This is a very true article I think.

National Journal
April 26, 2008 Inside Washington

Can Army artillery units hit the side of a barn? Maybe not, according to a troubling internal memo sent this month to Army Chief of Staff George Casey by three former brigade commanders.
"The once-mighty ‘King of Battle’ " is a "dead branch walking," write the active-duty colonels in the five-page document obtained by National Journal. With "growing alarm," they describe "deterioration" in artillery readiness to perform its most basic missions. In training, "firing incidents [occur] during every rotation"; "crew drills are very slow, and any type of [disorder] halts operations"; and, absent instructor intervention, "most" cannon platoons would have fired in unsafe conditions, the memo says.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have drawn experienced artillery troops into other jobs—like infantry and transportation—where soldiers are badly needed, the authors write. Ninety percent of fire-support personnel have been reassigned, leaving behind fewer than 10 percent certified for the mission.
"General Casey seeks out and appreciates receiving feedback [from] commanders and soldiers in the field," said an Army spokesman, who declined to comment on the memo’s specifics.
--Elaine Grossman

Who's shelling our position?

We are!

Good thing there are viable self-loading artillery pieces these days. I hope America orders some.

I can see a bigger problem with this.
If the arty deteriorates any further any and all american enterprizes will have to be started with gaining absolute air superiority to be able to fly CAS.

All well and good if you are up against an opponent with little to no airdefences or have airbases in close proximity to the AOR.
However this might not always be the case.
This is when the infantry and SOF Teams needs to be 100% confident in their arty firesupport.
This confidence might get lessened if this continues.

Just a thought right off the bat.

Then again, we have all had to scramble away like rats in a flood because some grenadelauncher dush forgot to bury the baseplate, or some arty dude missing their calculations..

"Death From Behind"
Thats what we used to call our dropshorts (Arty)

Basically what we were taught about air and arty support: It'll arrive late and then it'll land on us.

I foresee GPS-guided rounds making a sweeping introduction...

Are you talking about "Excalibur"?

I forsee that will take some time yet..

This is what happens when the ROE's for better or worse preclude the use of Arty. And Arty batteries are ramped up and deployed as provisional infantry units. If your training isn't MOS focused then the skills are going to be lost.

Reading this I suddenly came to remember that the artillery branch during the european "30 years war" and "100 years war" as we call them up here wasn't national at all.
In fact the artillery units was more of a "commercial enterprise" much like mercenaries, hired by the different sides in the conflict and rarely had any connection to the nation or king they were fighting for, except for the gold they recieved.

Given the fact that they were independent units they were able to drill and hone their skills to perfection, without interference from any other units.
They even had their own guild system.