The Canadian Army Journal

Even new terminology fails to re-establish the distinction. Line of sight (LOS) and nonline
of sight (NLOS) are terms near analogous to direct and indirect, while beyond line
of sight (BLOS) has been introduced to encompass a whole spectrum of non-ballistic
trajectories, around obstacle capabilities, and direct fire behind the next ridgeline. 21 Yet,
dual role weapons further break-down the direct/indirect blurring. Short range high
explosive direct fire engagements are possible with breach loading turreted mortar
systems, such as Delco AMS, AMOS, and the FCS NLOS mortar. Tank Extended Range
Munitions (TERM) and now Medium Range Munitions (MRM) are introducing a 9 km
beyond line of sight fire capability for tanks. 22 Even dismounted crew served weapons
are blurring this distinction with weapons such as the Close Area Suppression Weapon
(CASW). The precision, accuracy and reach of all families of weapon systems is
drastically improved with things such as gliding munitions, self-navigating munitions, and
discriminating munitions. Clearly, “direct” and “indirect” are less suitable as doctrinal
constructs than organic fire and fire support.
A solution would be for the Army to adopt a new vernacular that would provide
doctrine with a construct to communicate around the blurred direct/indirect paradigm,
while also better expressing the contribution of various entities of the dispersed or
aggregated force. The problem of incongruent definitions and cognitive limitations can
be overcome by adopting a construct that divides firepower along the same operational
regimes as Act. 23 This could be done by redefining the division of organic fire as close
fire and placing this within the close regime, 24 and redefining the division of fire support
to far fire and placing this within the extended regime. 25 The concept of fire support
would remain not as a division of firepower but as a task that may be assigned to any
weapon system for either a specific objective or as a standing principal task. Further
definition of close and far fire would reflect evolutions in technology and better align
firepower doctrine with the concept of ADO.
Far Fire
Far fire is the evolution of the land and maritime surface-to-surface component of
existing fire support doctrine. Part of an overall Joint Fire System, 26 far fire is an
operational level resource capable of delivering long range lethal and non-lethal effects
in a direct or supporting role. In comparison to current artillery doctrine, the role of far
fire is to destroy the enemy with far reaching fire as part of the all arms battle. Far fire
will be defined by one key characteristic.
Reach is the characteristic ability to project effects out to significant distances from
one’s position. In some cases, such as airmobile infantry and attack aviation, the
characteristic of reach is provided by a platform. Yet both airmobile infantry and attack
aviation are close fire capabilities. Far fire’s reach is derived from the weapon systems
themselves. It is this characteristic that allows far fire to provide fire to deep, close, and
rear operations as described in Firepower.
However in the more common instances, where friendly forces will be faced with
vast contested areas between isolated areas of close operations, far fire will contribute
to operational pervasive fire capabilities. Through coordinated movement of far fire
elements and higher assets such as long-loiter strike UAV, the operational commander
will have the ability to immediately put precise effective fire onto anything within the
relevant AO. Pervasive fire will compensate for lacking mutual support and help ensure
dispersed TF elements will have available the overmatching firepower against likely
encountered enemy that is required for ADO.
Land based far fire systems, the field artillery, will contribute to pervasive fire
through an ability to disperse below the traditional battery level, as is already being done
Canadian Army Journal Vol. 11.1 Spring 2008
69