“The audacity of the wheeled cannon is the maximum efficiency,” Beaudouin told Defense News. “You sacrifice nothing in terms of firepower, rate of fire, precision and range, and you’ve got a truck, armored all the same, but which is able to be nimble, which is very stealthy.”

Beaudouin was part of the French Army’s decision to buy an upgraded Caesar, so he might be suspected of bias toward wheels. But at least nine other countries, including the U.K. and Germany, decided to invest in self-propelled wheeled howitzers in the past year. Analysts said the Ukrainian experience is driving military planners’ interest.

Interest in wheeled self-propelled artillery flows from a desire for a “much higher degree of mobility and survivability” than towed guns, said Daniels. Military staff who see wheels as an attractive option over tracks “often define survivability in a broader way, as opposed to seeing it purely from the physical protection offered by onboard armor,” he added.

“Ukrainian use of shoot-and-scoot artillery fire suggests that the future lies in highly mobile artillery, be they tracked or wheeled,” Jones said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14513149/Russia-nightmare-Ukraine-best-artillery-guns.html

  • cabb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    12 days ago

    Franco-Prussian war had 2 million on French side and 1.5 million on Prussian side and resulted in an overwhelming Prussian victory per Wikipedia

    • Olap@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Excellent TIL. A really interesting figure on wikipedia also says the Prussians had a bigger actual peak mobilised figure which tells the tale of why artillery is so effective too. They massacred the French and so they had to mobilise more people