Last time on Parvusimperator Picks a Self-Propelled Howitzer for Borgundy, I ended up going with the big, expensive Panzerhaubitze (PzH) 2000. I also eliminated wheeled vehicles out of the gate for concerns about capacity. Since it’s been a while since I’ve talked much about the Queen of Battle, I thought I’d revisit my procurement decision, because that’s loads of fun to write about and tend to be popular with you, dear reader. While available systems have not changed, let’s open the floor up. We will require protection for gunnery crews while firing, to simplify this a little¹. So let’s dig in.

First, I’m going to relax my tracked-vs-wheeled constraint. This is artillery. It’s a support vehicle. With the range of modern systems, it’s not critical that the system be a perfect match for tanks and IFVs. Also, trucks should have no trouble getting to wherever a wheeled system is. What is important is 155mm caliber, an L52 gun, and a careful look at how we might plan to use the system. Wheeled systems have advantages in lower maintenance costs, better mobility via roads, and generally better strategic mobility if you care.

Somewhat-recent events in the Donbas reminded us that artillery is a very effective killer, and that a reasonably sophisticated opponent will endeavor to use counterbattery radars to locate and destroy one’s own artillery. So we’re thinking hard about shoot-and-scoot. Let’s get on to some plausible contenders.

As before, we have the German PzH 2000. It’s well protected, tracked, and has an excellent capacity of 60 projectiles plus charges. It has a five round MRSI capability. On the downside, it’s expensive and the heaviest at 56 tonnes. Once its empty, it has to be reloaded in the usual, manual way.

We also have the Korean K9 Thunder. It’s tracked, with a capacity of 48 projectiles plus charges. It has a three round MRSI capability. It also is the only one available with an armored resupply vehicle, the K10. The K9 weighs about 47 tonnes. In its favor are the fact that the South Koreans are buying tons of these, and they have a nice upgrade roadmap. The currently available K9A1 improves the electronics and navigation systems over the previous model, and is the current standard if one was buying today. Samsung Techwin is also working on an A2 version with fully automated shell and propellant handling and a reduced crew. It should also feature an increased rate of fire.

There’s also the Swedish Archer system, which has a low capacity of 21 rounds, but has a very high degree of automation. Like the ill-fated Crusader, it has entirely automated handling of artillery rounds, propellant charge modules, fuse-setting, and primers. As a result, it has a best-available six-round MRSI capability. Weight is somewhere in the middle at 33 tonnes. It was supposed to have a resupply vehicle, but that got axed.

Finally, we have the Boxer RCH, which takes much of the gun from the PzH 2000 and mounts it in a fully automated turret on the back of a Boxer MRAV. It has low manning, but not much is available about it, because no one has bought any. This is one of many mountings of the Artillery Gun Module on various chassis, and the same system has also been mounted on an ASCOD 2 chassis.

We also have Denel’s G6, which saw combat in the border with Angola, and has been kept up to date by the scions of Gerald Bull’s Space Research Corporation. It’s a somewhat large wheeled vehicle, and builds on South African experience in making mine-resistant platforms. Current versions have improved fire control and ammunition handling, and are equipped with an L52 gun that has a chamber with 23L (JBMOU-compliant²) or 25L capacity. These are the G6-52 and G6-52L versions, respectively.

We have contenders. Let’s look at some salient characteristics in a chart. Note reloading rates, instead of time to completely reload. MRSI are the maximum number of rounds possible according to the manufacturer. Bursts are 3 rounds, as fast as I could find the manufacturer claiming they could shoot them.

On to some commentary. Archer was supposed to be a joint Swedish-Norwegian project, but the Norwegians pulled out. Digging through old defense magazine articles, Norwegian concerns were the low capacity with lack of automated resupply system, issues with too large a dispersion, and too high ground pressure. Archer has seen no export success, and seems to be expensive.

Recently, K9 has been seeing quite a bit of export success in Europe due to its very reasonable cost and favorable licensing terms, which is notably less than that of Panzerhaubitze 2000. It also beat the Mista-S in an Indian tender. Other export users include Norway, Finland, Estonia, Poland, and Turkey.

Despite the higher cost, Panzerhaubitze 2000 has also seen plenty of export success with other NATO members as well as Qatar. It also has an armor kit designed to protect it against DPICM-type submunitions that you might find in a counterbattery rocket artillery salvo, especially if your opponent is Russia.

And the Boxer RCH hasn’t been bought by anyone yet. Rumor has it that it’s the favorite with UK MoD in their upcoming procurement contest. That said, it’s quite heavy for a Boxer variant, and it needs a different engine.

Denel has a long history of working on long range V-LAP rounds, and the G6 can take advantage of this. The G6-52L can use its non-JBMOU chamber to fire the M9703 base-bleed/rocket-assisted EFRB VLAP projectile a distance of 73 km in tests. Which is best in class by far. Otherwise it’s a pretty solid option with good but not great capacity for ammunition.

At this point, I’m strongly considering the G6-52L. At least until we consider some other things. First, Denel’s own (old) marketing materials basically dropped the 25-liter chamber version, focusing on the version that is JBMOU compliant with JBMOU compliant ammunition. The G6-52 itself hasn’t been exported anywhere: Denel’s last export order was the regular G6 to Oman in the late 90s.

Also, all of the present ammunition development work is being done to getting more range out of a JBMOU-compliant gun system. So the range limitation of the other guns isn’t likely to last, and we’re not likely to see more good testing on the -52L version. As a result, I can’t go with it. Regrettably.

