Fire Mission!
Story by SPC Bill Putnam; Photos by SGT Charles Ames & Courtesy of the US Army - Posted Jan, 2003
The Fire Direction Center or FDC - of a field artillery unit is the brain that drives the brawn of the Field Artillery... the "King of Battle". These digital warriors take precise scientific information and turn it into data that can deliver deadly accurate 155mm artillery shells on enemy positions more than 16 miles away, day or night, in any weather.
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The 2nd Battalion of the 146th Artillery, headquartered in Olympia, WA, has been using the new M109A6 "Paladin" self-propelled artillery system for more than a year now. Although the original M109s entered service in the late 1960s, it has seen dozens of significant upgrades since then. This latest version is a whole new animal.
"Most of the improvements on the self-propelled 155mm howitzers are in communications", said SGT Steven Beecroft, the Fire Direction Center (FDC) Chief.
"On the old system, the FDC communicated with the guns by wire telephone. This brought the battery closer together. Now they can be kilometers apart. There is a downside to such dispersion, however. "Youre lucky if chows warm because the batterys so spread out," SGT Beecroft concluded.
Each of the three artillery batteries in the 2-146th has two M577 Command Carriers, which house the battery's FDC section. The FDC must maintain operations and communications with battalion headquarters 24 hours a day. Three soldiers and an officer make up the FDC crew; Chart operator, computer operator, section chief, and fire direction officer. Their job is to receive fire missions from battalion, develop firing solution data for the six howitzers in their battery, and report the firing of each mission back to battalion.
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The fire mission process has many steps for a good reason. To send a 106-pounds of high-explosive projectile through the air to hit a specific point on Earth while said planet has wind, different air pressures, and temperatures, is difficult.
A Fire Support Team (FST) high on a ridgeline overlooking the impact area spots a target and sends the information to the battalion FDC. They send it down via a digital link they have with each battery. Down at "Charlie Battery", CPL Brian Horner, the Computer Operator in the FDC, receives the mission and calls it out. SGT Beecroft then confirms with Battalion FDC that he has received the mission. SPC Matthew Stewart, the Chart Operator, sticks a yellow thumbtack into map on his chart to mark the target location in the impact area. 1LT Pat Calcote, the batterys Fire Direction Officer, ensures that the target is within the batterys safety box in the impact area, a check referred to as "safing". CPL Horner sends the data to the guns digitally after 1LT Calcote again checks the data and verifies safety. Within minutes, six muffled booms from the batterys six howitzers mark the firing of the mission.
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A printer next to Horners computer records all of the FDCs operations; "That way if something happens and were going to jail, the investigators have something to look at," Calcote joked in between missions. With the old system it took a battery 20 minutes to fire after rolling into a new firing position. Now, with the Paladin system, a battery can roll onto a new position and be ready to shoot in two minutes.
Much more than geography goes into an artillery fire mission. Meteorological data, such as air temperature and pressure, wind speed and direction is taken into consideration, as is the guns elevation, the type of round being fired, the time it will take the round to travel to the target, the type of powder charge being used, and the temperature of that charge. Even the earths rotation is taken into consideration to arrive at a firing solution. Everything is calculated by CPL Horners computer in the FDC. "Even the wear on the rifling inside the gun tube is taken into consideration for the firing data, said SGT Beecroft. "The rifling can affect how the round will spin as it flies toward its target. The slower the spin, the more inaccurately the round will land. Theres a lot of stuff to take into account for a mission to go. Fire missions without that data would be like Kentucky windage ", said SGT Beecroft.
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Its the data that makes the difference between an artillery round accurately delivered on target and one that is only close. Close is not good enough especially on todays digital battlefield in the age of precision guided munitions. Artillery is still the Armys big punch in any conflict, and the accuracy of the Paladin 155mm howitzer ensures that the title of "King of Battle" will be theirs for many more years to come.
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