Indirect Fire Support in Small Wars

[jkm_101_fso]

I hold a deep afinity, appreciation, and respect for the Field Artillery. I have been on both the receiving end as well as the delivery end, I have been a fire supporter at Platoon through Brigade level, I have commanded a firing battery, and I am a member of the Order of St. Barbara.

These are hard times for the field artillery.

I do believe quite strongly that it would be criminally short-sighted to drive a stake through the heart of "The King of Battle" (a title earned, not bestowed by some poet) based upon an assessment drawn solely from the GWOT-driven, COIN-based operations of recent years.

In COIN one is in a competition with the insurgent to earn the support of the populace. (and in FID one is working to assist the HN COIN force to regain the support of the populace). This does not create a huge role for artillery, that is really good at delivering massive death and destruction, but not so much at handling a populace with kid gloves as one deals rather surgically with the insurgent himself. A Pred armed with a hellfire is great for that. Allows that BN CDR from the comfort of his CP to PID the insurgent personnally that is pinning down his guys, and give the order and then watch the insurgent vaporize in a flash of fire.

In conventional warfare between states, however, one is out to crush the will of the other fellow's populace to continue to support his war-like ways. For this, and for disrupting and defeating large military formations, there is no substitute for field artillery.

Know the nature of the war you are in today to be sure; but also be wise enough to recognize that that does not somehow translate into the war you might be asked to wage tomorrow. America must reconstitute and re-train its artillery and armor forces to both deter, and defeat if necessary, the major threats to our nation. A right-sizing of our current ongoing FID operations will help make that feasible.

Great post, Sir.

As a current battery commander, I appreciate you recognizing the complexities of not only our missions in combat, but training for those missions, as well.

My battery just fielded our Guns; we go to certify the sections next month and platoons in April. After that, we will transition to train for our mission(s) downrange. The men are fired up to smell some wolf pussy this spring; but not disheartened that they must train to be infantrymen, as well.

The current state of the Field Artillery, in my opinion, is pretty strong. Our artillerymen understand (and have understood for a while now) that the Army needs us to be multi-functional and flexible.

I continue to tell my men one thing: We might not be the best infantry company in the brigade, but we are sure as #### going to be the best firing battery. Truth be told, I stole that line from an old battalion commander of mine, but I love it because it’s the truth.

There is no doubt that the core competency of our Officers, NCOs and Soldiers has degraded over the past eight years. Frankly, we don’t get to shoot as often as we would like or as often as we need to. But there just isn’t time. Not if we are going to train for everything that we are asked to do.

And every day, another wealth of knowledge in the form of a CSM, 1SG or SFC retires. That knowledge is lost forever. Our young NCOs and officers have a lot on their plate and have had for some time. I am confident in their ability, but I somewhat fear the day that we are asked to be the Field Artillerymen that we were on September 10, 2001. In my opinion, we aren’t there…but we can be.

However, it should be recognized that our branch is now full of seasoned officers and NCOs that have been asked to do everything, and in most cases, done it quite well. What we lack in technical ability, we make up for in tenacity, confident decision making and maturity.

[sullygoarmy]

I've seen some interesting dynamics here in Baghdad with regards to using IDF or trying to at least. The unit replaced pushed hard to fire ground burst illum missions to "discourage" insurgents from conducting ISF attacks on US bases. Even though all the ground owners argued against it, including their FSOs, the Brigade won and started conducting ground burst illum missions on the fringes of Baghdad, in areas where no historical points of origin occurred! The results: two burned down farms, and one animal killed due to a falling canister. Prior to these missions, there hadn't been any IDF attacks in a while. Immediately following, several US bases took incoming.

Seems to me we tried bringing a knife (or a flare) to a gunfight and lost. We are still trying to conduct consequence management from those missions a few weeks ago. Yes, the artillery got to fire. No, it had no deterrent effect on the enemy and managed to piss everyone off.

I am all for the devastating effects of artillery and nothing warms this Scout's heart like a GLMLRS strike. That being said, the application of indirect, be it mortars or artillery, needs to be tied to an effect the ground owner both needs and wants. Otherwise, we are just wasting both ordnance and wasta.