My experience is much narrower than yours is since I am still on the enlisted side of things. All of my artillery experience has been as a forward observer calling in the artillery for the infantry. I have grown to love being an FO because the job is so simple yet so important. In an infantry platoon, I normally tag along with the Lt. A good FO lets the Lt know from time to time that mortars/ARTY are ALWAYS available. Sometimes the Lt will forget about indirect fires.
Being at Ft. Campbell, I got to do some good training. During an air assault operation, I was hooked into the UH-60's com system and I called in simulated fire missions on possible AAA sites. We did not kill anything but we did suppress one site and kept it from firing on us.
A lot of my time was spent on the OP (observation Post) and calling in rounds into the impact range. I have had the luxury of having 2 rounds come with in 100 meters of my OP because someone on the firing line put in the wrong charge. The rest of the time was spent pounding and sucking with the infantry. Once promoted to Sergeant, I found the infantry treat ya a whole lot better.
As for schools, I've been to the Close Air Support School in Ft. Lenardwood and played with a few A-10's. We had some Marines teach us naval gunfire at Ft. Campbell, but we never got to do it for real. I have been to NTC once and JRTC 2 times. The life fires there were pretty damn good. Never again in my military career will I control 60 mm and 80mm mortars, 105mm and 155mm ARTY, A-10's and Apaches with in a time frame of a few hours.
I've been to the Battalion and Brigade levels of fire support and completely hated life. Doing radio watch/battle tracking for 16+ hours a day is not what I was meant to do. I am definitely a line soldier.
That rounds up my ARTY experience. I went to Kosovo as a FO but only called in a few illumination rounds. Those coordinates were already pre planned so there was no work on my part.
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sgtbreeden
The only way the INF ever really respect the artillery is when the see the destruction first hand. My buddies who were in Iraq told me the INF loved having the FO's around. In some future conflict, I'll be sure to enstill some respect by giving the enemy some death and destruction from above. I'll leave you with a quote from Patton.
"Our mortars and artillery are superb weapons when they are firing. When they are silent, they are junk---see that they fire!"
SSG Doody
