Artillery Targeting Process

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mustavaris RE:Artillery Targeting Process - AE 3/22/2006 9:05:17 AM

I think (pretty sure) that they got the information thru messages and/or computer network, but they marked the places on the map to really see what was going on. We did not have any screens that were used to show any graphical maps or anything like that [some charts were most graphical stuff available]. All the maps were paper ones... But just after I left the whole system was renewed and our units war time mission was changed and now my wartime position would be among the local defence forces. As far as I know they got new radios, some computer stuff, GPS and more mobile systems.

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S-2 RE:Artillery Targeting Process - AE, Carl S., Mustavaris, & EW3 3/22/2006 4:02:58 PM

"... The pic below shows the overall process of which the Arty function is just a small subset of options available." I've really enjoyed the thread. AE, I might comment as both a former targeting officer and a direct support artillery battalion S-2 that our involvement was considerably more extensive than you imply. I, for instance, worked with the manuever bde. S-2 almost hand in glove. While not co-located, I was often so close to the BDE TOC that I kept a private land-line to the bde.S-2, and our TOC was usually the alternate brigade TOC. His IPB and mine were typically one and the same as his "named areas of interest/influence were the same as mine. My taskings for reconnaissance were typically serviced before any manuever battalion S-2 taskings. Moreover, I usually positioned up to 50% of the LRSD (Long Range Surveillance Detachment)allocated to our brigade from division. EW3, I don't doubt that we are moving to the point you imply with AEGIS. We have been since 1979-80. I do BELIEVE (no certainty implied whatsoever)that our battlefield may actually be considerably more complex than a CSF's, but that may just be ignorant and parochial. No doubt that the vast majority of your targets closed at speeds beyond human reaction. But even with 300 air to surface anti-ship missiles inbound, it is a discrete processing exercise at that point, sense of urgency notwithstanding. Facing a Soviet motor rifle division offered many fleeting targets of opportunity, coupled with a constantly changing friendly manuever situation-particularly in the defense. I stated early on that I BELIEVE (again, no certainty implied whatsoever)that we will find solutions for our field armies just as we apparently have for our navies. But an AEGIS cruiser/frigate is a discrete weapon system with one purpose-fleet air defense. That, I presume, would allow the design of a highly tailored processor for said purpose. We need far greater flexibility coupled with much greater situational awareness. Speed is your enemy aboard a warship. A constantly shifting, subtle and nuanced battlefield is ours. With mechanized friendly and enemy forces, speed also becomes a factor. Carl S. and I saw the introduction of PADS (pre GPS), encrypted digital communications, laser target designators, BCS/TACFIRE, M-90 Chronograph, and TPSQ 36/37 Counterfire radars. All designed to provide artillery with the ability to rapidly mass first round fire-for-effect from disparate sources/locations. I witnessed the "pileing on" of CAS and, more importantly, the manuever folks, who, recognizing what the artillery community was trying to solve, wanted into, and ultimately, control of our architecture-however infant it was. So be it. Malformed and largely untested until Gulf War I, the inputs that were attached from these sources threaten to overwhelm this very fragile structure. Again, Carl S. has very accurately described a typical TOC scene, where a number of officers are working off of limited terminals, constantly changing, and attempting to make heads/tails of what's going on. That's the system as I knew it. I recall an instance in July, 1988 at Twenty-nine Palms where we had a Marine UAV detachment working with us in an exercise against a Marine MEB. Our UAV caught a marine 155mm SP battalion lined up on a road at night refueling/rearming-in range of our M198 GS battery. Talk about a HVT of opportunity! Believe it or not, the Bde. S-3 refused to attack the target as it hadn't been placed on the target list as a known enemy location. STUNNING! So were the controller comments in the ENDEX AAR. Like AEGIS, in the end it's all about the processing of targets as rapidly, efficiently, and thoroughly as possible. I've often admired the cleanliness of the Navy-from their uniforms to their operating environments. Everything about the Army and Marines is dirty, cluttered, and chaotic-to include our battle-management. At least it was ten years ago. I suspect it remains so. The complexity of the air-land battlefield just doesn't, in my estimation, offer readily "clean" solutions. EW3, I've great faith in guys like you finding solutions to this dilemma. However, from where I sit (thankfully, no longer in a TOC), it appears to becoming more, not less, complex and unruly.

