M109A3 155mm DPICM Barrage: Combat Mission Cold War 

Not if a bomblet lands in your foxhole

@@usuallyhapless9481I’d encourage you to talk to the designers of World at War 85 (boardgame). They did a lot of research and determined that DPICM was a lot less effective than HE due to a high dud rate plus the small explosive power of each bomblet. Basically the shit never worked right. HE was vastly more effective vs tanks in particular. This was a little shocking to me but they have an entire article from a professional artillery publication to back it up.

The problem that clusters suffered form was they were essentially built for the last war where troops were more likely to have to move around using light armoured vehicles or on foot (you can guess what a large cluster barrage like this could do to a platoon walking alongside tanks or hung out in soft trucks or open topped half tracks). Problem is by the time they were coming into use military had adapted to the new times. In this war you’ll find enclosed IFV and APC with a good bit of hull to stop light shrapnel and small arms. In addition, instead of plan these barrages to engage potentially slow moving infantry formations crossing fords, rivers or even fields and tree clusters, your now dealing with tracked and wheeled vehicles that while ain’t the quickest in the world are considerably faster than it takes to walk across a field vs drive across it. It’s kind of what lead into the development of cluster mines and such. As while you can struggle to land hundreds of shots directly on a target to even knock it out, scattering dozens of lethal packages across the ground is surprisingly alot more effective and terrifying for all involved.

​@@reecedignan8365this is from Combat Mission Cold War, there's plenty of the lighter vehicles you spoke about still running about, and even IFVs get penetrated by DPICM afaik.

@@reecedignan8365 I though this sounded strange so I went to look it up, the 155 DPICM has a armor penetration of 63mm RHA, it will absolutely penetrate the top armor of most vehicles, ergo the "dual purpose" in the name. You need full on modern tanks to defend against that.

@@sproge2142 But that’s the main problem in getting direct hits on target. Even shown here on static vehicles only 1 took a penetration that caused it to peel off, the other two were still crewed and from the looks in operation by the end. And when you’re dealing with armoured motorised and mechanised troops you don’t have that long to get several volleys off before they’ve breached through engagement zone and pushed through. The majority of clusters as even found in real life fell close to the vehicles and peppered them with shrapnel for days but direct and disabling hits were quite rare especially worse when it comes to mobile targets.

​@@reecedignan8365 Worth considering the fact that DPICM wasn't necessarily designed to be a great anti-armor weapon, just a much better anti-armor weapon than conventional artillery. In that perspective, it succeeds pretty well and massively reduces the amount of ammunition required to knockout AFV formations. It's also worth noting that CM is very good, but it isn't real life. In actual Assault Breaker operations these rounds would be combined with radar spotting, large caliber surface-to-surface fire, precision weapons and traditional high explosive artillery for much more effect. That wouldn't make for particularly balanced gameplay though.

War is fked up, if want good result on combat and want to tear down your enemy? you will ended up call more fire mission battery. that won't be surprise some of their shell and bomb was duds.

Yeah, surely a small bomb isn't enough to deal with the damage, but when being unlucky the small bomb landed on the head, it's dead already, perhaps small exploding endlessly, your ear was no more or you get deaf for a while.

It is Dual Purpose rather than Anti-Tank- I wouldn't want to standing next to a DPICM submunition when it goes off.

@@usuallyhapless9481 Fair enough, but if DPICM was going off around me I’d rather not be in the area to begin with. Yeah, that’s fair

Considering all the M113's are fine, it's not very compelling for that either, at least here in CM

Here comes the Sun(s)

@@arandomperson7713 yeah, and, cluster munition are coming, that why was raining.

Well, the next step is getting all the bomblets to function as PGMs. Which is a thing already, but not a very mass produced thing.

@@usuallyhapless9481yeah those smART or BONUS, as well as CBU 97/105.

It would be interesting to know how Regiments works it mechanically: designating a zone under DPICM fire and inflicting x damage to everything in the zone is very different to modelling all the bomblets

​@@usuallyhapless9481 Well, sir, that the game has a WIC/COH style quick call and immediate fire support, coupled with the area radius blast effect, it would definitely show better results than combat missions. I believe and consider it.

Even those Cluster bomb are just HE? any way to better? no, or maybe little but, wider spread and accuracy was not good, only to expected you got nothing or too few of result but except demoralize your enemy.

I know what you mean. DPICM definitely looks cooler though.

@@usuallyhapless9481 cant deny that, you get the bonus cool point

It appears that the effect of fragmentation on vehicles isn't modelled in CM. I assume, like you, that its far too demanding on the engine to calculate several thousand fragments of different sizes. It's easy to get around this with infantry by assigning a %age hit chance that varies by distance, but with vehicles its more important to calculate exactly what component gets hit which is... significantly more difficult.

Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition. Essentially, a warhead that replaces the usual unitary HE filling with anything up to hundreds of smaller bomblets. When the shell detonates in the air, these fly out over a wide area. The DP part comes from each bomblet having a tiny shaped charge in the nose, meaning they can poke holes in armour as well as shred infantry.