FIRE FOR EFFECT INTO THE FUTURE OF LAND ARTILLERY

The dominant thunder of artillery fire and the concussion of terrain under the relentless fall of shots have dominated the battlefields, at least since the 19th century. Indeed, the capability to generate effects through the depth of the opponent’s device and the saturation of destruction caused in the deployment of enemy forces constitute the defining elements that have led the Artillery Weapon to be nicknamed, in Armies around the world, the “God of War.” A highly technological component, profoundly transformed from conflict to conflict, significantly increasing precision, intervention arm and timeliness of fire action, diversifying its possible effects on the target and consolidating its fundamental tactical and operational role.

The re-emergence of high-intensity conventional warfighting as a more than possible extreme within the spectrum of increasingly fierce cross strategic competition and prone to triggering recurring conflict dynamics in both peer and near-peer competitors as against asymmetric adversaries with increasingly advanced capabilities, has reaffirmed, should the need arise, the enduring centrality of artillery in contemporary military operations. A deployment of indirect fire that nevertheless addresses a battlespace marked by multi-domain hybridization, transparency, speed and lethality that is substantially unprecedented. Indeed, air superiority, and even more so supremacy, constitutes an incrementally difficult objective to achieve, at most for limited times and in circumscribed sectors, promoting an increasingly pronounced contribution of land-based sources of fire to both rear interdiction and frontline support. An action of disarticulation and degradation of the adversary extended increasingly in the depth of the enemy military device and necessary in all phases of combat, as well as aimed at an increasingly broader selection of targets, including with reference to the same air and integrated air defence capabilities of the opposing deployment. Fire missions to be conducted in an electromagnetic environment systematically contested, or denied, by the adversary and under the unrelenting threat of being detected and neutralized by a pervasive network of integrated, manned and unmanned sensors and effectors capable of generating counter-fire solutions with hitherto unknown rapidity. A battlefield in which to manoeuvre in the near absence of safe zones and in which device dispersion, tactical mobility and multispectral masking represent indispensable principles not only for the survivability of forces, but also for all adherence logistics, decisive for preserving their combat potential over time. An operational scenario in which, however, the unpredictable and sudden massing of fire will continue to be a key assumption for exploiting adversary vulnerabilities and generating ruptures in the opposing deployment, enabling the manoeuvre and penetration of allied forces.

A future for land-based artillery, then, marked by a challenging doctrinal and capacitive coexistence between long-range precision targeting against time-critical targets (time sensitive targets) and concentration of fires for areal effects (weight of fires), closely interrelated and dependent on the one hand on the technical development of new platforms and on the other on the integration of these into a modern and adaptive Tactical Reconnaissance Fire Complex (TRSFC). An evolutionary effort by no means limited to the mud of training ranges but inexorably extended to the assembly lines of a broader military-industrial complex, whose production potential is crucial to sustaining the consumption of ammunition and the wear and tear of artillery systems peculiar to a clash of attrition that cannot be ruled out from the outset. In fact, the deterrence of the whole military instrument and each of its components, including land artillery, is a function not only of the overwhelming operational effectiveness of individual pieces and batteries, but of the depth of the national arsenals and their capacity for regeneration. Starting from a comparative analysis of the doctrinal, organizational and capacitive paradigms that inform the artilleries of contemporary Armies, this Focus Report delves into the lessons identified and learned of the segment originating from the most relevant theatres of war of the last five years and the projections of employment in potential conflict scenarios in the near future, in order to define the most significant trends in operational requirements for indirect fire capabilities. The same then carefully details the evolving specifics of the technical requirements peculiar to the tube and missile components, with reference to both weapon systems and munitions, before outlining an industrial mapping of the international sector market. Indeed, the contribution to deterrence ensured by land artillery depends on its ability to dominate the metamorphosis of combat, continuing to project its unstoppable thunder, if necessary, on the adversary.