So I’m watching a show on the history channel about cannons. It traced the development of the canon up through today. The program took the position that canons will always be around.
Saddam was apparently developing a cannon that could shoot 700 miles. The U.S. Army developed a cannon that could fire a nuclear round 20 miles.
Missiles seem to be a longer range, more maneuverable, and more precise weapon. I believe they cost more, however.
Basically, do you feel there is still a use for artillery in today’s military? Do you forsee a day when Artillery will be an obsolete weapon?
Artillery is arguably the most important weapon an army possesses. It’s simply inconceivable that artillery is on its way out anytime soon, e.g. within a century or more.
Missiles are fine for more specific targets, but artillery is still the weapon of choice when you want to kill lots of enemy troops.
Actually the recent Iraqi war would be a good argument that artillery’s day has passed. The American troops went in with minimal artillery support which was replaced by missiles and air strikes.
But I’d say this was an exception to the rule. While missiles and airplanes can do many of the things that artillery does, there are many times when quantity not quality is needed. As the OP noted, artillery fire can provide this at a fraction of the cost, so using artillery in these cases is more efficient.
In addition, while the recent Iraqi war was also a good example of higher level communications, this also is regretably not the norm (even in the American armed forces). Artillery is usually much more closely associated with the infantry forces at the battle’s edge and there is therefore much less chance of communications breakdown occurring.
Still a use today? That isn’t even debatable, the answer is yes. Will there be a day in the distant future when artillery as it is understood today will be obsolete? Possibly, but that’s an extremely distant future. Precision has its uses, but artillery in the 20th century has historically inflicted ~60 or 70 or so percent of all casualties. Its psychological ability to suppress is fairly impossibly to quantify, but the effect of even a short bombardment prior to a ground attack is extremely powerful to those exposed to it. Primarily because one is exposed to it and can do absolutely nothing about it. Most firsthand accounts of soldiers in combat point to being shelled as the single hardest thing to endure.
From John Ellis “On the Front Lines,” an account from an officer of the 1st Scots Guards in Tunisia, WW II: “How I hate shells. I have seen strong, courageous men reduced to whimpering wrecks, crying like children… And when one has nothing to do, the fumes and dust and echoed cries of ‘Stretcher bearer!’ strain one’s nerves almost to the breaking point. Yet if one goes to ground how incredibly hard it is to get into the open again to do the job of work. I would sooner have a thousand bullets or even dive bombers than a day’s shelling.”
The thing that changed my mind was a news story on Yahoo about a successful test of a battlefield laser that shot down an artillery shell in flight. The laser was the size of a tank, while the power supply was two semi trailers in size.
Foreseeing predictable miniaturization in the technology, and reasonable breakthroughs, it’s plausible that in ten years or so, there’ll be battlefield lasers capable of shooting down artillery shells in flight, with the mobility of a tank.
Now imagine that alongside a charging tank brigade is a laser defense brigade. The enemy’s artillery barrage is destroyed in flight, along with its missiles, and its drones.
If (and it’s a big if) such a theatre defense laser could become a reality, it would fundamentally alter the battlefield by making indirect fire useless. No more artillery.
How likely is it really that any system can be developed that will be as cheap, effective and reliable as artillery?
Missiles cost. Lasers or other energy weapons are obviously more complicated, and thus likely to be prone to breaking down. Artillery seems to be a cost effective, reliable way of damaging your enemy - what’s to be gained with replacing it?
This was my original thinking. Then I wondered, what about the “changing battlefield” we’re always hearing about? After all, artillery (at least the artillery that I’m aware of) isn’t terribly useful when you’re trying to take out specific targets in a city full of civillians, a la the recent war on Iraq. Is it?
To take it a step further, imagine if I picked six or seven particular buildings in, say, Chicago. Then you try to take over or eliminate those six or seven targets while minimizing damage to the surrounding area. What is artillery’s role?
But even if tactical anti-artillery lasers become a reality, they can still be overwhelmed by a battery of MRLS dropping hundreds of bomblets out of the sky at them.
