re: #112 Decatur Deb

“Artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be an ugly brawl.”

Tru dat!

I have a copy of that poster (from the Artillery School) hanging up in my study. :)

The last week or so has been quite interesting. In April the Russians had been making some progress with their DonBas offensive. Since the announcement that Western artillery lendlease has been deployed on that front, the Russian offensive seems to have fizzled. And one analyst has compared recent Russian armored losses to those of the 1943 Kursk battle.

Interesting observations of a combat video by Hertling:
(To clarify his comments.

First, it used to be that artillery (indirect fire) did not have the accuracy to hit a specific target. They fired a lot of shells with the goal of winging enough people in the area that the rest lost interest and left.

Now, the capabilities are good enough to explicitly target a specific object.

Second, Russian doctrine was to get a massive amount of cannons in one spot and blanket an area with massive fire. The Russian Army does not appear to have the capability to coordinate small units like the US can.

Here there are only two cannons. They did not assemble tens or hundreds of cannons together. Does this mean that the Russians cannot assemble a lot of cannons (or anything else) without it getting blown to smithereens?)

There are 2 interesting things about this clip:
1). *Precision* counterfire against RU artillery pieces (not the usual *area fire*
2). There are only TWO RU arty pieces…not “massed fires” from a large unit that is in their doctrine & in their propaganda films. https://t.co/ueniu6skVz

— Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) May 7, 2022