Screw that.
Build the Montana class.
Posted on 07/18/2019 4:22:09 AM PDT by tlozo
The U.S. Army Field artillery going back again to manual methods of fire direction and gunnery after lessons of Russian intervention in Ukraine.
The U.S. Army has not had to contend with electronic warfare during the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the conflict in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region showed an increase of electronic attack threat levels.
With the growing threat of cyberattacks, the U.S. Army Field Artillery School has placed a renewed emphasis on learning manual methods.
“Bringing back the charts is a big deal,” said Staff Sgt. Chad Payne, an instructor for the 13J fire control specialist course. “If you don’t understand the chart, you won’t actually understand what the automated system is doing for you.”
About a decade ago, the school began reducing its emphasis on teaching manual methods, said Col. Samuel Saine, assistant commandant. That’s because improvements to the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System enabled AFATADS to be used effectively in all situations, he said, and it dramatically sped up the firing process.
Then electronic warfare in Crimea and Ukraine shut systems down there, and at the same time, cyberattacks began disabling automation systems at civilian firms. These attacks “woke some people up,” Saine said.
Over the past year, the Field Artillery School commandant has made it a priority to reinsert manual or degraded operations back into the program of instruction for all courses, Saine said.
The renewed emphasis is not only in advanced individual training for new Soldiers, he said, but also in all of the officer courses from basic up to the pre-command course for colonels.
Now students begin AIT using maps to plot and they learn the math behind firing solutions.
“They’ll do manual operations until we know they fully understand the basics,” Payne said, explaining only then do students move on to the automated system.
This method provides students with a better appreciation of the concepts, he said, enabling them to “hit the ground running” at their first units.
They are also better prepared when electronic warfare takes the AFATADS system offline, he said, and degraded operations are now part of the scenario during AIT field exercises.
When systems go down, Soldiers are now trained on how to transition between the automated and manual methods, confirmed Pvt. Cynthia Antaya, a 13J student at the school.
EW can affect communications, automated systems and access to GPS. So 13J Soldiers break out their charts, pencils, plotting pins and protractors for degraded operations.
“It’s going to be important to know your charts and darts and how to go manual and still be able to continue on with your job, even when everything’s down,” Antaya said.
It’s essential that artillery sections “never sway from our No. 1 task,” Saine emphasized, “and that No. 1 task is to provide uninterrupted fires to the maneuver elements of our Army — the infantry and armor.”
Manual or degraded operations for firing howitzers are actually a 20-level task for the gunner and primarily only 10-level tasks are taught at AIT, said Staff Sgt. Rodrick Stone, an instructor for the 13B cannon crewmember course.
Some instructors, however, still demonstrate manual sighting for the students, Stone said.
“I believe it’s very important that they learn both ways, because in the event that the digital goes down, you have to have a failsafe — a backup plan,” he said.
The Field Artillery School has helped work degraded operations into the program of instruction for the Advanced Leadership Course, Saine said. Since howitzer gunners are by doctrine sergeants, learning how to manually sight howitzers is emphasized in ALC, he said.
With degraded operations, the gunner switches to a panoramic telescopic sight, Stone said. Aiming poles and firing stakes are used. “We already have an additional primary aiming reference that’s set up; he instantly sights in off of that,” Stone said.
Then the traverse hand wheel is spun manually to raise or lower elevation of the howitzer tube, he explained.
“When I was coming in, degraded operations was the only thing that was going on,” Stone said. “There was no digital systems at the time.”
Now the threat of cyber warfare once again makes degraded operations of paramount importance, he said.
“We have more capacity and capability than they do,” Saine said of the enemy, “so they’re going to try to find creative ways to degrade and deny some of our systems.”
The emphasis on degraded operations is not only happening in the schoolhouse, it’s in the field as well, Saine said. Doctrine has been updated and so have performance standards.
Training Circular 3-09.8 for fire support was recently updated with increased performance standards for manual gunnery and degraded operations.
The chief of field artillery emphasizes degraded operations at fires conferences and at quarterly meetings with division artillery commanders, Saine said.
“It’s not just a Fort Sill thing,” Saine said. “He believes very strongly it needs to be informed by the operational force.”
Preparing for EW is not only practical, he said, but it also creates a more well-rounded force.
“What we found along the way is that we actually were increasing the proficiency of our Soldiers and our leaders,” Saine said, “because it helped them understand to a higher degree how everything worked together.”
