Field Artillery Strategy 2030
By Field Artillery
Article published on: May 1, 2024 in the 2024 Issue 2 of Field Artillery
Read Time: < 10 mins
MAIN EFFORT–Master the Fundamentals: In an era of continuous transformation, the U.S. Army recognizes the imperative of mastering the fundamentals of field artillery training. The ability to deliver combat-ready formations capable of shaping the future force is essential in the modern warfighting landscape. Our main effort, “Master the Fundamentals,” touches on the core principles of shoot, move, communicate, and survive on the battlefield, emphasizing their role in strengthening the Army profession.
Shoot: Delivering accurate and timely fires is the cornerstone of field artillery effectiveness. Training in precision and consistency, target acquisition, and fire direction is paramount. Soldiers must become proficient in using advanced technologies and weapon systems to maximize their lethality while minimizing collateral damage.
Move: Artillery units must be capable of rapid deployment and repositioning to support maneuvering forces. Mobility training focuses on efficiently moving and emplacing artillery pieces, vehicles, and personnel. Mastery of these skills ensures that artillery units can quickly respond to changing battlefield dynamics.
Communicate: Effective communication is essential for artillery units to coordinate with other military branches and maintain situational awareness. Training in radio and digital communication systems and standardized procedures for relaying fire missions is crucial for successful artillery operations.
Survive on the Battlefield: Artillery units must deliver devastating firepower while maintaining survivability. Training in active and passive defensive measures, such as C-UAS and digital signature camouflage, is vital for maintaining personnel and equipment in hostile environments.
Mastering the fundamentals of Army field artillery training is essential for ensuring the effectiveness and survivability of artillery units on the battlefield. By excelling in shooting, moving, communicating, and surviving, artillery units can provide critical support to ground forces and contribute to the success of military operations. The U.S. Army Field Artillery Master Gunner Course is a crucial tool in developing highly skilled artillery professionals who can lead their units to excellence. Continuous training and dedication to these principles are essential for the success of our field artillery forces.
By excelling in shooting, moving, communicating and surviving, artillery units can provide critical support to ground forces and contribute to the success of military operations.
SHAPING EFFORT 1–Develop Expert Redlegs: Producing expert leaders who are fit and adaptive problem solvers requires recruiting and retaining the best talent, regularly re-evaluating and modernizing training and facilities and executing assessments and evaluations at each central developmental point in a Soldier’s career. Per the Chief of Staff of the Army’s (CSA) READY ARMY Concept, the Field Artillery must establish expertise as the foundation of our Profession of Arms – this requires deepening our expertise as leaders and empowering our subordinates to do the same by creating opportunities and pathways for training. Expertise also requires mentorship and constant development, with a deliberate investment of resources to ensure subordinates understand their role and its importance to unit success.
We develop expert Redlegs by first taking care of people and building trust and cohesion within our Field Artillery formations – per the Combined Arms Center (CAC) Commanding General’s lines of effort (LOE), this is how we will steward the profession. With this foundation, combined with efforts to provide career-long assessments and modernization of professional military education (PME) and Army training, we can achieve the Fires Center of Excellence’s (FCoE) goal of developing high-performing Field Artillery leaders who possess the knowledge and skills to fight and win in large-scale combat operations.
SHAPING EFFORT 1–Develop Expert Redlegs
INSTITUTIONAL DOMAIN: The U.S. Army Field Artillery School (USAFAS) will modernize along with the rest of the Field Artillery Branch. We will transition to interactive media instruction (IMI) and advanced simulations demonstrating what “right looks like” regarding fire support planning and execution. Our branches’ new firing capabilities will exceed what is permissible in our current ranges. Snow Hall, Burleson Hall, I-SEE-O Hall and Fort Sill Noncommissioned Officer Academy (NCOA) must update their classrooms to host advanced IMI training and immersive simulations that will enable students to demonstrate proficiency in their critical tasks. Training at Fort Sill will be relevant and meet the needs of the operational force. USAFAS will design their instruction around operational force feedback, including CTC trends, center for army lessons learned, and observations in current LSCO-fought conflicts. USAFAS will establish formal mechanisms to promptly receive direct input and insert it into our curriculum. USAFAS training must be flexible and modern, consistently measuring its graduates against the standards set by our operational force. USAFAS will prioritize talent for the training instructor and developer positions on FCoE. Placing the best talent in the school setting ensures the best artillery men and women train students. Instructor and developer positions within USAFAS will have significant meanings to future promotion boards and future assignments in the branch.
