The Gun Counter

Back in my bad old cavalry days of feeding the main guns of our M1 steeds, 105mm practice rounds were about $2000 each, HEAT rounds were about $4000 each and APFSDS rounds were about $8000 each. The US Army transitioned to M1A1s with 120mm smoothbores just before I left active duty. That's approaching 30 years ago, so I'm sure the rounds cost at least 4 times those numbers today.

Here's the USMC bragging about burning two barrels per gun and 35,000 rounds of 155mm ammo to kill ISIS fighters "by the dozens"

http://www.businessinsider.com/m777-how ... -combat-13

"In five months they fired 35,000 artillery rounds on ISIS targets, killing ISIS fighters by the dozens," Troxell said.

Those 155mm howitzer rounds have to cost as much, if not more than, tank main gun rounds. Let's say $30,000 each (M982 rounds are $70,000 each https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur). That's over $1 billion of our taxpayer dollars just for ammo.

Back in my bad old days, a US Army artillery battery was about 150 men. An artillery battalion was about 3 or 4 gun batteries and a HHC. My CAV troop, almost 200 men, burned about $50,000 in payroll and about $15,000 in food every week. Again, that was 30 years ago, so multiply by 4. We also burned about $100,000 in fuel for every week in the field, but I figure artillery doesn't move as much as we did. That comes out to about $25 million to keep a battalion in the field for 5 months (men are cheap). Let's figure about 5x that number of support troops (supply, medical, transportation, etc.) to keep those guys in the field for 5 months (I'm being generous - the US Army was about 10 ash-and-trash troops for every trigger puller), so another $125 million.

Total cost: about $1.2 billion USD

Let's say "dozens" means 5 dozens of ISIS fighters - if it was more than that, he would have said "hundreds". That's 60 ISIS fighters killed.

That comes out to $20 million USD for every ISIS fighter killed.

Theyre not firing the smart rounds in that volume its good ole HE. So, probably mid 4 figures for m795?

An artillery battery will burn far less fuel than an American tank company simply by virtue of not having turbine engines. And Marine FA batteries are, AFAIK, all towed, so they don't even have tracked vehicles.

Not sure exactly how the Marines organize their FA units. An Army 155 battery, whether M777 or M109, will have 2 firing platoons with 3 guns each. That number of guns worked fine for counter-insurgency. Be interesting to see if the re-emergence of emphasis on fighting the Russians or ChiComs, and using mass fires, results in increasing the number of guns per platoon and/or the number of firing platoons per battery.

I'm going to assume that Marine unit has the new M777, not the old M198. Not sure how the barrel life compares between the two.

But HTRN is right - at those volumes, they're firing stanard HE and WP/smoke. (Possibly DPICM, but supposedly we're not using cluster munitions anymore. Maybe it's a spendex?) And if they're using M198s, they're for sure not shooting Excalibur rounds, since the M198 lacks the capability.

Langenator wrote:But HTRN is right

I never get tired of hearing that.

HTRN wrote:

Langenator wrote:But HTRN is right

I never get tired of hearing that.

Well, yeah, but we might get tired of saying that.

TheArmsman wrote:

HTRN wrote:

Langenator wrote:But HTRN is right

I never get tired of hearing that.

Well, yeah, but we might get tired of saying that.

My wife and I have a running joke that the sweetest words in the English language are "yes dear, you were right".

Sorry for the necromancy, but I owe my USMC brethren an apology.

I disparaged their effectiveness when I calculated that they spent $20 million per ISIS fighter killed.

However, they beat the US Army and US Air Force combined. In Afghanistan, US military is spending $300 million per year per Al Qaeda chased, not killed.

Your tax dollars at work: https://www.zerohedge.com/article/more- ... fghanistan

U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country.

With 100,000 troops in Afghanistan at an estimated yearly cost of $30 billion, it means that for every one al Qaeda fighter, the U.S. will commit 1,000 troops and $300 million a year.

Time to send in the Marines.

Hence, why, despite my unease about it, for this kind of stuff, it makes more sense to hire it out.

Given what you're average backwoods goofball will do for a $5/hide raccoon pelt, pretty sure there'd be all manner of craziness for $10mill per verified Al Quaeda or Taliban.

BDK wrote: ↑Sat Mar 16, 2019 4:34 pm Hence, why, despite my unease about it, for this kind of stuff, it makes more sense to hire it out.

Given what you're average backwoods goofball will do for a $5/hide raccoon pelt, pretty sure there'd be all manner of craziness for $10mill per verified Al Quaeda or Taliban.

For $10 Million and with a letter of Marqui, I could get backers and get together a group of 8-10 guys trained up and go over with them. After the initial training, etc of sunk costs, the rest is gravy. Pay an annual salary of $200k per field op and $125K for support people. I take all bounty on the first confirmed kill, then take a 70% house split of each confirmed kill after that. Crew bounty split is slanted towards shooters . On a crew of 6 shooters and 4 support people:
second kill $7 mill house -- shooter salary plus $350k - support - salary plus $225k.

Or do it with less out front capital and pay a much higher bounty / commission, although $350k and $225k would probably get more than a few hundred interested parties with no base pay.

If you offer $10 mill per scalp, you would have to ban it without a letter of marqi or you would have 1000 groups over there vying for scalps.

Drop me a line when you start putting together the Intel/Commo support

(Honestly not physically up for the shooter side anymore )