DF New Equipment

[sledger]

Reading the DF Annual Report it seems that extra Steyr rifles have been purchased along with STANAG HF Radios, AMSTAR Ground Surveillance Radars, APC's, Trucks, NBC, PC9 aircraft etc, etc, and €3.9 million is to be spent by 2004 on 60 mm mortars. I assume that these are a new model of mortar as the current one must be ancient at this stage? anyone know anything?

[yellowjacket]

As far as I know, the new 60mm is the Vektor long barreled mortar from South Africa.

[Goldie fish]

Where is this report available to view? Is it online?

[ias]

Annual Report

It's on military.ie!


IAS

[Goldie fish]

Great help..now I have to go all the way to that site and look for it myself,instead of some decent sould posting a link here so I dont have to bother..:p

[ICUN]

http://www.military.ie/images/ann_re...ort%202002.pdf

There's a link to it on the homepage of military.ie

[paul g]

Mortars

Is it the M-6 version that's being acquired, if it is, that says something about the future of the 81mm as an infantry weapon.

[John P Hannon]

81mm is a great weapon,shyte,was on the receiving end once.It was orright as it was 'friendly' fire....
Hanno

[Come-quickly]

Is that AMSTAR or M-star?, the Brits use M-star and it's something we really need, along with more than 12 actual guns.
The M-star is needed for directing counter baterry fire, a must for Balkans type ops.

[sledger]

AMSTAR
Man Portable Surveillance and Target Acquisition Radar
Manufactured by Thales

It is the updated version of the UK MSTAR for the Australian Army.

AMSTAR is a modern lightweight man portable radar which meets the peacetime and battlefield surveillance requirements of observer and reconnaissance elements of infantry, armour and artillery forces. The radar performance is optimised for operation against targets as widely varying as personnel, vehicles, in-shore vessels and low flying helicopters.
Surveillance up to 42 km
Automatic detection and classification
Registration and correction of artillery and mortar fire
Embedded DIGEST compliant V MAPS with integrated DTED
Intuitive MOTS based HMI
Integration to C3 systems
Full ILS infrastructure
Key Parameters

Typical ranges (single scan at 9°/s)
- Pedestrian: 11 km
- Vehicle: 22 km
- Tank: 26 km
- Helicopter: 21 km
- Boat: 13 km
- Vessel: 42 km

[paul g]

Amstar isn't a counter battery radar, which would be something more like ARTHUR from Ericsson.


they've got more than 12 L-118, though not enough.

[John P Hannon]

CRIKEY!!!!!! NO one is safe on a battlefield,lets call the next war off now.Maybe Iraq was a side show to test these new devices and weapons?
Hanno

[Come-quickly]

Oh yeah I forgot they bought 6 more in 99, I'm sitting here looking at a recently published and militarily accurate book that says M-Stars were used for directing CB fire in the Balkans, although I think they are refferring to its role in making their artillery more accurate by detecting fall of shot.

[ias]

C-Y,

When you say "they bought 6 more in 99", I assume you talking of 105s?

If so they bought an additional 12 by all accounts (Dail Eireann, UN etvc.) - I know big deal, still if the bought the new mount from RDM and some Load Carrier versions of the MP44 (Bushmaster) or MP66 from Timoney they could have quite a mobile little force (along with some 120 mm mortars).


IAS

[Come-quickly]

I thought six, buit if you're probably right but if we have twenty four who actually uses them?
As far as I know only one FAR actually has them