OPERATIONAL DOMAIN: Ensuring the Field Artillery remains relevant in the Force of 2030 requires the USAFAS to strengthen and maintain relationships with the operating force. As Field Artillery units in the operational force train to build proficiency in mission-essential tasks, weapons qualification and collective live-fire tasks, we must regularly re-evaluate and modernize training and facilities to meet future threats. In doing so, USAFAS can help drive necessary change. USAFAS must develop regular, formal feedback mechanisms between the operational and institutional forces. This will allow us to capture and assess lessons learned from our battlefield coordination detachments (BCDs), division artillery (DIVARTYs), and Field Artillery brigades (FABs) on how they are establishing a warfighting culture, building and sustaining Filed Artillery readiness and what are the impediments to achieving their mission-essential task list (METL). USAFAS can use this feedback to inform updates to our doctrine, Field Artillery unit organization, training strategies and institutional curriculum. Most importantly, feedback from the operational force is crucial to ensuring the USAFAS delivers the competent, confident and committed Soldiers and leaders our Field Artillery formations need.
SELF-DEVELOPMENT DOMAIN: Field Artillery self-development seeks to develop agile, adaptive, and innovative leaders for our Army within a flexible, relevant, and enduring framework. Self-development ensures officers, noncommissioned officers and civilian leaders within Field Artillery formations are equipped to handle future challenges. Our Field Artillery formations will accomplish this through a self-development domain that is well-defined, meaningful and integrated into the leader development process. Properly structuring self-development will bridge the operational and institutional domains and set conditions for lifelong learning and continuous growth for all Redlegs. USAFAS will establish leader effectiveness through assessments and create a culture of assessments throughout Soldiers’ and civilian careers. Additionally, modernizing career maps will help Soldiers and civilians see their potential future adventure in Field Artillery’s decisive role in LSCO. Finally, improving self-development requires re-evaluating distance learning, virtual and correspondence courses and building the necessary Solider training products to bridge known operational and institutional gaps.
TALENT DISTRIBUTION: People define our Army and the Field Artillery, and proper distribution of talent will give the branch a decisive advantage against our near-peer adversaries in the future. Talent distribution is a commander and leader business. When done correctly, it will build progressive training, education, and experience to ensure the Field Artillery attracts and retains the best. Commanders and leaders must be able to describe the unique requirements of Field Artillery occupations along appropriate career paths and help develop their subordinates through coaching, counseling, and mentoring. USAFAS can help with talent distribution by updating DA PAMs 600-3 and 600-25 for our new Field Artillery Formations and positions. We must also review MOS standards and ASIs to ensure proper talent distribution for future capabilities. Finally, USAFAS will review key developmental positions and timings to ensure we build expert knowledge and skills to fight and win in LSCO. Master Gunner Course: The U.S. Army Field Artillery Master Gunner Course is a specialized training program to develop subject matter experts within artillery units. This course provides in-depth knowledge and advanced skills in all aspects of artillery operations, including ballistics, fire control and maintenance. Graduates of this course become invaluable assets to their units, capable of mentoring and leading their peers to achieve a higher level of proficiency.
The number one priority remains fielding the Artillery Force for the Army of 2030, and the cornerstone of that success lies in the men and women who make up that force. Producing expert Redlegs requires investing in their professional development through the institutional, operational, and self-developmental domains while distributing talent to build expertise to fight and win in large-scale combat operations.
SHAPING EFFORT 2–Continuous Transformation: Field Artillery modernization efforts must evolve/upgrade field artillery systems synchronized across all doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities and policy (DOTMLPF-P) stakeholders to maintain a position of relative advantage against named adversaries and win in a LSCO environment. Effective communication and exchanges between the operational and institutional forces must accompany modernization efforts.
