The Field Artillery Soldier is highly trained in this highly technical branch of service. Field Artillery basic and advanced training is primarily conducted in The US Army Field Artillery School located at Fort Sill Oklahoma. Areas of artillery training include cannon artillery, survey, fire direction, targeting, and forward observation. Each area of this training has its unique challenges.
During my time as an artilleryman the artillery school also taught tactics, nuclear targeting and operations, and missile courses along with aerial observation.
The most physically demanding job is the job of cannoneer. The cannoneer has to lift, transport, and load artillery projectiles onto the howitzer and into ammunition trucks.
Speed is always stressed in artillery training because whoever needs artillery needs it as quickly as possible and is probably in some kind of trouble. Safety is critical because the field artilleryman is dealing with high explosive fuses, powder, and projectiles. Accuracy is a major factor because the smallest mistake will cause a huge error on the receiving end of the artillery fire. Artillery shells can travel for miles so small discrepancies are greatly magnified over distance. Some of the factors that must be accounted for when an artillery shell is fired are; air density, wind speed and direction, the rotation of the earth, air temperature, powder temperature, and temperature of the gun tube.
There are many options for the field artilleryman who wants to design a custom field artillery ring. We can’t give you every available option in this short post, but the combinations are numerous.