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ArtyEngineer RE:Artillery Targeting Process - S-2 3/22/2006 5:11:24 PM

Concur, a lot of good information has been provide. My statement about Arty was meaning that tubes are just one option available to engage an indetified target. I know that Arty personnel have a huge area of responsibility within the over all process. As described by the "Artilery Mission" See below: Image hosting by Photobucket

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AlbanyRifles RE:Artillery Targeting Process - AE 3/22/2006 5:43:15 PM

Aw jeeez!!! Now you're going to make their heads swell!!!!

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EW3 RE:Artillery Targeting Process - S-2 3/22/2006 11:44:32 PM

Been an interesting learning experience for me as well. Just a quick correction, my guess is a CBG can track 3000 targets, not 300. And that is being conservative. The reality is probably closer to 10000. The difference is it's a 3D battlespace (including subs and torps) about 100nm (SRBMs) deep with a radius of 200nm. It's sort of an inverse fractal to your situation. If I could add one more question to further muddy the waters, what happens when GPS guided 155mm rounds become available? Won't that change things a bit? Be much more like the air force using JDAMs and SDBs. I note with pleasure the MLRS has gone GPS.

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EW3 RE:Artillery Targeting Process - 3/23/2006 12:45:20 AM

Yet another question for you folks.... Was just looking at an article about Netfires link Opinions?

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neutralizer RE:Artillery Targeting Process - 3/23/2006 4:34:56 AM

It's useful to break the issue into functions and not get too hung up about the detail of past organisation and procedures. I think targeting today means identifying targets, deciding the effects required on the target and then the best way of achieving those effects, and the last means considering all delivery systems, which have different characteristics. How this is organised varies, for example in some armies a FO does it all for close targets, obviously acting in a way that meets the local combined arms comd's needs. For deeper targets it may be split, the TA element identifying and someone else doing the rest, although again in some armies a TA operator may be able to do more and may have tac FC authority. Targetting may overlap with aspects of tac FC, it depends on a host of issues, and its always important oo remember that flexibility is a key principle for arty. Tac FC basically involve control in the form of having authority to assign fire units to targets. It's an authority that can be moved around, in some cases it may include post identification steps of the targeting process, in others it may just be that the targeters say what they want and tac FC provides it. Allocating tac FC authority (sometimes called allotment) is a comd function, along with other resource allocations notably ammo. In some armies a FO can have tac FC responsibility (ie he or she can order what they want). The UK BATES system (now going out of service due the the cost of changing the comms sub-system to BOWMAN for a few years only) allowed a BC with a battlegroup to have allotment authority over an entire corps' artillery (but he wouldn't have it for long!). BATES was a message passing and processing system, lots of suppliers now offer battalion level systems as part of their 'package' but their capability tends to be limited (in many dimensions, analogue data comms being a significant bottleneck). For basic stuff these system work fine but once you get ambitious they are very complex with seriously smart software. Interestingly BATES was orginally required (no sure if it was deployed this way) that a FM could pass thru a BCP with the first thing the crew knowing was the guns firing (if they weren't watching their screens), of course for peacetime firing it had a different mode. The real issue today seems to me to be whether or not deploying single autonomous single guns is operationally realistic taking into account logistics, local defence and all the other details that actually make a battery function properly. My view is that it isn't, but pairs of guns, the traditional 'Section' in Brit terms is.

