HIMARS

[pourts]

It's an idea, not doctrine. The Corps has played a joke on the rest of the military by not refuting the "Jarhead" stereotype. Modern amphib, vertical envelopment..........both the result of big brains in the Corps. Because of limited resources, culture, and professional officer and NCO development, I'm sure that the correct decision will be made.

As someone who is currently inside the machine, I have no confidence that money will get spent on the right things. Your confidence/ naivete is scary.

Next up, we are going to sling load M777 under Hornets, because, you know, maybe we need Hornets to fly some arty somewhere.

 

[jmcquate]

Your confidence/ naivete is scary.

Well, to alive your fears pourts, I'm in no position to influence Marine Corps doctrine or procurement. There's a lot of weird shit that gets briefed at Quantico and H&I that never see's the light of day............that's all I was saying.

 

[azguy]

Hasn't been employed that way in real life, and probably never will, but the Blk IV can be used in a tactical situation.

This. Blk IV TLAM can be employed in a CFF scenario with infinitely greater range and precision than the alternatives discussed in this thread.

Without going into specifics, there are some great reasons we've never done it for real- cost being the most compelling. But if you really need fire support, at great range, in a place we don't have CAS a/c, it's a tool available to the JTF.

 

[sparky]

HIMARS generally makes more sense with something like ATACMS, though stocks of those apparently are precious, and Army is still a few years away from the follow-on.

Having spent time around LCS FREEDOM variants, full-up HIMARS is do-able but reloads are a pain. It got a lot of attention and some FOGOs and activities noticed as 'doing something', but baseline MLRS rounds don't make the juice worth the squeeze.

A deep strike variant might be worth it, but putting a truck that clobbers a big swath of running track / parade ground, er, flight deck (along with its reloads - there was fun around handling those and it's a good thing we can waiver pretty much anything) makes it pretty much a non-starter for more than a photo-op on LCS, and as posted above VLS on LPDs is a better value.

A VL version of that follow-on deep strike round would be a worthwhile consideration. LockMart also had for consideration a 'horizontal launch system' notion for LCS that would have a smaller footprint than HIMARS, but AFAIK it never got beyond a notional stage. We pitched that "HLS" a couple times but mostly for getting big salvos of ASCMs from non-VLS hulls, and aside from handling/storage concerns we took up a lot of the aviation facilities.

As for parking mobile SAMs, unless they get CEC or a waiver for radiating, or don't need more than a data link cue from the ship to engage, that's a non-starter for systems requiring active emitters. There was some talk of 'containerizing' SM-x years ago but that's a long & heavy missile with a round that was designed for VLS (for which it's already containerized), and even if employed unless/until we put suitable combat systems on amphibs you'd need escorts to participate in CEC. So put the demand signal out there for VLS & AEGIS/EASR/similar on amphibs - we have a shipyard looking for ways to sell those self-escorting LPDs.

 

[SethB]

Army artillery guy here. At the risk of raising a necropost I'll add some color to the discussion. For reference, the units I served in used HIMARS and MLRS.

I have no idea why the Marines want to shoot off ships. It doesn't really make sense to me.

The M31 GMLRS rockets cost about $98,000 per unit. TLAMs are 13x-19x the cost depending on which source is correct. For that money you are delivering a 52.5 pound warhead. This is one of those cases where more isn't always better. You can deliver that explosive right next to US troops. In fact, the WOs (Army Warrant Officers do targeting and select munitions) tell me that the GMLRS can be delivered more closely than any other munition. So if you have troops pinned down and you want to blow up a building, this is your top choice. Excalibur (a 155MM guided projectile) is just as accurate, but it has a higher per unit cost and only about 8 pounds of explosive.

The next generation warhead will deliver pre formed tungsten fragments. They'll be able to chew up armored vehicles just as well as people.

ATACMS is on the way out but will be replaced with something of similar capability. The big thing ATACMs brings to the field is that it is ideal for shooting time sensitive targets (TSTs) and pre-ATO fires. It works really well when you don't have a plane overhead.