Something is missing from the Battlefield
Does Anybody Care?
Does Anybody Care?
Captain DA Gronbeck-Jones
Time once was (and not too long ago), that when a Gunner spoke to a non-Gunner about locating devices, survey, or artillery intelligence, he was greeted with blank looks and the old “another black box-thing” attitude. Outside the Royal regiment, few people were aware of anything that the artillery did, other than service the guns and save the lives of not a few companies of infantry during the war with some pretty impressive firepower. But times are changing, and the other arms still have not any better knowledge of our craft than before. To make matters worse, a whole new breed of Gunners is evolving that also thinks of artillery only in terms of close-support guns. We can all blame force reductions, of course, for the demise of specialized non-gun artillery units, but can’t we also look a little inwardly and examine whether or not we are also at fault for letting some of our “black arts” die an untimely death?
Part of the problem is that non-gun artillery for the most part is found at divisional and higher levels and it is difficult to justify having divisional and higher artillery units without the parent formations. This fact of life resulted in the demise of the Locating Battery, or Command & Control battery if you wish, which contained all the locating devices at the time of its disbandment in 1968. An effort was made to put the counter- mortar radars into the close-support regiments shortly after that but they too are now out of service, not because of obsolescence, but because of their non-airportability.
Locating devices fell into disrepute even more as fewer officers and other ranks attended courses. The disappearance of locating trades was the next, and fatal step. It is now impossible to find a sound ranger, since, without a TSQ number, the specialty cannot be recalled from NDHQ’s computer. Many Gunners are of the opinion that locating artillery is obsolete, but let’s review the various aspects as they could have been today.
RADAR
In terms of the basic radar equipment, disregarding mountings, the Canadian AN/MPQ 501 Counter-Mortar Radar is still one of the best around. With its maximum range of 26,000 metres it can range twice as far as comparable radars in other countries. However, in a pure counter-mortar role, such great range is not needed. It’s mounting, on the M113 APC, causes mechanical failure of the electronic equipment and makes it difficult to conceal. It is not available in any other configuration, but if it were it might still be around today.
The latest development in this field is Cymbeline, a UK-developed radar which is about to come into service in the British Artillery. It is man-portable, Land Rover portable, air-liftable by helicopter (slung) and it can be deployed by just sitting the radar set on the ground behind a hedgerow. It uses the latest in computers, so small that the operating crew of two carry them into a slit trench with them. It can be sited far forward, so that its range of 20,000 metres can reach any enemy mortars, and observe the counter-battery fire to destroy them. A Wankel rotary engine generator is under development, but in the meantime the radar can be powered by conventional generators.
The infantry probably don’t realize yet that we are without a mortar-locating capability. It’s really surprising how many counter-mortar radars are around once the shooting starts (SE Asia, for example) and our own infantry had better start demanding a little better protection from us, for their own good!
SOUND RANGING
Canada’s sound ranging equipment was getting pretty old when it was retired, but it worked well. The main problem was time. Time to do survey, time to lay line, and time to pick it all up again when the base had to be moved. Some of these problems have been overcome. Now in service with the British is a radio-link microphone, which eliminates the large job of laying line (and frees quite a few men from the establishment). Survey processes are being speeded up all the time. Sound ranging may still be fairly slow to move, but for this one fault it should not be passed into oblivion. It is still the only way to locate hostile batteries effectively (other than mortars), and unless we are willing to sit there and be shot at, we had better do something about re-introducing sound ranging somewhere, just to keep the craft alive.
DRONES
All readers of this article must be familiar with the AN/USD 501 (CL-89) Drone system developed right here in Canada. The fact that it has been bought by several other countries shows how effective a device it is. It has probably been the biggest Canadian seller in the war equipment line since the plastic water bottle! Since we don’t use them ourselves, we can only call for a CF-5 to do our behind-the-lines snooping. Wouldn’t the drone be a little cheaper? Wouldn’t it be easier to get in a battlefield emergency?
SURVEY
While not primarily thought of as a locating device, survey is usually lumped in the same pot, and it is indeed suffering just as much these days. Here we have no equipment problems – ours is the finest in the world. What we do have is a credibility gap, a refusal to use survey, a misunderstanding of survey, and definitely a lack of education on the part of those Gunner officers who have control over it.
