“…but he was too tierd to go on…”

Gee, Now I know why there are so few guys in these forums who actually knows and more so understands stuff…they just couldn’t be bothered with these kinda lads.

To all ye others, if you wish to know about littorial naval warfare or about how modern mechanised landwarfare is fough, due by all mean turn to Plawolfs experties, he really has the hang on things…

One thing I do have to say, as your proffesor is trying to pulling our legs…

I know full well how artillery works and it works by a set of fixed principles that is usually written down on a set of tables. So much elevation gives you so much range. Accuracy need to be adjusted for wind etc. The PLA anti-air gunners I saw training had memoried all those tables off by heart. They were going given the range, heading speed of the target and wind directions. They did the calculations themselves. It was not just about pointing the barrels in the direction they were told to.

The basic idea of artillery. You have a point A from where you need to shoot to the point B. You cannot see the point B. What do you do?

Well you will shoot ballistically. Everyone who has ever studied physics can propably give you the formula where certain ammount of force gives the projectile certain speed and certain flightpath and a estimated location where it going to drop. But this is theoretical calculations with simple XY co-ordinate axels. How do you apply that to the practise and transfere that to the field? Well our proffesor surely knows this but is teasing us and trying to misslead us to think irrelevant issues…

To fire artillery, you need to have fixed co-ordinate system set to the area where you are firing to and from. Most modern artillerysystems may use GPS, where you basicly just push the button and the GPS recievs the GPS co-ordinates of the gun and sends them to the battery’s command post via radio. GPS is however not always the most accurate means of doing this and has alot of limitations. Other method is using gyroscope (like in inertial navigation). You set the know co-ordinates of some safe location to the gun and due the gyroscope, the gun knows all the time exactly where it is. Our 155K98 used this method. We once set the co-ordinates in our barracks at Vekarajärvi, drove the gun up to 900km away to Rovajärvi and started to shoot once we got there without adjusting the guns settings by any means. The radio sended the encrypted co-ordinates to the battery HQ similar way as with GPS, only the way how the co-ordinates were aquired was different.

But how it was done before GPS and for example how does PLA which doesen’t feature neither of these systems in any artillery system it currently has in service outside assumingly the still-to-be introduced PLZ05??

Well they use method adotable from basic land surveing. You have the co-ordinates of of some spesific spot. Without going too much to the very principles of the surveing, you use theodolite to meassure co-ordinates of some other point by measuring it from the known-spot. There are spesific survey unit in the artillery battalions support battery. Those guys does one of the most important and sadly underated task of the artillery. They bring the co-ordinates to each fire sections (battery is divided to two fire sections, basic and side) to spot which is called basic point. The co-ordinates of this point is now known. And here comes the actual guns, hauled to the fire postion and hurried to the individual spots of each gun. Now starts the important phase. Its called “fanning”. A theodolite is setted to the basicpoint.

The section commander meassures rough bearings of the guns. Each gun has it tube set to horizontal postion eg its facing straight forward. The aiming scope is aimed using only the bearing (not elevation) aimers towards the theodolite. The section commander gives the bearings of each gun and those are set to the aiming scope. Then you traverse the whole gun again so that you see the theodolite from yuor aiming scope by using the traverse wheel and not touching to the scope any longer. This is made with each gun and they all now points to single direction forming sort of fan with their tubes.

The actual firing is done by replacing the theodolite by a collimator which is individual to each gun. You set the paramets to the aiming scope and use the traverse wheels so you see the maching figure from the collimator trough your aiming scope. Elevation is done by setting the simple spirit-level straight with your elevation wheel.

But in further information, please turn to Plawolfs experties, he knows alot more of these stuff than I or any else of you. Or if he doesen’t know it instantly, he will watch some PLA training video or pamflet and shall return to the matter later on;)