“The audacity of the wheeled cannon is the maximum efficiency,” Beaudouin told Defense News. “You sacrifice nothing in terms of firepower, rate of fire, precision and range, and you’ve got a truck, armored all the same, but which is able to be nimble, which is very stealthy.”

Beaudouin was part of the French Army’s decision to buy an upgraded Caesar, so he might be suspected of bias toward wheels. But at least nine other countries, including the U.K. and Germany, decided to invest in self-propelled wheeled howitzers in the past year. Analysts said the Ukrainian experience is driving military planners’ interest.

...

Interest in wheeled self-propelled artillery flows from a desire for a “much higher degree of mobility and survivability” than towed guns, said Daniels. Military staff who see wheels as an attractive option over tracks “often define survivability in a broader way, as opposed to seeing it purely from the physical protection offered by onboard armor,” he added.

...

“Ukrainian use of shoot-and-scoot artillery fire suggests that the future lies in highly mobile artillery, be they tracked or wheeled,” Jones said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14513149/Russia-nightmare-Ukraine-best-artillery-guns.html

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[–] Olap@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago (15 children)

Never let a good line get in the way of statistics

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1342260/wwii-mobilization-by-country/

The Red Army was double the Germans, who had to fight on two fronts. Troops win wars. Artillery wins battles.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (13 children)

No... having more countries as allies against a weaker foe wins wars?

If I had to choose between being allies with someone with a bunch of artillery shells and cannons and someone with lots of troops I would pick the person with the artillery every single damn time if raw power was all I cared about.

easy

Especially if those are just conscripts or general military grunts without much combat training, than I will definitely take the artillery instead.

Also don't shit on the Russians by making it seem like they won WW2 on blind numbers of troops alone, if you think Russians didn't at least used to intimately understand the role of artillery in mechanized warfare you are fooling yourself. The entire Russian mechanized blitz is built around there being MLRS trucks hanging around that are waiting for your forces to amasse a resistance to the Russian armored column and take a stand... at which point you and the 1km grid around you no longer exists anymore and the Russian column continues.

No, artillery is the most important part of mechanized warfare, this isn't up for debate.

[–] Olap@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago (12 children)

I think you need to go back and revisit to Sun Tzu. Without troops no war can be won. Now I'm not saying Artillery isn't important, but Artillery alone will not win a war. Is there any war where a numerically inferior army has won? And I don't mean individual battles, of which there are most certainly examples, a full campaign. The closest I can find is the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War which it should be noted the Red Army got want it fought for, just at enourmous cost

[–] cabb@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Franco-Prussian war had 2 million on French side and 1.5 million on Prussian side and resulted in an overwhelming Prussian victory per Wikipedia

[–] Olap@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Excellent TIL. A really interesting figure on wikipedia also says the Prussians had a bigger actual peak mobilised figure which tells the tale of why artillery is so effective too. They massacred the French and so they had to mobilise more people

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