Jack Linthicum wrote in
:

On Mar 21, 10:41*am, Andrew Chaplin
wrote:
Jim Wilkins wrote in news:06e4c642-660b-43ad-ab48-
:

On Mar 21, 9:35*am, Andrew Chaplin
wrote:
Jim Wilkins wrote in
news:403ede79-f9c2-4ed1-9568- ...

[Generally, however, if you're firing smoke to mark a target,
you're dealing with a target that doesn't require smart ammo.]

Good point. I was thinking of gun positions concealed on a rocky
hillside, able to target laser flashes and kill the designator.

Few if any service lasers "flash," at least not in the visible light
spectrum. Laser designators are usually on only from the report of
"Splash" -- about five seconds. It is a challenge to bring fire to
bear before the guys with the laser f*** off.

If you're talking indirect fire artillery, gun positions are never to
be dealt with lightly; you need a counter-battery policy, the basis
of which should usually be "go big or stay quiet" lest you attract
unwelcome attentions. If you're dealing with DF arty, talk to your
nearest tankie.

I'm old school, so if I were bringing in air on guns as you describe,
I would use some sort of load with DPICM submunitions. Those are not
precision weapons and fitting GPS or other targeting aids to them
when you can observe the target is, well, a waste of time and money.

(My own government has sworn off DPICM because of its tendency to
leave UXO all over the show, a policy I think ill-advised. A better
idea would be to go with a bomblet with an extremely low probability
of landing blind.)

Or timed self-dee

They had already tried that and it didn't work reliably. The DPICM
bomblets were, I think, too small for a mechanism that would have done
the trick, having a volume of only about 0.1 litres. Artillery-delivered
minelets are large enough for such mechanism, but they are not (properly)
used to suppress.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)