We’ve now come back to the choice I had last time, and my answer is the same. I prefer the better fire rate and submunition protection of the PzH 2000. Things to keep an eye on would be an aggressive price move from Samsung, or the rumored K9A2, which is supposed to include fully automated ammunition handling and reduced crew. If that keeps the reasonable stock of ammo, we’d prefer it, especially since it might also improve the rate of fire.

Let’s also take a brief moment to talk about the usual 800 lbs. gorilla in the room: the US Army. Having had a few M109 replacement programs terminated, they’re being quite a bit more conservative this time with a two-stage approach. The first stage, which has just entered production is the M109A7 upgrade, which replaces the M109’s powertrain with that of the M2 Bradley, and upgrades the suspension to handle more weight. Gun upgrades, as well as an automated ammunition loading system, are coming as part of the second stage. The gun is supposed to have an L58 barrel, so it should be pretty fun. For now, there’s not much worth looking at, unless one uses or plans to full-fleet Bradleys. It’ll probably be interesting to look at in the future, however.

The evolution of western 40mm grenade launchers is a bit of a back-and-forth affair. Initially, we had the M79, which is a single barrel, break-action weapon with its own wooden stock. Sort of an old shotgun given a huge dose of steroids. It was proven super effective in Vietnam, launching a very reasonable amount of high explosives with a minimum of setup. Of course there were drawbacks, especially due to the low rate of fire and limited amount of rounds that could be carried.

The first approach to fix this was called the “China Lake Grenade Launcher.” Taking yet more cues from shotguns, this was a pump-action grenade launcher, with a three-shot magazine for the fat 40mm rounds. Where the M79 weighed about 6 lbs empty and 6.5 lbs loaded, the China Lake launcher weighed 8.2 lbs empty and about 10.2 lbs loaded. Usage was mostly confined to Navy SEALs, who were generally fond of the weapon. The US Army was focused on its SPIW program, which would end up going nowhere. Unfortunately, that meant that the sensible China Lake launcher also went nowhere.

The other approach was the cheap and cheerful M203, an underbarrel launcher that attached to the rifleman’s M16. It’s much lighter at 3 lbs, but has a shorter effective range and makes the rifle a bit awkward to use. Also, the sights aren’t integral with the M203, which leads to more opportunities to lose or screw up a zero. Some standalone launchers were made starting in the 90s, but they never achieved much in the way of widespread use. The original M203 attaches to an M16A1 or M4 by means of a pair of barrel brackets. Some newer variations can be attached to picatinny rails instead.

Replacements to the M203 have been concerned with fixing some of its less than desirable traits, chief among them the inability to use longer ammunition. The US Army’s replacement for the M203, the HK M320¹ does this by means of a side-opening action. It also has an integrated grip to facilitate standalone usage, and has integral sights. These don’t have to be rezeroed if the launcher is moved between rifles or attached to the stock kit. However, the M320 is a bit heavier than the M203. The integrated pistol grip and included vertical folding foregrip seem to indicate that the M320 is optimized for standalone use.

The big competitor to the M320 is FN’s EGLM, which had an extension to move the trigger down where it could be fired from the rifle’s regular grip using the middle finger of the rifleman. Extensions are available for both 5.56 magazines and 7.62 NATO magazines. The EGLM can also accommodate longer rounds, but does not have integral sights. Also, like the M320, it has a double action trigger. This is marketed as giving second strike capability, but I really don’t think that’s all that important given that you aren’t using super old grenades.

So let’s get to picking. There are a bunch of other grenade launchers out there that are marketed in packages to go with various other service rifles, but that’s not a big deal to us M4 users in Borgundy. And when I go looking for fancy rounds that you can’t fit in an M203, I mostly get a bunch of “less-than-lethal” options². Great if you’re the LAPD, but I don’t really see the utility for standard issue to the infantry. The other thing that you can load in the EGLM and the M320 is the Pike missile, which is a pretty cool laser guided mini missile with about 2,000 m of range. However, that’s quite a bit of reach for the regular grenadier in the rifle squad, given that the standard 40mm round has an effective range of about 400 m. Again, it seems kind of a niche weapon. Great for special forces. I’ve also mentioned that I’m not buying the second strike argument as anything anywhere close to necessary. The M79 and M203 don’t have that, and soldiers have been using those effectively in combat since the 1960s. And at the end of the day, the venerable M203, even with the picatinny rail adapter, is going to be way cheaper than the competition.

So we’ll go with the M203A2 (or equivalent; the M203 is a widely licensed system), which has the picatinny rail attachments. We’d want to purchase the stock kits to go with these as well, since we’d expect³ these to be used more often in the standalone configuration as long as we can keep that configuration reasonably compact and light.

We should also talk about the the Milkor MGL (M32 in US Service), which is sort of like a successor to the China Lake Launcher idea, albeit from South Africa. It has a six-round, revolver-style magazine. Clearly, it’s trading weight for capacity. An M203 in standalone configuration weighs a bit less than 5 lbs unloaded, depending on options.⁴ The six-shot M32 weighs 15.4 lbs unloaded. And that revolver magazine makes for a pretty bulky gun. Anyway, I’m kind of skeptical of the M32, given that the grenadier is still likely to have to carry a carbine in addition to it. At least the rounds it fires actually work, unlike the XM25. I think it would be reasonable to procure some M32s, but I’m not really sure where to put them in the TO&E. Probably in the back of a vehicle somewhere.

And there you have it. Cheap and cheerful launchers for cheap and cheerful grenades. In terms of basis of issue, I think two per squad is a pretty reasonable choice.