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Carl S RE:Artillery Targeting Process - 3/24/2006 8:37:55 PM

"and not get too hung up about the detail of past organisation and procedures." I've avoided details about the current system as I know just how easy it is to misinterprete the complexities. It is quite likely the electronic Fire Support Coordination system I saw in development back in 1996 has already been replaced. Reviewing EW posts it appears he is thinking of only the sensor to shooter portion of the corps fire support control system. And that only in terms of an imeadiate mission. There was no clear dividing line between the command & control and the fire control sides of the IFASS or the other systems we used. The programs and comm nets were not only linked but overlapped. And, the links went from necessity outside the intel/operations group to the logistics. I'd Imagine the AEGIS system keeps tabs on what remains in the ships magizines but I dont know if the replenishment ship or fleet log train is directly linked to it as well. A second thing I'd note is that across the corps, or down at the lower levels such as battalion, the bulk of the targets were planned & put into the sytem, but were not fired any time soon. The intel sections (G2) generated massive target lists, parts of which were regularly forwarded to the operations G3) target lists/schedules or to the fire direction center for imeadiate attack. The second primary source for targets were the air artillery liasion sections (including the air/artillery observers) with the manuver units. This is where the bulk of the 'imeadiate' requests came from. These target inputs overlapped those from the liasion link with the manuver units operations (S2) who were generating targets based on their intent for movement vs known enemy locations. I suspect one thing our system had in common with AEGIS is that most targets could be attacked effectively by many different shooters. Artillery, missle, air, & at least nominally naval gun fire. The optimal method varied from minute to minute and I'm guessing here this is no different than with AEGIS I never kept stats for what we actually attacked vs the gross target list If someone told me 90% of the targets entered in the system were never attacked I'd not be able to argue against it. Another stat I could not define would be the number of friendly location that were entered into the system as potiental targets. The map exercises were too canned to reflect the error in manuver unit/recon location. The problem did become clear when we ran field exercises with live manuver units. GPS helped but it was not a panacea. But I rambling, tell us about yourself...

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Carl S RE:Section vs Single. GPS ammo 3/24/2006 9:03:12 PM

"The real issue today seems to me to be whether or not deploying single autonomous single guns is operationally realistic taking into account logistics, local defence and all the other details that actually make a battery function properly. My view is that it isn't, but pairs of guns, the traditional 'Section' in Brit terms is." Back in my battery days we occasionally brokeout a section, or a single gun for some conditions. It cetainly is not efficent from a general operations standpoint. If there is a serious counterbattery threat then dispersal becomes more important. Eventually US & Brit artillery will have to think about that again, but not real soon. The other incentive to dispersed ops is when the manuver units are widely dispersed. As in a counter insurgency. As long as there are enough bodys with the cannon to ensure local security operating single or pairs may be productive. Tho the logistics snake can come back at you here. As far as fires go dispersed or grouped cannon is irrelevant. If the effects tables or experince indicate that target type T requires X ammount of ammo from Y guns in Z time then that what is fired. All the way back in 1944 both the Brits & US artillery could mass everything in range in minutes. Theres been no need to mass the canon to achieve massed fires. Any sort of guided ammo will be grreat. I've been waiting for that nearly thirty years. We thought Copperhead was the wave of the future, untill it was used under battlefield conditions. It would not have been so bad if the promoters had not promised so much for it. Anyway bring on the GPS guided rounds.

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EW3 RE:Artillery Targeting Process - Carl S 3/24/2006 9:14:39 PM

Continuing an excellent thread.... Actually I would have the computer even point the guns. (Sorry) My rationale (and I know nothing about guns) is that how else do you point the barrel? My guess is that you get a coordinate to hit, convert that to a range and bearing, mix in variables like wind, air temp, air density, etc.... I suspect you already use a computer to compute the elevetion and bearing, so why not have servo motors move the barrel to the right position (USN does it, how else would you hit anything from a rolling ship ;) ) Once the gun is loaded and cleared, you can hit the ready to fire button and then the "system" knows the gun can be assigned to a target and fired. The thing about Aegis/CEC is that all the ships share their weapons. If one ship sees a target and is either out of position or does not have a potential defense, it can call upon a ship that does to destroy the target. It would be like having say 10 155mms loaded, and the user selects a target, it would command the most appropriate gun to shoot. Then until that gun is reloaded it is "out of service" and the next target goes to the next appropriate gun that is loaded. Sorry, the whole supply train issue is beyond me.

