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| A pre-production CAESAR 155 mm SPG under test at the Bourges ETBS. © Jean-Michel Guhl |
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| The 155 mm gun breech flanked by the Sagem Défense Sécurité Sigma 30 computer on the right. © author |
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Nexter's CAESAR SPG
ready for French Army service
By Jean-Michel Guhl
in Bourges, France
France will deploy its first brand new half battery of Caesar 155 mm truck-mounted SPG this autumn in Lebanon in support of UNIFIL. The four guns will be the very first of the 68ème Régiment d'Artillerie d'Afrique from La Valbonne, located not far from Lyons.
By year’s end, a battery of eight Caesar self-propelled artillery vehicles of the 68ème RAA will be able to dispense, totally unseen and unheard in less than one minute, more than 1 ton of projectiles, 1,500 bomblets or 48 smart anti-tank munitions on targets at ranges up to 40km with less than a decametric precision even at night and in the worst weather conditions. A real technical feat.
The CAESAR truck-mounted artillery system (CAmion Equipé d’un Système d’ARtillerie) designed and developped by Nexter (formerly Giat) in cooperation with Renault Trucks Defense and the Lohr Group is a highly mobile 155mm 52-calibre self-propelled gun developed by Nexter of Versailles (formerly Giat) that can maintain a firing rate of six to eight rounds a minute in sustained fire with extreme precision. The first standard production system was delivered to the French Army’s ESAM in February of this year.
The Caesar artillery system historically evolved from the earlier Automouvant 155 AM F3 of the sixties highly successful automotive howitzer, which used the chassis of the AMX-13 light tank.
Caesar entered production in June 2006 after an initial batch of five systems was ordered by the French Army in December 2004. The first pre-production guns were delivered in June 2003 to the Délégation Générale pour l’Armement (DGA) for technical and operational evaluation at the Bourges ETBS and only in 2006 did Nexter get an order for a further 72 Caesar systems to equip eight land artillery batteries of the French Army (62 guns in total), mostly to replace towed TR F1 guns in standard artillery regiments and a single battery in AMX 30 AU F1 regiments. The contract actually is for 77 systems as it includes the refurbishment of the five pre-production systems and their updating using the new RTD (Renault Trucks Defense) 6x6 chassis. All will later go to the Ecole supérieure et d'application du matériel (ESAM) in Bourges and to the Ecole d’Artillerie in Draguignan for basic gun instruction and training.
The first production vehicle was delivered to the French Army in April 2007 for extensive test trials using a new RTD 5-man cabin as the initial narrow lozenge shaped 3-man armoured cabin of the Giat prototype is now discontinued and replaced by a choice of RTD Sherpa 5 or SOFRAME (Unimog) 6x6 off-road 14 to 15-ton flatbed truck chassis.
In April 2006 came the first export for the Caesar with Thailand placing an order for six systems for the Thai Army (to be delivered later in 2008). Three months later, during Eurosatory 2007, an (at that time undisclosed) order for 76 systems was placed by the Saudi Arabian National Guard, the praetorian guard of the Saudi monarchy. The Saudi Caesar are earmarked for delivery from 2009 onwards.
The Caear is equipped with all the subsystems needed for independent operation, a cabin to protect the 3 to 5-person gun crew against shell fragments and small arms fire. It has its own on-board ammunition supply of 16 complete 155 mm rounds and all necessary instrumentation for navigation, aiming, ballistic computing as well as command aids and cyphered radio systems. The Caesar which can fit a C-130H cargo hold was specifically designed to meet the fire support requirements of rapid deployment forces. Two will be carried head to tail onboard an Airbus A400M, thus allowing for projection of twice more firepower at a single time.
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| A pre-production CAESAR during test at the ETBS. © Nexter |
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The first three production Caesar have been delivered to the ESAM
in Bourges for further acceptance tests between February and April of
this year. These will soon go to the Ecole d'Artillerie in Draguignan
for field practice. Eight more will be delivered to the 68ème RAA in La
Valbonne to equip one battery with a half battery scheduled to go East
to add firepower to the UNIFIL forces deployed in South Lebanon since
the late summer of 2006. Some fifteen systems should be provided to the
French Army in 2008 and about twenty more in 2009.
Early NATO
evaluations have shown the Caesar 17-ton gun system (using an identical
52-calibre 155mm gun) to be extremely precise and far more adaptable
than the heavier 55-ton PzH 2000 now in use with the Dutch, German,
Greek and Italian land forces. Actually, the Caesar can travel
unrefuelled twice longer at twice the speed of the PzH 2000, a tank
considered a diplodocus by many experts, a Cold war era SPG largely
unsuited to support independently overseas European expeditionnary
forces with readily available airlift means other than those of the USA
or Russian Federation.
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| The French Army Caesars use a Renault Trucks Défense Sherpa 5 14-ton 6x6 chassis with a better-looking armoured cabin. © Jean-Michel Guhl |
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Highly automatised with an automatic
hydraulic laying system and a semi-automatic loading system, the
Caesar’s FAST-Hit computerised fire management system, developed
jointly by Nexter and EADS Defense Electronics, an Intertechnique ROB4
muzzle velocity radar system and a Sagem Sigma 31 navigation system and
Global Positioning System (GPS) are fitted so asto aleviate the need
for a dedicated topographical team and goniometer to be deployed at the
same time. Equipped with large plows, the gun can be set into and out
of action in less than one minute. The weapon system configuration and
the provision of hydraulic drives give a time of approximately half a
minute to take the Caesar out of battery thus avoiding all foe return
fire.
In French Army service, the Caesar will be fully
integrated with the Atlas artillery C4I system (developped by Thales
Land & Joint Systems) which provides onboard terminals for
communications and real-time firing sequence management including
fowarding of fire-support requests and transmission of firing orders to
each battery according to the type of targets earlier designated by
UAVs, scouts or recce parties.
Caesar is capable of using a
truly large range of ammunition for deployment against protected and
unprotected targets. The gun’s interoperability with NATO 39 and JB MoU
52 calibres is total allowing for easy field ammunition replenishment.
Caesar can fire conventional High Explosive (HE) or new generation
cargo rounds, which provide increased accuracy and terminal
effectiveness including the Franco-Swedish BONUS rounds (obus antichar
à effet dirigé) with smart submunitions which can be launched against
tanks and other types of medium and heavy armoured vehicles attacking
them through their softer roof armour.
The Ogre F1 (obus à
grenades) shell, which is in series production for the French Army, is
an anti-tank and fragmentation bomblet dispensing round for use against
relatively unprotected area targets such as command posts, artillery
batteries, light armoured vehicles or logistic sites. Ogre dispenses 63
bomblets, each fitted with a self-destruct mechanism. The bomblets are
capable of penetrating more than 90 mm of armour. A salvo of six Ogre
shells releases 378 bomblets to saturate an area of 3 hectares at a
range of 35 km.
With a clear view on export, in March 2004, Giat
Industries signed an agreement with BAE Systems (formerly United
Defense) to market the Caesar SPG in the USA. In September of that
year, the French company also placed a teaming agreement with ADI (now
Thales Australia) to offer Caesar to the Australian Army for its Land
17 Artillery Replacement programme. If needed, the Caesar gun system
can fit any available armoured 15-ton class flat bed. In the coming
years, further export contracts for the Caesar are expected, notably
from countries in Asia and the Middle-East (Bourges – 04-20-08)
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| The ancester of the Caesar: the Automouvant 155 mm F3 of the sixties. © Jean-Michel Guhl |
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