So they found someone to make GFTs again? Never saw one for the 700 series projos.
Oh how my chiefs hated me when I made them do it all manually at least once each AT. Then they fat fingered a target out of the box that the computer said was safe.
Manual MET and high burst, mean point of impact! What fun.
This brings to mind how in Vietnam some of our planes only had missiles but not guns, and if they ran out of missiles, they couldn’t dogfight?
re: “I just wonder without GPS how they will position the battery?”
Terrain map on CD; you don’t need GPS with that in hand ... (BUT your laptop will have to work. Alternatively, a 7 1/2 minute paper “topo” map will work.)
Also, carry an aneroid barometer, used in conjunction with topo map.
Oh, you’ll need a pair of function eyeballs to locate land features correlated to the topo map.
I was going to mention about ship’s navigation also. And don’t forget to get a daily solar azimuth for compass correction due to magnetic poles wandering.
So how close in accuracy can you get with a map and what a compass?
Of course as a young devil dog I didn’t care to ask too many questions but as I age I am more curious as to the details. Heck a few weeks ago I spent a night trying to find out how they emplace 81mm mortars, and damn there was scant info beyond aiming stakes and stuff.
Map spot sun shot. Simple.
Now with the new 777 that supposedly takes awhile to emplace and displace that seems almost reckless in regards to near peer combat.
re: “Morse code (CW) is gone by the wayside but plenty of Old Timers l still know how to use it, “
There is digital comm mode (JS8, with JS8CALL being the app) that works down to -24 dB SNR, which is about 15 dB below what a good CW op can copy a message at ... this is great during this period of low sunspot activity (and poor band conditions).
A LOT of development has taken place since the days of PSK31, such as the WSJT suite of low-SNR modes courtesy of Joe Taylor W1JT Nobel Laureate and astrophysicist.
I’ll be running JS8 in a little bit here on 40 meters ...
The old fashion way. Read a map.I know,it is tough in the desert.
re: “So how close in accuracy can you get with a map and what a compass?”
Depends on the terrain (flat as in no features/creeks, hilly with passes), how many land features are noted on the topo map, and how good your “range estimation” faculties are with your two eyeballs.
After the Chinese shoot down the GPS satellites, USN will be sorry Annapolis dropped celestial navigation by hand, as well.
I was in bn FDC in an 8” bn in the reserves in Florida and had an FDO, CPT Danny Henson that could that.
I can see him now with his stop watch hanging around his neck, sitting on the ramp of the 577, sweating in the heat at Blanding or Avon Park, on top of multiple fire missions. The guy was on top of everything, country boy from Arkansas and scary smart. Tough too, whipped the commo section CPT’s butt one night at the end of AT when said officer got smart about criticism of commo deficiencies, I believe Jack Daniels may have been involved, lol.
I used to maps spot the battery Center of Mass when I was an XO. I could get to within 100 meters or so.
Once you shoot a registration, you can shoot pretty accurate.
On a week long backpacking trip I assigned the navivation job to a soon to be Eagle scout and aspiring Army officer. When I was bugged with “how much further Mr Bert?” I told them to ask Tim.
Years later, he wrote me thanking me for teaching him about maps and navigation. As a second LT, he was ordered to check out a trackless desert with no landmarks and miles and miles of literally mothing. He had a map, a compass and a watch to navigate by calculation and dead rekioning.
Later, he was given a verly GPS device
This article warms the cockles of my old Redleg heart. Comes now the misty memories of the GFT and TFT issued to us at FA Officer Basic Course, the TFT full of columns of mysterious figures and GFT appearing to be the easier solution, only to face learning how to apply MET data to the GFT for a better firing solution. Then, off to missile school to compound the learning with trig and log tables to get the manual solution within the performance standard time.
I’d be surprised if anybody below the rank of E-8 has actual experience in setting up firing stakes, the infinity collimator, or using the sun filters on the M2 aiming circle to lay the battery using the sun as the EOL.
That might just keep them from colliding with tankers and freighters.
Arrrr, matey, that be Morse Code.
Screw that.
Build the Montana class.
Well, it could certainly be done before the Advent of GPS. The crew did have to inspect a map, locate their position on that map, and then extract the coordinates. We could do it all just fine.
Of course, how else would one know terrain features before “going there”?
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