We spend many hours of training time and blow a fortune in ammunition trying to adjust fire for guns that have been fixed by mapspot. It is not good enough to park a battery near a bearing picket and leave it to the CPO to figure out where he is. The world is not a big Grafenwoehr, and there isn’t BPs in every grid square. In fact there are still plenty of parts of the world without even grids! Our own northern regions, for example, are one of the worst possible places to shoot, especially without survey. Much like in the deserts of Northern Africa, survey is a must for guns and OPs. Without it, unobserved fire is impossible, and in the arctic night most fire is unobserved.
Even in observed fire, accuracy studies show that one of the largest components of terminal error is the displacement of troop centers as a result of poor survey on the part of the CPO. In these days when laser rangefinders are coming into use at the OP, isn’t it ironic that our predicted fire capability is less than it was in the Second World War? We need to keep our surveyors at all levels, use them on every exercise, and make sure that the tradesman gets the courses he needs to understand and effectively employ the art of survey. It takes much longer to train a surveyor or a survey officer than it does for his counterpart on the gunnery side. Our reserve of trained surveyors is dwindling fast, and unless something is done we will find ourselves with no survey capability at all.
THE UNPOPULAR SOLUTION
The way to get around narrow thinking has not been solved, and probably never will be. Perhaps in these media-oriented days we Gunners should do a little reverse advertising. Instead of telling the other combat arms what we can do for them, start telling them what we cannot do. Let the infantryman know that we can no longer do anything about the mortars that cause so many casualties to his troops in their trenches. Let them know every chance you get that our fire would be on the ground quicker if we had accurate enough survey to be able to do a decent job of prediction of fire.
Within our own units we should do all we can to dispel the idea that locating and survey are dead-ends. Get the equipment out, use it every chance you get. Deploy guns where they need survey assistance. Send officers on survey courses so that someone close to the tradesmen can give them a challenge on field exercises. Pull your surveyors out of the regimental library and duty NCO’s office and get them to work before they lose faith in their own trade.
No one has shown that locating isn’t still a necessary part of the artillery. Why, then, is it still being ignored?
The Canadian Gunner, 1972, Volume 8, December 1972, page 87
Time once was (and not too long ago), that when a Gunner spoke to a non-Gunner about locating devices, survey, or artillery intelligence, he was greeted with blank looks and the old “another black box-thing” attitude. Outside the Royal regiment, few people were aware of anything that the artillery did, other than service the guns and save the lives of not a few companies of infantry during the war with some pretty impressive firepower. But times are changing, and the other arms still have not any better knowledge of our craft than before. To make matters worse, a whole new breed of Gunners is evolving that also thinks of artillery only in terms of close-support guns. We can all blame force reductions, of course, for the demise of specialized non-gun artillery units, but can’t we also look a little inwardly and examine whether or not we are also at fault for letting some of our “black arts” die an untimely death?
Part of the problem is that non-gun artillery for the most part is found at divisional and higher levels and it is difficult to justify having divisional and higher artillery units without the parent formations. This fact of life resulted in the demise of the Locating Battery, or Command & Control battery if you wish, which contained all the locating devices at the time of its disbandment in 1968. An effort was made to put the counter- mortar radars into the close-support regiments shortly after that but they too are now out of service, not because of obsolescence, but because of their non-airportability.
Locating devices fell into disrepute even more as fewer officers and other ranks attended courses. The disappearance of locating trades was the next, and fatal step. It is now impossible to find a sound ranger, since, without a TSQ number, the specialty cannot be recalled from NDHQ’s computer. Many Gunners are of the opinion that locating artillery is obsolete, but let’s review the various aspects as they could have been today.
RADAR
In terms of the basic radar equipment, disregarding mountings, the Canadian AN/MPQ 501 Counter-Mortar Radar is still one of the best around. With its maximum range of 26,000 metres it can range twice as far as comparable radars in other countries. However, in a pure counter-mortar role, such great range is not needed. It’s mounting, on the M113 APC, causes mechanical failure of the electronic equipment and makes it difficult to conceal. It is not available in any other configuration, but if it were it might still be around today.
