Elio Calcagno, Bryan Clark, Sam Cranny-Evans, Alessandro Marrone, Nicolò Murgia & Eugenio Po
Artillery in land warfare, between doctrine and practice
The status of artillery capabilities in NATO militaries, particularly European ones, has been deeply influenced, and in many ways hindered, by the protracted absence of an immediate threat of conflict with a peer-level adversary, at least until the Russian occupation of Crimea. Indeed, for decades since the end of the Cold War, most Western armed forces have focused their planning on expeditionary deployments such as counterinsurgency (COIN), counter-terrorism, crisis management, peacekeeping and stability operations against technically inferior adversaries, where air supremacy was almost always a given where artillery could not reach. In fact, such was the level of air dominance achieved, that in many cases artillery was not even deployed.
On the modern battlefield, the ability to effectively deliver artillery-based firepower in offensive and defensive operations alike is of the utmost importance. In such a context, “traditional”, barrelled artillery such as field guns, howitzers and mortars play a massive role, as demonstrated in the Ukraine conflict. Yet this instrument cannot fulfil its true potential without being inserted into a wider array of capabilities which includes longer range systems generally known as long-range fires (LRF). Such systems, which can include longer-range guided rockets as well as cruise and ballistic missiles, can have a significant advantage relative to traditional artillery weapons in terms of range and precision. While LRFs should not be seen as merely a more advanced solution to the same requirements that are set for gun artillery capabilities, they add a crucial layer to an army’s fire potential and work best in concert with solid artillery capabilities.
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