Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

CHAPTER 12
Modernization Efforts
Despite the Army’s demonstrable superior firepower and airmobile capability in
Vietnam, the many years of fighting took its toll, not only on the war-weary troops
but also on their force structure and materiel. Field artillerymen, in particular, believed
that the conflict had delayed critical technological improvements needed to
successfully meet an attack by a more formidable enemy in Europe. They maintained
that Vietnam had been mainly a battery commander’s war with small individual
actions but that the European arena would be a division artillery commander’s war
with large opera tions requir ing his constant effort to allocate scarce means of fire
support, to know when to mass and when to disperse, and to execute his missions
over vast frontages.
In the aftermath of Vietnam, the political dynamics shifted to the defense of
Western Europe and NATO’s role. Cognizant that the Soviet Union and its Warsaw
Pact allies outnumbered and outgunned the United States, Army planners believed
they had to reduce the opposi tion’s superior firepower and numbers well before
meeting on the battlefield and that Army organizations and equipment had to be improved
drastically to contain such an adver sary with any suc cess. Consequently, they
focused their attention on improving the force structure and arms and other equipment
to meet the threat of a sophisti cated war in Europe. Simultaneously, because
of a growing assumption that crises were more likely to occur outside the European
milieu, they also took appropriate measures to ensure that Army forces could respond
immedi ately to any contingency within and outside the NATO sphere.
Materiel
The 1970s and 1980s saw myriad developments in cannon artillery—new
weapons, integrated large-scale fire direction systems, longer-ranged and more
varied ammunition, ter minal guidance systems, and modernized target acquisi tion
systems—that promised a virtual revolution in field artillery if successfully fielded.
The Soviet tank threat and the fear that the Air Force would be occupied fight ing
an air war, thus reducing close air support, led to studies in the use of field artillery
to fight armor. Direct fire was gen erally more effective than indirect artillery fire in
destroy ing tanks, but direct fire had its limitations, notably range. Something was
needed to engage enemy tanks beyond the range of direct-fire weapons. Cannon
artillery, traditionally the weapon of deter rence and denial, could force the enemy
to avoid the ground the artillery took under fire, but it had never been accurate