The latest development in this field is Cymbeline, a UK-developed radar which is about to come into service in the British Artillery. It is man-portable, Land Rover portable, air-liftable by helicopter (slung) and it can be deployed by just sitting the radar set on the ground behind a hedgerow. It uses the latest in computers, so small that the operating crew of two carry them into a slit trench with them. It can be sited far forward, so that its range of 20,000 metres can reach any enemy mortars, and observe the counter-battery fire to destroy them. A Wankel rotary engine generator is under development, but in the meantime the radar can be powered by conventional generators.
The infantry probably don’t realize yet that we are without a mortar-locating capability. It’s really surprising how many counter-mortar radars are around once the shooting starts (SE Asia, for example) and our own infantry had better start demanding a little better protection from us, for their own good!
SOUND RANGING
Canada’s sound ranging equipment was getting pretty old when it was retired, but it worked well. The main problem was time. Time to do survey, time to lay line, and time to pick it all up again when the base had to be moved. Some of these problems have been overcome. Now in service with the British is a radio-link microphone, which eliminates the large job of laying line (and frees quite a few men from the establishment). Survey processes are being speeded up all the time. Sound ranging may still be fairly slow to move, but for this one fault it should not be passed into oblivion. It is still the only way to locate hostile batteries effectively (other than mortars), and unless we are willing to sit there and be shot at, we had better do something about re-introducing sound ranging somewhere, just to keep the craft alive.
DRONES
All readers of this article must be familiar with the AN/USD 501 (CL-89) Drone system developed right here in Canada. The fact that it has been bought by several other countries shows how effective a device it is. It has probably been the biggest Canadian seller in the war equipment line since the plastic water bottle! Since we don’t use them ourselves, we can only call for a CF-5 to do our behind-the-lines snooping. Wouldn’t the drone be a little cheaper? Wouldn’t it be easier to get in a battlefield emergency?
SURVEY
While not primarily thought of as a locating device, survey is usually lumped in the same pot, and it is indeed suffering just as much these days. Here we have no equipment problems – ours is the finest in the world. What we do have is a credibility gap, a refusal to use survey, a misunderstanding of survey, and definitely a lack of education on the part of those Gunner officers who have control over it.
We spend many hours of training time and blow a fortune in ammunition trying to adjust fire for guns that have been fixed by mapspot. It is not good enough to park a battery near a bearing picket and leave it to the CPO to figure out where he is. The world is not a big Grafenwoehr, and there isn’t BPs in every grid square. In fact there are still plenty of parts of the world without even grids! Our own northern regions, for example, are one of the worst possible places to shoot, especially without survey. Much like in the deserts of Northern Africa, survey is a must for guns and OPs. Without it, unobserved fire is impossible, and in the arctic night most fire is unobserved.
Even in observed fire, accuracy studies show that one of the largest components of terminal error is the displacement of troop centers as a result of poor survey on the part of the CPO. In these days when laser rangefinders are coming into use at the OP, isn’t it ironic that our predicted fire capability is less than it was in the Second World War? We need to keep our surveyors at all levels, use them on every exercise, and make sure that the tradesman gets the courses he needs to understand and effectively employ the art of survey. It takes much longer to train a surveyor or a survey officer than it does for his counterpart on the gunnery side. Our reserve of trained surveyors is dwindling fast, and unless something is done we will find ourselves with no survey capability at all.
THE UNPOPULAR SOLUTION
The way to get around narrow thinking has not been solved, and probably never will be. Perhaps in these media-oriented days we Gunners should do a little reverse advertising. Instead of telling the other combat arms what we can do for them, start telling them what we cannot do. Let the infantryman know that we can no longer do anything about the mortars that cause so many casualties to his troops in their trenches. Let them know every chance you get that our fire would be on the ground quicker if we had accurate enough survey to be able to do a decent job of prediction of fire.
Within our own units we should do all we can to dispel the idea that locating and survey are dead-ends. Get the equipment out, use it every chance you get. Deploy guns where they need survey assistance. Send officers on survey courses so that someone close to the tradesmen can give them a challenge on field exercises. Pull your surveyors out of the regimental library and duty NCO’s office and get them to work before they lose faith in their own trade.
No one has shown that locating isn’t still a necessary part of the artillery. Why, then, is it still being ignored?
The Canadian Gunner, 1972, Volume 8, December 1972, page 87