Martyrs Brigade in Syria has 120 mm. mortars

 
You can pick this thing up after you have fired, toss it in the back of a pick up truck and be far gone before the counter-battery fire arrives whether that counter-battery fire radar is the German "Cobra" or not.  pl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1938_mortar 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyfpHrq8Bw8

Comments

[par4]

Col. Why is the shell at the end of the video marked with the English/Latin alphabet instead of Cyrillic? It states they are Russian made and stolen from the Syrian Army.

[Tyler]

They could take all the time in the world they wanted to boresighting, running poles, etc because the timer doesn't start until the round goes for a trip. Three men in a pick up truck could break it down under 15 seconds and be gone before the Fire Direction Control even begin to crunch numbers.

How's Turkish gunnery? Maybe they're spoilers, like NK with its light infantry, but I don't seem them catching anyone with steel rain before the gunners were long gone.

[turcopolier]

par4

I dunno. Made for export maybe? from some other manufacturer Dunno. I would think that a 120 mm. morter round for a smoothbore gun would work in just about any mortar of that caliber. pl

[oofda]

Could it also be Chinese- the type 53 120mm mortar based on the Russian model?

[turcopolier]

oofda

Sure. I thought a 120 mm would have the right range and be light enough but pack enough punch, and sure enough, the buggers have at least one. pl

[Peter]

Being an Imagery Thingie person and a fleet sailor gunner, your earlier posts about mortars was enlightening about the utility of mortars. That is an eye opener about the availability of rounds just needing to be 120mm. I imagine this weapon is widely available if you have the cash.

[turcopolier]

peter

If I am wrong someone will correct me. I had an 81 mm. section (three guns) as a lieutenant and then a 4.2 inch rifled mortar section for a few months. I love mortars, the poor man's artillery. pl

[Tyler]

Sir,

No, you're right. A batt's section will be three guns, while a company will have two 60s in the light/airborne world.

[Tyler]

Mortars are amazing. The amount of firepower that a team of two men can bring to the fight, as well as round utility (smoke, illum, marking) can be an eye opener.

Our biggest fight was always with junior PLs who wanted us to leave our guns in the FOB when we patrolled and just use us as dismounts. Never happened, and all it took was a few rounds downrange to end an ambush, but still another example of the Big Army hating on specialists.

High angle hell!

[walrus]

120mm aerodynamic AE round, can't tell who made it, but English writing suggests its for export.

[Allen Thomson]

Yes, and to briefly obsess on something I've been obsessing about for the last while, what happens when 120 mm PGM mortar rounds become commodity items? Set up, fire a round in the direction of the target that hits the target with 90% probability, move on.

http://www.army.mil/article/54502/

[turcopolier]

Allen Thompson

These would be lazer designated? pl

[The Twisted Genius]

As an infantry company weapons platoon leader, I also had an 81mm mortar section consisting of three tubes. This was in addition to a section of two TOW systems. The FOs were still organic to the platoon at the time. The battalion mortar platoon had four 4.2 inch mortars. Because of the rifling, the "four deuce" was amazingly accurate. I was fortunate in having MG Willard Scott as Division Commander at the time. He was an artilleryman, but he absolutely adored mortars. He directed us to train like we were at war, especially during our month long stays on the Big Island. My section once fired an over 30 minute FPF in support of a company night live fire exercise. We fired off HE and WP with one tube doing the illumination. We ended up burning out one tube, but we totally outshot a full battery of 105s. Even the artillery battalion commander agreed. When the report of survey was conducted, General Scott directed that nobody in Charlie Company was going to pay for that tube. He said we were doing exactly what he wanted us to do.

[confusedponderer]

GPS guided: "Unlike the regular mortar round, the 120mm PGMM has a Global Positioning System and can hit a target location within 10 meters or less."

I wonder whether GPS jamming can deteriorate accuracy, and to what extent.

[The Twisted Genius]

Sounds like they are GPS guided. I don't know exactly how that would work. Programmed with the target coordinated in the gun pit?

