There are systems like Archer that fire and move long before the shell lands, but its still ratcheting up?
A defense system in nullification phase needs to know really one thing: Bearing. Once it knows the direction to the incoming munitions, it fills the air along that direction with metal as quickly as possible. Some distance information is important for timing and relative velocity is important for acquisition of targets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS
Now, I speak from relative ignorance of a whole bunch of possible technologies that actually could back-project and actively sense shooters. I'd welcome an education on that. I base my assumptions on the "payload" model that most military aquistions take, in which you can't necessarily do the integrated sensing, computation, and real-time display that would be required to back-project an incoming shell or rocket onto local topology to provide an actionable estimate of the firer's location. I'm less skeptical of close-in / nonballistic, especially given TFA's claims, and very skeptical of longer-range / ballistic attacks.
On this, I'm fascinated by the smart-munitions arms race described in the future pistol duels from Count to a Trillion, where a series of countermeasures, decoys, and guided munitions would be pre-loaded in an attempt to outsmart your opponent.
The max effective range of a M1A2 is 3,500m. Max effective range of a Howitzer (155) is 18,000m.
You don't set up artillery where you'll be overrun by tanks.
People ITT talking about using the tank main gun as counter bat are confusing indirect fire with direct. Tanks cannot elevate the main gun like artillery (unless we're talking about mobile artillery).
When infantry kills tanks (not using air or fire support) usually requires near line of sight for targeting (TOW, Javelin). If you shoot and scoot you're still within the max effective range of the main gun (but hopefully outside max effective range for the coaxial). Therefore, if the APS gives the TC (tank commander) a POO (point of origin) he's going to swing the main gun around and blast them, as there's little cover you can find that will protect you from a tank round.
These TOW jockeys in Syria get such good kills on video because they're near max effective range for the TOW, in daylight (everything in the desert has roughly the same surface temp) challenging the sensors, shooting at old ass tanks. Count the flight time of the TOWs you see in those videos. Look where they're shooting from. Look what they're shooting at!
> The system functions as follows. The observer determines the target location (e.g. map coordinates or bearing and distance from their own position), ensures that their laser target designator can 'mark' the target and requests or orders a fire mission against the target using Krasnopol. A gun is then aimed at the target location and a guided shell is fired. The firing unit uses their 1A35K command device to send a signal via a communications link confirming the firing of the projectile to the 1A35I observation post device with the observer. The laser target designator is then used to illuminate the target and the in-flight projectile detects the radiant laser energy reflected by the target and the navigation system steers the shell towards the point of greatest incident energy—the designated target with top attack pattern. The iris of the optical seeker head is protected by a cap which is ejected by a mechanical timer upon firing.
Low visibility conditions are of course a deterrent against this type of attack.
> The laser target designator is then used to illuminate the target and the in-flight projectile detects the radiant laser energy reflected by the target and the navigation system steers the shell towards the point of greatest incident energy—the designated target with top attack pattern
I think means that the shell basically hits where the drone-laser points at any one moment, not where the drone-laser was pointing when the shell was first fired. Which means that if the target moves then the laser can still remain focused on it for the shell to hit said target, even if the target is moving.
But at 30Km range even a classic shell becomes hard to precisely track. A guided shell just makes it worse. At long range a counter shot would basically be a blind shot because the target area is large enough to be considered unacceptable.
Then it's an artillery vs artillery battle, and the side with the best artillery wins (ignoring for the moment airspace superiority), which only adds to the point that tanks are mostly obsolete, they're not part of the conversation at all. I do agree that tanks do look cool and that they create more jobs and help preserve more technical know-how in times of peace, but out on today's fronts it looks like they're not as needed as before.
The counter-battery fire uses radar to calculate where incoming shells are fired from and shoots at that point.
But now the original artillery tries to move away from that point before the counter fire hits it.
That counter fire isn't laser guided.
Is the counter-fire mobile as well? Has it moved from its original point of counter-fire?
If not, there's only a couple rounds of this before counter-fire ends.
Or the counter-fire is protected by a C-RAM system like Phalanx, Iron Dome, MANTIS, or Porcupine/DRACO.
Every counter has a counter. It's turtles all the way down.