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Team Infidel

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
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
Click to expand...
 
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..
 
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. :smil:
 
More than one post in this thread made me laugh heartily. Death from behind was great. I think Rock Hudson would agree with that.
 
After losing the reconnaissance-job german Artillary is down to 5 bataillons, for same reasons their importance is shrinking, we don't even have the machines to fly them anywhere and a Eurofighter-jet is more effective and faster. The new Tank-howitzer 2000 is very nice but we have no real need for it... Lot of comrades i know are changing into other divisions for that reason, tank-bataillons are better off and every nation respects a german tank-officer i think ^^
 
there is a loss around the world in this art. I have spoken with artillerymen from other military's and they are going through the same issues. no money for future systems, and artillerymen being used in other areas of the military. i saw the writing on the wall after Crusader was killed. I am sure we will keep a robust inventory of artillery, but the skills will not be there to accomplish the tough tasks.
 
Probably similar to mortar platoon's TI. At least in the Corps, rarely are mortar platoons only doing mortar work. We often trained with the Rifleman in addition to our 81mm mortar responsibilities. Maybe because we were a SOCMEU, but we did indeed almost constantly cross train. With the downsizing certain members of government did to our military, I don't think their is anyway this can be avoided unless our troop numbers are allowed to go where up to where they should be. Look at the invasion for Iraq for example, President Bush did so with less than 200,000 folks, President Bush Sr put us in with about 600,000. Big difference. Our troop level now is barely enough be successfully defensive, need more folks for the times when we might have to go on the offensive such as is the case with the war on terrorism. Cross training is good, but obviously, certain specialty training may suffer in this approach. Therefore, seems like a wise decision to not downsize our military.
 
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Who would have ever thought the king of the battlefield would be left at home?
And they were always talking about how the infantry would be the thing of the past.
 
Compared to the way the Infantry used to be the main source of inflicting damage, that may be correct Sarge but I don't think Infantry bullet stoppers will ever be a thing of the past, unless wars are fought with no concern at all for civilian casualties in the future and we could just bomb the snot out of each other.
 
As a gunner, I can not let this thread continue un-answered. My reading of the article is that the problem lies with the Arty no longer receiving continuous artillery training to conduct arty work correctly, not the on the effectiveness (or not) of artillery in the battle.

I the first instance I concur.

In the second, you just ask ANYONE that has actually been in battle about who is the King of the battle field. Ask our guys that advanced to 50m behind our delayed fused rounds before they de-bussed, ask our guys that sat while tanks came out of dull down positions and there were no friendly tanks around. Ask the guys who have got to the objective only to find zero resistance.

The gunners are not responsible for not receiving GUNNER training and being deployed elsewhere, diminishing the ability of the arty, it is the politicians that turn the financial taps tighter.

I was also completely infantry trained and operated as infantry from time to time. This did nothing to my ability to operate as a gunner; in fact it helped when operating as an infiltration OP.

I close with:
"Artillerymen believe the world consists of two types of people; other Artillerymen and targets."
- Unknown​
​
"There is NO job in the Field Artillery for the weak, the timid or the indecisive."
- Unknown​
 
In Korea, North Korean artillery is the biggest problem... more so than their nuke. Artillery units in South Korea get priority status when it comes to new equipment.
 
I love the Koreans, their military is awesome, I always loved those guys. They're probably considered a small force, but very much so hard chargers.
 
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