PPT Slide
SECTION 3 - The FA of the Future
This part of the Roadmap is about destinations. In the proceeding chapeter, we established a base line or starting point for the modernization of the Field Artillery. In this chapter, we show where the artillery is headed in terms of its future development. It is an assessment of the potential trends and expectations which appear to lead to the concept of Ascendancy of Fires.
The Ascendancy of Fires. The Ascendancy of Fires is a concept that describes the combined results of improving our ability to "see the battlefield", while simultaneously attacking at depth with precision lethality. Ensuring that the Ascendency of Fires becomes a reality is a major modernization strategy of the FA Roadmap.
The Ascendancy of Fires describes a potential trend where land warfare is becoming more like sea and air warfare, i.e. forces will fight at increasingly greater ranges in "demassed formations." In this setting, combat elements conducting superior information operations and employing state-of-the-art smart/brilliant munitions, robotic vehicles, and swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles, can conceivably shape the battlefield and conduct decisive operations, possibly without coming in visual contact of each other. Here we can expect to see a dispersed combat situation where small, powerful, highly mobile tactical units employing precision fires, fight almost independently over incredibly large distances. The national mandate to win quickly with minimum casualties remains the driving factor in the emerging Ascendancy of Fires. We cannot afford to be embroiled in protracted conflicts where U.S. soldiers are fed through the "meat grinders" of attrition. Instead, our soldiers are and will remain a precious commodity. We must protect and preserve them by enabling them to literally fight out of sight, over increasingly greater distances, with highly accurate, precise, and deadly fires.