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ArtyEngineer RE:Artillery Targeting Process - EW 3/24/2006 10:39:56 PM

"Actually I would have the computer even point the guns. (Sorry) My rationale (and I know nothing about guns) is that how else do you point the barrel?" - EW I dont really want to tell you this but the Fire Control System on Artillery has not radically changed since, well forever. Paladin and the MLRS are the only artillery systems to date in the US inventory utilising an INU and a computer controled laying system, every thing else relys on "Glass and Iron" Sights, and gunners cranking handwheels and centering bubbles (I call it "bubbleology") and to be fair this system can accurately put a tube on azximuth and elevation within 2mils and 1 mil respectively. (Does the Navy work in Mils?) The M777A1 will be the first towed hoitzer in US use which has a digital system, minus electric drives. Those = weight and power requirements.

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neutralizer RE:Artillery Targeting Process - EW 3/25/2006 1:43:21 AM

I've have been on active service with a battery deployed as single guns 10s of km apart (bty front was about 150 km as the crow flies). But it was all fairly static. Dispersion is undoubtedly a good way to aid survival if the CB threat is high, moving around a lot at the same time (eg 'gun manouvre areas') is also good, but the load on the guys is such you can't sustain it for long unless you have duplicate crews. The thing about modern fire control is that you can put the guns wheel to wheel or spread across a few km or anything in between, the tactical situation and the threat estimate basically leads to the answer. UK had re-equipped all their guns by the end of 2002 to remove glass sights (for indirect fire). The important thing is that it eliminates the need for directors/aiming circles, and makes laying more consistent. Onboard calcs may or may not be necessary, they won't help accuracy/consistency (unless they're tied to the MVR and using round to round MV prediction), whether they speed things up a bit is more complicated. Modern computers can comp for a bty in millisecs, and doing it on each gun isn't going to be noticeably faster! The issue then becomes the comms bandwidth and protocols. However, if all the guns get the same fire order msg not unique msgs to each gun then it should be a bit faster (a few secs).

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Carl S RE:Artillery Old Guns vs New 3/25/2006 2:28:41 AM

Maintinance hours & training for mechanics/electrical techs was a important consideration for the Marines a couple decades ago. There is a direct trade off between spare parts and support pers vs weapons when loading the ship. The reliability of the digital gun parts, the self loading mechnisms ect.. did not prove out in field trials. So, we went with simplicity. This included discarding the selfproppelled tracked howitzers. In this case there was a clear increase in training (shooting) time as the repair time vanished. The reliability thing is a serious issue for me. Back in the early 1980s we were still using a large quantity of gear that had major problems. Aside from old worn out stuff there were a lot of over engineered items which took too much effort to keep running. The cute capabilities these things brought were not worth the time. Component reliability is enhanced by the ability to change out critical parts without the need for a specialized technician and tools. ie: if the trigger or indirect fire sight on the M198 failed the gunner could grab either off the gun and install a replacement in a couple seconds.

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Carl S RE:Artillery Targeting Process Speed 3/25/2006 2:48:57 AM

Shaving the seconds off can mean lot to the guy who needs the fire support. For us routing the call for fire from a observers keypad direct to the bty computer then to the gun display was the largest time saver in four decades. The downside was significantly more weight for the observer to pack around. A few more seconds could be cut with a auto loader, but that brings us back to some sort of selfpropelled system, more moving parts & reliability questions, and trading off guns for a little more speed. In any case whatever a fire mission takes currently sounds better than the four - five - or six minutes it took us in the manual era from the 1940s, and way better that the 12 - 15 minutes it took the Wehrmacht artillery back then.

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Carl S RE:Artillery (Does the Navy work in Mils?) 3/25/2006 2:53:52 AM

I thought so. The Navy officers attached to us knew what mils were. But they also knew a lot about minutes & seconds of arc, which were still used for navigation.

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