Shoot and Scoot

[IronManBeta]

Since I stand in awe here of the assembled expertise, I thought I would throw out another question:

I'm writing a routine to relocate an artillery unit after every fire mission. My understanding is that they are happy to blaze away for up to five minutes or so, but after that they get antsy about counter battery fire and feel a strong need to pull up stakes and get into a new position quickly. This is a perfectly normal (and well justified) feeling to have. Arty is far too valuable to lose for no good reason.

My question is - if say, half a dozen M109s are arrayed in a patch of ground that is 500m by 500m, would they move just 100 m each, or perhaps 500m or what? Would it be fair to show the entire unit as having displaced 500m in some direction after just 5 minutes of fire? I foresee having them fire up to 3 times in a half hour turn and displacing an equal number of times. They could therefore drift by up to 1.5 km from where their CO had them just 30 mins before and this seems pretty extreme. Or would 500m for the entire half hour be SOP? Or are they tethered to some imaginary point that they can move about but not too far from?

Many thanks, Rob.

[Sabre21]

Hi Rob

Actually the distance moved is more than that. 100 or even 500 meters is not far enough of a move considering the resources the Soviets would use on counter battery fire. A typical BM21 battery of 6 firing units could cover a square kilometer in a single barrage. Thats 6 x 40 122mm rockets. I'll ask a friend of mine who is retired now, he used to command an arty battalion back in them days.

Sabre21

[IChristie]

Rob,

I actually know something about this one.

first of all any arty move would be a full battery move to a whole new position, usually at least 2km away. I was in a towed 105 regt but the doctrine is actually pretty similar. How often the battery's move probably depends on a lot of things including: how fluid the situation is, whether they have had a chance to prepare the position (giving them protection against CB fire), and whether there are actually new positions available. The last one is probably a big concern. Every officer in an arty battery (FOO's included) is actually responsible for looking for potential gun positions.

Frankly though, with the density of units expected in this type of conflict it is unlikely that gun positions would be allocated at lower than div or even corps level. Arty CO's (at the Bde HQ) would likely get a list of possible gun positions, but they would almost certainly have to get permission from the Commander Div Arty to move their guns. In general, close support batteries do not move unless their is another battery available to cover their supported arm.

An arty battery is actually a pretty sizeable organization, not because of the guns but because of the other vehicles, principally ammo trucks. The wagon lines are supposed to be 600m from the gun line and guns are to be no closer than 50m apart (and usually more like 100 to 150 for 109's). Thus making a battery position a minimum of half grid square and more like a full grid square in a lot of cases.

Moving to a new location is not a simple exercise either since the all the ready ammo has to be packed and the gun prepared to move. Even 109's can't just drive off a position. They have spades that have to be raised and the gun has to be latched (I think). Cam nets have to be taken down and stowed etc.

New positions have to be surveyed in advance - which if you're good takes at least 30 minutes. The gun platforms are designated and surveyed and once the guns arrive they have to be oriented. With the advent of GPS the survey is probably easier but the guns still have to be put on common orientation if you want to have any idea where the first round is going to go. Ultimately the battery survey should be upgraded to regt then div and eventually theatre. At that point you would expect that every gun available will hit the same spot when given a common target. Without common grid the FOO has to manually correct each battery's fall of shot.

All in all, I doubt that batteries could move more often than once an hour and that rate could not be sustained for more than a few moves or the gunners would be exhausted and you'd have ammo and other kit strewn over half the battlefield with the BSM madly driving around trying to pick it up. Basically, if the guns are moving, they're not doing their job...

Excluding road move time a good battery could probably get out of one position in about 10 minutes and into another in about 15 (with rounds on the ground). There are procedures for deploying from line of march and firing from improvised positions, but that is only likely to happen in case of emergency.

I'm not sure what the doctrine would have been, but I suspect that close support arty (the reg'ts assigned to the mnvr bdes') would not have practiced shoot and scoot. First of all because their first responsibility is to be available to their supported arm and second because they would assume that most CB assets would be directed at bigger fish (the heavies and the MLRS).

