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Arty and Air Support


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It's not just timing. It can also be accomplished by making a variety of measures. Easiest to describe is simply keeping aviation higher than the flight path of indirect fires, or offsetting the aviation approach and exfil from target area to not enter artillery occupied air space.

It's something that requires some work but aviation and artillery is not mutually exclusive.

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Good question.

Depending on comms , they made no know regardless. So they wouldnt know to consider aborting.

They dont know about enemy fire coming in so its a risk they take.

There strafe attack alttitude may be high enough to not consider it a risk.

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ah so when in game you see helos or aircraft doing strafing runs while 155mm fire is coming in this is really actually unrealistic?

 

It depends. You can deconflict in such a way that aircraft are employing their weapons safely while rounds are impacting. As long as they aren't crossing the G-T line, they're OK.

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ah so when in game you see helos or aircraft doing strafing runs while 155mm fire is coming in this is really actually unrealistic?

 

As Apocal points out, nah.  It's a big part of the Fire Support Officer's job at Brigade/Battalion levels.  Basically you want to be able to mass as much fire on a target at once.  By separating the air and the artillery by elevation or terrain/graphic control measures/etc you can have both assets in operation.  These are things that basically are part of the minutes leading up to the strike, it's the fires cell or something hashing out who's where, the aviation approaching whatever safe attack by fire position via an air corridor etc etc.   

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f it. Im gonna throw this on here. As Nidan stated he was a Marine clmbat engineer in Vietnam 66-67. I was lucky enough for him to share a declassified Ops order for an op and AAR at the battalion level. Obviously it covers everything. Verbal passwords, ROE, weights ammo loads passengers for helos, call signs, etc.

Two interesting things. One I just thought you guys would find interesting was the line that (im paraphrasing) a four man VC anti tank team fired an RPG at Sgt. So and So.s tank. The damage was minor. The tank fired canister and the enemy team disintegrated. (funny how dry writing can descriptive)

But my question is this - in the pre order for battle theres a line that mentions VT fuzes ARE NOT to be fired where the trajectory would take them over friendlies. Why? Would the high canopy elevation in spots cause random airbursts? Were VTs that unreliable 23 years after invention? Did the heat do something to them...?

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My guess is that VT would inadvertently act as primitive radar guided AA fire, with the radar detecting a aircraft in it's flight path thus trigging it's fuse. Just my 2 cents.

Wait. You never said "aircraft." Ok so nevermind. Yeah I'm not sure why they'd say that. The canopy theory is the best I can figure.

Edited by Currahee150
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no helos and aircraft are as good a guess as any. the bttn aar from an op late in 67 I corps Marines is bery revealing. the guy who was there said most ied or boiny traps were vc related but I corps was DMZ area and they fought NVA a lot. Honestly i was shocked that aboiut 70% of casualties were gunfire

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Artillery still occasionally drops short for a variety of reasons (water-compromised powder, idiot FDC, etc).  Could be they were willing to risk having PD type shells falling short but not VT.  Also howitzer fire is still fairly low angle, higher trees might trip some of the lower flying shells.  

 

Really in principal you try to avoid shells going over friendly troops. Likely no VT is just a way to reduce the risk a bit.  

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But my question is this - in the pre order for battle theres a line that mentions VT fuzes ARE NOT to be fired where the trajectory would take them over friendlies. Why? Would the high canopy elevation in spots cause random airbursts? Were VTs that unreliable 23 years after invention? Did the heat do something to them...?

 

A low trajectory round might fuze much earlier than expected and detonate over your troop's head. And back in Vietnam they still had a bunch of long-range gun-type field artillery units and naval gunfire that flew at particularly low angles compared to howitzers.

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Apocal,

 

The Vietnam era M107 175 mm SPG could elevate as high as 65 deg, which is basically half of the elevation coverage for a mortar. An IOWA class BB (16") could fire at max  range with elevation of 45 deg, a BALTIMORE class CA (8") to 41 deg, a Brooklyn class CL (6") could elevate to 46 deg, and a destroyer could fire pretty much straight up. The M107 data is in the M107 Wiki, and the rest at www.navweaps.com, specifically here, with links to the appropriate naval rifles. Consequently, if attempting deconfliction, it is vital to specify what weapon's being fired, from how far away and on what axis relative to the planned altitudes and flight paths. That's coordination in space only, but such coordination must be addressed temporally as well. 

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

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