Integrated Field Artillery Transformation Strategy: Cannon, rocket/missile/fire support systems must have redundancy and complementarity and eliminate competing solutions to common enterprise challenges.
SHAPING EFFORT 2– Continuous Transformation
DOTMLPF-P SYNCHRONIZATION: To achieve DOTMLPF-P synchronization requires:
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Programmed and predictable Soldier touchpoints
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Timely POI development
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Deliberate and comprehensive facilities assessments
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Timely doctrine updates
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Synchronization of personnel with FA formation needs in near real-time.
DELIBERATE FIELDING STRATEGY: Fielding strategies for new equipment must coincide with priorities for the force. Units aligned against an OPLAN/CONPLAN should receive equipment and associated training priority.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE/ MACHINE LEARNING INTEGRATION: New solutions should harness AI/ML and other emerging technologies to free leaders to make judgment decisions. Focus technological efforts on tasks such as:
FORMATIONS TRANSFORMATION: Formations must evolve to allow access to kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities to achieve effects across all domains. This may include altering MTOEs to create composite formations with various enablers (CEMA, IO, etc.).
PERSISTENT EXPERIMENTATION: Experimentation should be integrated, enduring, adaptive, reiterative and informed by enduring objectives and learning demands across the enterprise. It must utilize feedback from the force to progress across the DOTMLPF-P spectrum. The continuous transformation of the FA branch is a testament to its unwavering commitment to maintaining battlefield superiority through transformative experimentation. A vital component of this modernization effort is the tactical integration of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) as forward observer platforms at the battalion-and-below levels, marking a significant shift in target acquisition/engagement methodology. This initiative not only enhances real-time intelligence and situational awareness but also accelerates the precision and efficacy of our FA operations. By empowering frontline units with advanced UAS capabilities, the FA branch is ensuring its adaptability and lethality in the dynamic landscape of LSCO, reflecting an overarching dedication to continuous transformation.
FA modernization efforts must harness emerging technologies promptly to maintain a position of relative advantage with a focus on joint/combined interoperability, machine-enabled decision-making, and understanding of threat-based gaps to drive efforts.
SHAPING EFFORT 3–Strengthen the Profession: Professional writing is a critical component of leader development in the U.S. Army. It serves as a conduit for exchanging ideas, experiences, and knowledge, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement. This exchange is essential as the Army prepares for the challenges of 2030 and beyond.
SHAPING EFFORT 3– Strengthen the Profession
Developing the most professional leaders is a priority for the Army, as evidenced by the various supporting efforts to the Harding Project. As the Army looks towards 2030 and beyond, the importance of professional writing in leader development will only continue to grow, and our branch will remain at the forefront of this effort.
The Field Artillery Professional Bulletin (FAPB) and the Field Artillery Journal are vital platforms facilitating this exchange. They serve as forums for discussions among field artillery professionals. These publications disseminate knowledge about progress, development, and TTPs, cultivating a common understanding of the power, limitations, and application of Fires, both lethal and nonlethal. They foster interdependency among the armed services, contributing to the strengthening of the Army profession.
Professional writing programs within professional military education (PME) significantly develop the most experienced leaders. The professional writing programs will enhance communication skills, foster critical thinking, and promote organizational and command leadership, preparing leaders for the multifaceted environments of modern warfare.
The Army of 2030 will require leaders who communicate complex ideas and strategies effectively. Professional writing equips leaders with the skills and knowledge to share lessons across their organizations. Professional writing connects communities of interest around shared problems and informs doctrinal development as these lessons accumulate.
Strengthening the Army profession involves building expertise through written discourse. This deliberate, continuous, sequential, and progressive process, grounded in Army Values, is integral to leader development. It grows Soldiers and civilians into competent and confident leaders capable of decisive action. Leaders must be experts in their fields, capable of coordinating, synchronizing, and integrating joint and Army fires. Simultaneously, be imaginative, agile, and adaptive leaders of Soldiers.