Learning to fire a howitzer is not very difficult. Maybe 2 or 3 weeks.
Teaching firing data computation and a Fire Direction team takes a little more effort.
Synchronizing artillery fire with the maneuver effort takes an effort and months of training to perfect.
Mastering Battalion and higher level massing of Artillery fires takes years to develop.
There are 5 conditions for accurate, predictable artillery fire.
1. Accurate gun location. (GPS)
2. Accurate target location.
3. Accurate Metrological Data.
4. Common Survey
5. Accurate Muzzle velocity.
Unless they sent of ton of fire control computers, calculating any of these manually is difficult for anyone.
Can these things hit a moving target?
The beauty of smart artillery munitions is that you just have to get the round in the vicinity of the target. (Current Ukrainian arty, operating with conventional rounds, is pretty good, btw.)
As for towed artillery, it’s at a severe handicap on the modern battlefield. You fire, let’s say, three rounds, then you have to quick un-ass your location as you’ve got to figure you’ll be facing counter-battery fire. Self-propelled artillery can do the un-assing part rather easily. (Of course, you’d like to keep a battery in reserve to quick answer their counter-battery with counter-counter-battery. This gets fun real quick.)
For anybody interested in this stuff, check out multiple trajectory volley fire. German self-propelled artillery can fire up to five rounds, at different trajectories, that land simultaneously in the target area (if you’ve laid in the coordinates correctly). So, a battery can deliver a devastating attack, and then be outtadere.
Close. GPS is not a requirement and don’t forget accurate computational procedures:
There are five requirements for achieving accurate first-round fire for effect. These requirements are:
accurate target location and size
accurate firing unit location
accurate weapon and ammunition information
accurate meteorological information
accurate computational procedures
Mar 30, 2020 TC 3-09.8 Fire Support and Field Artillery Certification
I thought a spotter adjusted artillery fire.