of 105mm ammo all over the United States? Which ... could have been caches of stuff for re-building the country, not blowing it up.

A few howitzers aren't much use across a continent; a lot of howitzers makes a very odd Morrow Project. I think some MARS mortar teams, TOW teams and so forth, plus the MARS-One, should be sufficient for most purposes. Of course, it's your Project -- run your game as you see fit, and to entertain yourself and your players!

One V-150 and One M35A3 2 1/2 ton truck. Both are MP vehicles. The Deuce is stated out in "Fall Back". Probably an XR-311, though I am converting the Humvee for MP games.

V-150 (CP version) to use as an FDC, crewed by three. M35A2 to haul ammunition and spares, crewed by 2. XR-311, hauls personal gear, crewed by 2.

MARS team with seven personnel. Part of the MARS contingent for a Combined Group tasked with protecting Morrow Assets. Draws additional munitions from Bases, and Depots. May be assisted by other MP Teams withing the Combined Group for security and hauling munitions.

[ArmySGT.]

Looking forward to stating the M7B1 Priest for both the Project and as a Snake Eater support piece.

A fusion plant and electric drive overcomes the fuel issue and the power to wight issue. The fuel tanks are removed opening up space. The Autonav gives it a rapid mission effect and a shoot and scoot that this platform did not before.

The open top makes it vulnerable to counter battery and reminds PCs it is not a tank, while the ring mount give it some self defense.

[Gelrir]

You might want to go with the 5-ton truck; the V150 shares a lot of drivetrain components with those -- handy for post-apocalyptic logistics. Or the HEMMT -- some versions come with a handy cargo crane.

http://olive-drab.com/idphoto/id_photos_m54.php
http://olive-drab.com/idphoto/id_photos_hemtt_m977.php
http://olive-drab.com/idphoto/id_photos_hemtt_m985.php

7 people with an M102 leaves no more than one person to operate an FDC, act as a radio operator, and as a forward observer. And the unit still has no innate security when it's emplaced and ready to fire.

Instead of the ancient Priest, how about something newer:

http://olive-drab.com/idphoto/id_pho...8_howitzer.php

For that matter, if this a one-of-a-kind thing, why not just make a custom vehicle, suited to the Morrow Project?

Or: variations on the M113A3 'Gavin' APC. The proposed M8 'Buford' AGS (armored gun system) had a 105mm autoloading gun, woot. And there's been discussion of a hybrid electric drive version, which would make a Morrow Project conversion as simple as plugging in your fusion pack.

http://www.combatreform.org/hybridelectricdrive.htm

(note that the author of the "combatreforms" pages can get mighty worked up about his favorite topics, one of which is the M113)

Imagine a hybrid-drive version of the M8. The Project could just snap them up and roll them right into a bolthole.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m8-ags.htm

--
Michael B.

[.45cultist]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

M102 Howitzer, Towed, 105mm.

And was a part of some Green Beret camp equipment in Vietnam. I would like a more varied mortar section, and stuff like this for special groups. The M102 would make quite a dragon for the team to slay. An M226 60MM mortar has a place in light team's special item list.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by .45cultist

And was a part of some Green Beret camp equipment in Vietnam. I would like a more varied mortar section, and stuff like this for special groups. The M102 would make quite a dragon for the team to slay. An M226 60MM mortar has a place in light team's special item list.

Probably why it is used extensively by the KFS.

One of the major problems for the French and later the Americans in Viet Nam was the soviet supplied 130mm D-30 howitzers.... Getting hit and you can't hit back because the other guy can shoot further and accurately too ....... well, that really, really pegs the suck-o-meter at maximum.

[ArmySGT.]

Battery fire / Counter Battery fire works in two scenarios..... their tubes fire first or yours fire first.

Their tubes fire first....... preferable... You get all yours to fire back.

You fire first......
Your self propelled is moving immediately upon completion of their fire mission....... towed is waiting.... tied with counter battery radar. When the enemy fires his counter battery mission , your towed fires theirs in counter-counter battery. MLRS is in the commanders tool box with two important missions....... immediate suppression and counter battery fire. The MLRS in counter battery is excellent. The basic package outranges most gun artillery and with the larger affected impact area doesn't need precision to be overwhelmingly effective. You're raining mixed AP and AT submuntions (some with internal guidance) onto a 1km by 1 km square.

Immediate suppression is to disrupt or delay and enemy breakthrough of your own positions again by wrecking everything in a very large impact area.

[mmartin798]

I have to stand corrected. I made an incorrect assumption about the 127mm rocket used on the Valkiri. After doing research, the Denel V3 is a copy of the AIM-9/MIM-72 Chaparral. As the AIM-9 is in the Morrow supply chain, a "dumbed down" version for the Valkiri is not unreasonable addition to the supply with little additional training needed for Project members handling them.

[.45cultist]

Stats for heavy pieces can be useful if the KFS decides it needs more advanced tools to counter Morrow teams or even Krell, surely his minions haven't missed the expansion detailed in "Fall Back".