2010 Fires Seminar - Fort Sill, OK

[patmc]

patmc,

My understanding is that guns are no longer grouped into batteries by MVV, which means that using analog methods you will get an irregular sheaf. Is this effect noticeable in the field?

Seth, those words are music to my ears, but I haven't been near a cannon in half a decade. Someone closer to the powder has to answer that one for you. I still have my first MVV homework assignment. A lot of red pen on that one.

I should caveat what I wrote, you need to know BOTH digital and manual, which was how they taught gunnery. You learned manual, then applied it to digital. The majority of FA ops are digital because machines can crunch the big numbers fast. That said, you have to know what the computer is doing to ensure it gives you good data. You need to know what right sounds like. In my Fire Direction Center, we used AFATDS, a handheld computer and 2 charts. AFATDS accounted for Met, powder temp, elevation, etc... We confirmed it was in the right neighborhood with the charts and handheld, but shot the AFATDS data. You always want the most accurate data because mistakes can kill. Our Battery Commander trusted us to shoot off charts when needed, though.

I believe a Field Artillery Officer should know manual gunnery because it is the backbone of everything else. Assuming they'll learn it with OJT or OPDs will fail. Try reading FM 6-40 or a TFT for self improvement. OBC is unpleasant, but you learn it. "Just trust the FDNCO" is good, but you still need to verify. My SSG was really good, but I still had to give the fire commands and it was my ass if the data was bad. The fact that we both knew gunnery made ops smooth and we got along great.

[Pete]

When I went through FAOBC in 1978 we were taught manual gunnery first and later using computers, then FADAC, a Vietnam-era system. My Advanced Course in 1981 was the first one to be taught TACFIRE, another obsolete gunnery computer. Back around 9/11 when most Army publications were still online FM 6-40 resembled the versions I used, so it appears that things haven't changed that much. The one thing I thought Fort Sill ought to have been doing was provide pre-canned fire missions for FDC training with all the input data--grid coordinates, azimuths, met, propellant temperature, etc--as well as school solutions to the fire missions. That way it would be easier to present training for FDCs without having to do all the computations in advance. If I recall correctly something like that was available for 155mm; at my first assignment I was in a 175mm gun battalion and we didn't want to repeatedly reprogram FADAC from one caliber to another. FDC skills decline rapidly, as one can find out the hard way during live-fire exercises. I imagine many 13Bs are rusty on laying pieces and so forth after years of being infantrymen overseas.

[Ken White]

When I went through FAOBC in 1978 we were taught manual gunnery first and later using computers, then FADAC, a Vietnam-era system.

Actually, I'd retired by then as an eternally young Smaj with almost ten years in grade. I think I was prob'ly a Corporal before you were born...

However, as I'm sure you meant that Corporal in '78 as a testament to said youth, you get full credit and no ' West By God' jokes for a month.

On a serious note, good point on the rapid skill decay, that's true of all cognitive skills as you know. Good news is that if those skills are firmly and properly trained and embedded they can be quickly recovered. Thus the critical importance of manual plotting...

[Pete]

Actually I knew that. We graduates of Fort Sill schools are taught that a round landing within 50 meters of the target counts as a target hit, something Fort Benning types have difficulty fathoming. I was born about three weeks before Ike was elected president in November 1952. When my dad was a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal about three years later he had one of its photographers take a picture of him holding me and my brother next to a convertible with former President Harry Truman smiling in the backseat.

[Ken White]

Actually I knew that. We graduates of Fort Sill schools are taught that a round landing within 50 meters of the target counts as a target hit, something Fort Benning types have difficulty fathoming.

Oh we understand that, we're just not at all used to seeing FArty get that close, 500m ± we're used to, that and 3,200 mil deflection errors (there's a reason FOs are taught to make "bold corrections..."). The boys and girls at Sill really ought to work on that abbreviation... .

...When my dad was a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal

My Grandfather was an Editor for the CJ, he'd retired about about four years before. I used to play with Barry Bingham, Jr; that was a really good newspaper -- until he sold it to Gannet. Was in Louisville a couple of years ago for a visit. Small world indeed...

[Pete]

When dad attended the Field Artillery Replacement Training Center at Camp Roberts, California in 1943 it went by the acronym FARTCEN. I know gentlemen of the press aren't the most popular people in military circles, so if it's any consolation, after having been a battery clerk in combat in Europe he went on to run the composing room of Stars and Stripes-Pacific in Tokyo in December 1945. I have the 7.7mm Arisaka he won at the S&S Christmas party raffle in 1945. At the C-J he was its TV critic for a while--he wrote that the best setting on a TV was the "off" position. He also predicted that a young comedian named Johnny Carson who was then being badly beaten in viewer ratings by Liberace would go on to have a good career.