Hi Korus, thanks for the questions on the artillery. It‘s not surprising that you don‘t know too much about the artillery as the Canadian army doesn‘t operate at a level where the firepower of artillery is fully apparent. I was fortunate to have participated in various sized divisional shoots for the artillery and you don‘t appreciate firepower until you see the hill feature in front of you disappear in a cloud of devastation. The effects were only the result of relatively small number of guns 30-40 of various sizes (105 and 155 mm). The artillery brings flexible and devastating firepower to the battlefield.
My doctrine is a couple of years out of date so if any of you keen young gunners are out there and can correct me, please feel free to comment. My comments are based on the Corps 86 model.
The basic artillery grouping is a Regiment which consists of three gun batteries of six guns per battery and a Headquarters and Services Battery to provide various operational and logistic support to the guns.
Artillery Regiments are not normally grouped under a Brigade (as we see with 1, 2 and 5 CMBG) in Canada, rather they are organized into a Divisional Artillery Group containing various calibres of guns in order to fight the close battle and interdict in the deep battle.
Divisional Artillery Groups are further organized into a Corps Artillery Group that once again has a variety of tubed, rocket and missle systems to fight the close and deep battle.
This is fairly sophisticated and I won‘t get into how the command and control relationship is developed between corps, divisions and brigades. Suffice it to say, a Brigade on operations would have an artillery regiment to provide indirect fire resources to the commander.
1, 2 and 5 CMBG have been organized as independent warfighting organizations. This is why they have integral artillery, engineer, service support, etc resources that would otherwise be allocated to them by a divisional commander.
Counter Battery. I am certainly not an expert at locating artillery. The actual counter battery is conducted using the resources I explained above. The sub-field of locating artillery uses a mix of resources in order to fix and strike the enemy artillery and mortar positions. Locating methods can be through visual means (binoculars), radar, UAV, fixed wing, rotary wing, etc. The type of system you are refering to is based on radar and uses triangulation of the projectivel flying through its trajectory to fix the enemy position. If the supporting artillery unit is designated as a counter battery mission it is indeed possible to have to capability to engage the enemy position very quickly.
Canada‘s locating capability is fairly limited and its expertise is resident at the artillery school in Gagetown. A fellow I know just returned from the locating officers course in the UK and is currently serving in Afghanistan. The indirect fire threat (ie Afghanistan) has brought this shortcoming out once again and hopefully it will be better dealt with. I know they have some type of counter artillery/counter mortar radar in Afghanistan but I‘m not sure if they still use the TPS 70 any more.
Anyone else?
