Field Artillery Team
Modern field artillery (i.e., post-World War I) has two distinct parts: some forward observers (FOs), and the batteries. Each battery is divided into the fire direction center (FDC) and the actual guns themselves.
The FOs sit forward where they can see the targets and call fire upon them. They signal the FDC of the battery, who calculate the gun settings, telling on to the gun crews, who then fire. The FO observes the fall of shot and sends correcting signals.
The batteries are many kilometres behind the FEBA, so one might hope well away from enemy infantry. They pick a "convenient" location where they can sit for some while and do multiple fire missions before needing to relocate.
In normal operations the FOs locate targets and signal them to the FDCs.
They can also calculate "defensive fire" tasks. These are pre‑planned missions, typically just in front of or upon one's own positions, designed with the intention of either suppressing potential attacks (where fire is dropped just in front of friendly positiona), or in dropping fire on a recently abandoned or overrun position to prevent the enemy from consolidating there. Because the calculations have already been done, the fire can be called down very quickly when it is needed.
Read more about this topic: Field Artillery
Famous quotes containing the words field, artillery and/or team:
“I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentiment in mankind; so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea over land and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine meter of civilization.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Imagination is a valuable asset in business and she has a sister, Understanding, who also serves. Together they make a splendid team and business problems dissolve and the impossible is accomplished by their ministrations.... Imagination concerning the world’s wants and the individual’s needs should be the Alpha and Omega of self-education.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)