Besides those big tin cans those 109 guys drive around in have to be good for something... right?

[byron13]

Huh. I would've thought that DS guys would have moved around quite a bit too. But I'm just a dumb treadhead.

Where's Marc Schwanebeck when you need him?

[Marc von Martial]

Here I´am ,

well, I was with the big ones, not that towed peashooters Iain served with (hehe couldn´t resist). Our MLRS (Div artillery) doctrine was to have the whole battery in a well camouflaged so called "Bereitstellungsraum" , there the whole loot is waiting for a possibly fire duty. Several firing and rearming positions have been preplanned and every vehicle commander knows about them.
In the "Bereitstellungsraum" you wait for the Divisions call on a possible fire duty. The call comes and the launchers march to the firing positions, waiting for the actuall fire command. Immediatly after firing the complete series (volley?) launchers move ASAP (and I mean ASAP in the military meaning ) to the rearming spots, recalibrating GPS and all the fancy stuff on the move.
From there you move to the next firing position or back to the "Bereistellungsraum", depending on what Division is planning. Since our greatest threat was enemy airforce the "Bereitstellungsräume" could also have been multiple ones (but we never practised that actually).

All in all a MLRS battery is switching positions whenever possible. The good speed of the MLRS and GPS made this exercise pretty comfortable.

That´s all now some 9 years ago and doctrines might have switched since then.

[Marc von Martial]

Btw, forgot the marching distances between the different spots. They were well above 1km but depending on what the terrain allowed of course.

On the M109 I have to ask my Dad, he served 12 years as NCO in a M109 battery, beeing FO the last years.

[IChristie]

Huh. I would've thought that DS guys would have moved around quite a bit too. But I'm just a dumb treadhead.

Well, as I said, I am hardly current and doctrine for the SP guys may have been different.

Still moving an battery of guns is not as easy as moving a tank company

Unlike MLRS, tube arty not only needs to know where they are but where they are pointed, and all guns have to have common orientation. This means that moving takes quite a bit more coordination and individual guns cannot operate independently.

[byron13]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting it was easy. In officer training, we actually had to set up those barber pole stakes and do all of the stuff that you had to do to get everything lined up. Obviously, I don't remember much (but isn't it amazing that there was a time when every ROTC cadet in the U.S. got to call for fire and actually have live rounds fired on the call?). I just figured that anyone that fired more than two missions and didn't move would get pasted - regardless of what level unit they were. But I'd best back out of this conversation, because I don't know dickey-doo about arty.

[IChristie]

And I, frankly, know the square root of dickety doo about the situation in Germany so I think you're ahead of me. Let's face it, towed arty was pretty much a remnant of the last war (hell, I found one 105 with "Rock Island Arsenal, 1944" stamped on the breech). I often felt that we were often training for the last war anyways.

So maybe I'll go back to my maps and leave doctrine to the pros (and ex-pros).

[Sabre21]

Hi all again

I am pretty certain that the US doctrine in Germany was to fire a mission then move to an alternate position. With the amount of arty the Soviets had, you could expect counter battery fire most ricky tick. All the FA units I know of (US) were self propelled. I have been trying to get a hold of a friend of mine that was a battalion commander back then but he hasn't been home. I'm still trying though. I'm about ready to call Ft Sill and ask the school house themselves:)

Sabre21

[Sabre21]

OK..I got the info and I can't believe I never thought about this.

As it turns out, in Germany...since we had been there since the end of WWII, nearly every conceivable arty spot had been pre-surveyed. There were literally hundreds of locations an arty battery could choose from, and it didn't matter if it was a sp or towed unit. Also if it was necessary, firing a couple high burst registration rounds would be sufficient to get zeroed in.

In attack aviation, we knew every avenue of approach and had pre-set battle positions with ingress and egress routes already made. We even knew the altitude and magnetic heading to hover at in order to see the engagement area. We kept all these surveyed sites in a safe on little cards that could ce handed to the pilot with all the pertinent data. So even new guys could get into good firing positions.

So with this in mind, I have no doubt the other branches of the Army did the same thing.

Sabre21