Abstract:
For millennia battles were essentially affairs of linear encounter. From the 10th
Century to the 20th Century, artillery generally fired directly in the two dimensional
plane,limiting potential effects. The development of indirect fire changed this ,
two-dimensional model. Warfare became not so much a matter of linear encounter
as one of engagement as cross and throughout an area; and artillery dominated land
operations in both the First and Second World Wars as a result.
Firepower was subsequently often applied in even greater weights, but its effects
were frequently excessive and high-value targets proved elusive. During the Cold
War in Europe,the importance of field artillery wanded relative to other arms.
Artillery could only regain its utility by acquiring the highest-value targets and
engaging them effectively with the appropriate degree of force in time and space true
precision, as opposed to mere accuracy at a point. Improvements in target
acquisition and accuracy will enable land systems once more to engage targets
effectively throughout the battlespace with implications for warfare analogous to
those precipitated by the introduction of indirect fire a century ago.
Land operations will become increasingly three-dimensional and Joint. The effects
of fire will increasingly be applied in, not merely via, the third dimensions, since
targets themselves will increasingly be located, not just on the area of a battlefield,
but in the volume of three-dimensional battlespace with values of indetermined
by considerations of the fourth dimension, time. Fire, lethal and non-lethal, will
also be targeted in other less tangible dimensions such as cyber-space and new
types of 'virtual counterfire' will also emerge in the forms of legal and moral
restraint. All will be viewed through the lens of perceptions.
The burgeoning of firepower from all sources now becomes the spur for changes in the relationship between the land and air components, mindful of those novel factors that will increasingly inhibit the application of that firepower.