[The Twisted Genius]

Wow! Sounds like the infantry battalion lost tubes since my day, although the firepower is probably the same.

[Tyler]

Its interesting that they GPS guide the shells, cause we were using Stryker mounted 120s with GPS guidance and we registered in one round every time.

Probably saves them the cost of having to refit the old M113s with GPS systems, but still.

[Tyler]

I reckon so, though with the 'arms room concept' that some BCs push, all the 11Cs belong to battalion, and they parcel out gun teams as needed instead of each commander having a 6 man 60mm mortar squad in their HQ company.

I still don't get why people push it, other than "the Rangers do it this way so should we!"

[turcopolier]

TTG

In my weapons platoon we had a section of 81s and a section of 2 106 rr. on jeeps. FWIW I think there is a limit to how high tech you want to get. What are the burdened costs of these mortars, shells and associated GPS gear? pl

[The Twisted Genius]

PL,

The 25th ID swapped out their 106s for the TOW jeeps about a year before I got there. We still had a pair of 90s in rifle platoons. The Marine Brigade still had the 106s mounted on mules. That "high technology" greatly curtailed live firing. While the mortars would regularly be firing off mountains of rounds, the TOW gunners had to vie for the few live TOW missiles given to the entire division every year. I liked the 90s and fell in absolute love with the 106s in Lebanon. It probably marks me as an old fart Luddite, but I like the low tech, manually operated stuff, too. When they took the organic mess teams out of the companies, that was the collapse of western civilization.

[Kunuri]

Quote from Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, from daily Radikal newspaper within the last hour-my translation for all here.

"Obviously, Turkey knows where an artillery round fired towards her own territory from 12 km away originated, by whom, and since it landed within our own territory and is in our possession, its specifics. This artillery round is a D30 type 122 mm artillery shell. Its address is known. And the piece that fired it is only and exclusively in the inventory of the Syrian Army."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/122_mm_howitzer_2A18_(D-30)

Politicians lie of course, but I go by this explanation until someone else has a better and more credible one.

[turcopolier]

kunuri

OK. If the Turks have this dud or pieces of the shell sufficient to identify it then the logic of saying the gun belongs to the SAA seems persuasive. Taking that as a given for moment, what would be the motivation of the SAA for firing into Turkish territory? Madness? Blood lust? What? pl

[Kunuri]

I had written earlier "... the firing was deliberate and targeted, not accidental, or ordered by an overambitious battery commander. In my opinion, Syrians were testing something, perhapse the Turkish resolve, perhaps attampting to terrorize civilians living along the border, and the refugees seeking safe haven in Turkey."

On its face value, it will be madness for Assad to draw Turkey in for a hot war. But a journalist who is very familiar with the situation in Syria was saying the other day, that Assad maybe so desparate that a hot war with Turkey may be preferable to the one he is raging at the moment, and that he may already have made up his mind to withraw to the Alawite redoubt by the sea. Border violations may have be to test how temperemental the Turks will be, and how does the public opinion shape in Turkey. Also, how supported, or lonely Turkey will be if indeed there is a hot war. He may even calculate that he may have a chance fighting the Turks alone-but not with US and NATO actually helping actively, on the ground. To me it was a public opinion poll. But the Turkish public is not biting and unless there is a really, really serious attack, there is no chance of Turkey going at it alone. If this remains just a cross border attrition war, each battery Turkish artillery destroys is one less that he can fire on the rebels and civilians.

[turcopolier]

kunuri

So, Assad wishes to increase the number of his enemies by drawing Turkey, the US and NATO into active operations against him? The rebels are not enough for him? He wishes to withdraw to a coastal strip that has no industry and in which his back will be to the sea, i.e., the US Navy? Think about it. pl

[Charles I]

What?pl

This is the kind of thing I've referred to in the past as a "banana peel". Whether you see it or not, if you wipe out on it, it doesn't matter what type it is, where it came from, who left it there, purposely or not. What matters is how bad the fall is, did you get seriously hurt, whattya gonna do about it?