Basics of Artillery

 The most important part of the artilleryman's job is getting fire quickly and accurately onto a target you can't see, using only information from a forward observer.

 When a forward observer sees a target, he calls the target's map coordinates back to the Fire Control Center. The fire control people will then sift through all the fire requests, allocating the batteries at their disposal to the most important targets. They will send a firing solution to the battery (4-8 guns) headquarters, which gives the guns the information (elevation, direction) they need to train the guns.

 One round, called a spotting round, is fired. It hardly ever hits the target, (Note the "Scatter" built into the indirect fire rules of all military games) so the forward observer calls back the correction to bring the next spotting round, hopefully, on target. (A good forward observer usually needs two to three rounds to get close enough).

 When a spotting round is close enough, the Observer calls for "Fire for Effect". The entire battery opens up on the coordinates the last spotting round was aimed at. This, hopefully, will obliterate the target, or at least make the enemy think twice about continuing whatever they're doing.

 In most western armies, any headquarters from platoon on up can call artillery fire. (The Fire Control Center decides if they GET it or not...). Units in important sectors are often assigned FISTS (Fire Support Teams), forward observer teams with priority on artillery calls, and the facilities (usually an armored personnel carrier with special communication and plotting gear) to expedite the process of planning artillery missions - for example, in the attack, where the FIST will have some knowledge of where the enemy might be.

 Fun for Referees!

One mistake commonly made by inexperienced forward observers is when calling in corrections, ("Left Fifty" meters, for example), they will use their own left and right coordinates, rather than those of the firing battery. It is these coordinates (relative to what is called the "Line, Gun to Target") that the gunners use, not the observer's (called "Line, Observer to Target").

 If the two lines to target vary greatly, getting a hit on target could be very difficult—something a devious referee can use to great comedic effect on the unsuspecting.

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