L. Lance Boothe
Yet in the US Army, a struggle with math is happening, particularly in the Field Artillery. For a combat arm which demands meeting the five requirements for accurate predicted fire (target location and size, firing unit location, weapon and ammunition information, meteorological data, and computational procedures) as essential to putting steel on target, one would think arithmetic near reverential. Calculus and geometry, simply being able to count to ten, and doing math in increments of 10s, 50s, or 100s applies to just about every one of the “five requirements” in some form or fashion. Yet some artillerymen cannot seem to do the simplest math of all – merely counting munitions and systems.
While “sight-to-crest,” standard and nonstandard factors, “met worksheets” for applying data from ballistic MET (meteorological) messages, the tabular firing table (TFT), graphical firing tables (GFT), “charts and darts,” muzzle velocity records for calculating muzzle velocity variations, and high burst mean point of impact worksheets for solving the gunnery problem (the practical application of the science of ballistics) would be a stimulating discussion, suffice it to say math is involved.[1] And that arithmetic goes a bit beyond balancing your checkbook, which the bank does for you now anyway. Perhaps this is the problem – computing power, which alleviates the individual from doing math. Recalling my days in a fire direction center (FDC) with a battery computer system (BCS), now the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS), we still laboriously and quickly checked the computer with our TFT, GFT, chart with “whiz-wheel,” range-deflection protractor, and calculations from MET data correction sheets along with a handheld computing device called the back-up computer system (BUCS) – a calculator to check another calculator. Dual independent checks make the gunnery world go ‘round. It is all about the math.
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