You would basically program six or seven sets of coordinates and let the shells fly.
As long as armies will have a need to bring indirect fire against an enimy, there is a place for artillery on the battlefield.
It’s kind of like the argument that helicopters and man-portable missles would make the tank disappear from the battlefield. There will always be some need for a fast moving impenetrable vehicle that can deliver massive direct firepower.
Plus, many of the advantages of missiles are being duplicate in some way by super-accurate artillary.
Nope. Even if they develop such a system that, say could be put on a dedicated Humvee-like vehicle, that only make sartillary less useful, but doesn’t eliminate it. It simply mean one must be much more careful with the initial bombardments and also use combined arms to eliminate their defenses.
Plus, such things would be expensive and not everyone could afford them.
Possibly, but I wonder if we aren’t on the cusp of a change such as the one that occurred in WWI, when machine guns rendered the cavalry charge useless.
On the other hand, lasers are of finite power. Perhaps it will lead to armored warheads…
I just want to point out that, unlike missles, artillery shells have few delicate moving parts and they don’t have a relatively thin-skinned airframe. And they are fast. You would need one heck of a laser to detect, acquire and destroy a 155mm shell in mid-flight.
Still, seems to me that this only adds a layer of armor to your defenses, so to speak. Any system like this could be overwhelmed, given enough artillery on the other side. Just a numbers game. Just because we have Patriot-2 batteries doesn’t mean theater ballistic missiles like the SCUD are now obsolete–it just means that we’re not TOTALLY defenseless.
Seems to depend who you’re at war with. During the Iraqi liberation / acquisition, the average Iraqi artillery piece apparently managed to get off two or three rounds before being blown apart by a coalition plane. Against an opponent with lesser communications, less accurate targeting tech, less dominant and immediately available air cover, artillery might have a role. For Saddam’s loyal troops against this opposition, it represented little more than tokenism.
Of course, the gap between opponents isn’t always that great, so, one assumes, there is a role when the forces are better matched.
Don’t see artillery as being the weapon of choice for the first-world army’s, though. The new-ish GPS targeted (plane dropped) bombs seem to better address the political ‘surgical’ / minimal ‘collateral’ damage issue in our democracies – old fashioned artillery still invites the occasional front page mistake.
I think artillery (for us) has likely developed a political downside as other targeting tech improves.
Artillery is cheap, effective, easy to use and mass produce.
A battleship can send a ton of lead into a target 25 miles away. It doesnt care if you sent one or a dozen patriot missiles up against it. Its going to do massive damage to or near the target.
An anti-missile missile like the patriot damages the warhead or the guidance system of an incoming missile. a ton of lead has neither. Once artillery ordinance is fired, it can not be countered.
As has been mentioned, artillery currently fills a role that is irreplaceable. Artillery is mass, indirect fire support. An indirect battery can, from a centralized position on the battlefield, rain heavy fire wherever it’s necessary. It’s cheap and therefore plentiful, and thus readily available to the front line units that need it, the giant hammer always waiting to reach out and smash the tallest nail.
Artillery has a short range compared to other indirect options, such as cruise missiles and air support, but it’s vastly less expensive, more timely, more potent and generally more precise. It is also, for the forseeable future, practically unstoppable. Shooting down a single shell in a rigidly controlled experiment is a far different thing from intercepting an entire barrage in a combat environment…and even then, I imagine it would be fairly easy for decoys and similar countermeasures to greatly reduce the effectiveness of any interception systems.
Now sure, the argument can be made that artillery is of limited utility in an urban environment where collateral damage must be minimized as much as possible - but all indirect fire is affected by that. Air support is also crippled, yet highly vulnerable (helicopters especially) while cruise missiles are functionally useless in a dynamic situation. However, these are more the defining limitations of urban combat, and some of the reasons why it’s so much more of a ‘level’ playing field with regards to technology than an open battlefield is.
For that open battlefield, artillery is King. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.