Field Artillery in

 Military Operations

 Other Than War:

 An Overview of the US Experience

Combat Studies Institute Press

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 

 

 Global War on Terrorism

 Occasional Paper 4
Field Artillery in Military Operations Other Than War:

An Overview of the US Experience

Combat Studies Institute Press

Fort Leavenworth, KS 
iii

Contents

Introduction .....................................................................1

US Field Artillery and MOOTW, 1789-1941 ..............................4

US Field Artillery and MOOTW, 1945-2000 ..............................17

Greece ..................................................................18

The Philippines ......................................................18

Korean War .........................................................19

Lebanon ...............................................................20

Dominican Republic ................................................21

Vietnam ...............................................................23

Grenada ...............................................................30

Panama ...............................................................31

Somalia ...............................................................32

Haiti ..................................................................34

Bosnia ..................................................................35

The War on Terror and the Role of Field Artillery ........................36

Conclusions .....................................................................41

v

Foreword

The initial conflicts in the Global War on Terrorism, Afghanistan and 

Iraq, pose significant challenges for the armed forces of the United States 

and its coalition allies. Among the challenges is the use of field artillery 

in those campaigns that fall short of conventional warfare. Engaged in a 

spectrum from full-scale combat to stability and support operations, the 

military is faced with an ever-changing environment in which to use its 

combat power. For instance, it is axiomatic that the massive application 

of firepower necessary to destroy targets in decisive phase III combat 

operations is not necessary in phase IV stability operations.

However, the phasing of campaigns has become increasingly fluid as 

operations shift from phase III to IV and back to phase III, or activities in 

one portion of a country are in phase IV while in another portion phase 

III operations rage. The challenges of this environment are significant 

but not new. The US military has faced them before, in places like the 

American West, the Philippines, Latin America, Vietnam, and others. Dr. 

Larry Yates’ study, Field Artillery in Military Operations Other Than War: 

An Overview of the US Experience, captures the unique contributions of 

that branch in a variety of operational experiences. In doing so, this work 

provides the modern officer with a reference to the continuing utility of 

field artillery in any future conflict. 

 Thomas T. Smith

Lieutenant Colonel, Infantry 

Director of Combat Studies 
1

Field Artillery in Military Operations Other Than War:

 An Overview of the US Experience

Introduction

One of the principal developments in European military technology 

during the 13th and 14th centuries was the advent of artillery tubes that 

used gunpowder to launch their projectiles at enemy targets. Initially, these 

artillery pieces were extremely large, heavy, cumbersome, inaccurate, and 

unreliable. Over the ensuing centuries, however, continuous technological 

breakthroughs resulted in smaller, lighter, more accurate field guns that 

could, using many refined techniques, fire a variety of munitions over 

longer ranges. As the guns became more versatile and mobile, their 

utility expanded: besides their initial use as siege and garrison weapons, 

they quickly became fixtures on the conventional battlefield as well. 

Over the course of several centuries, commanders and other military 

specialists made adjustments in artillery techniques and placement that, 

given improvements in accuracy, weight, mobility, range, vulnerability, 

and target acquisitioning, employed the pieces in ways that would wreak 

as much havoc while enjoying as much protection as possible. In the 

process, the use of artillery on the battlefield and in siegecraft became—

and remains—a matter of specialized study within the military profession. 

To the present day, that study has largely dealt with the employment and 

utility of field artillery in conventional warfare, characterized by force-onforce engagements across clear-cut siege lines or on a linear battlefield, in 

which artillery functions as one of the combined arms alongside infantry 

and cavalry/armor, not to mention naval and air power.

Historically speaking, the professional study of the employment 

of field artillery has devoted little attention to the role artillery 

weapon systems play in what the US military refers to as Military 

Operations Other Than War, or MOOTW (pronounced “moo’-twa”). 

This umbrella term is used within the joint community to cover a 

variety of activities that fall short of total or limited conventional 

warfare (or, as these two phenomena were categorized throughout 

much of the 1980s, high-intensity conflict and mid-intensity 

conflict, respectively). The paucity of MOOTW artillery studies is 

easy enough to understand. Artillery was invented as a weapon of 

war, and the massive destructive power of artillery pieces over the 

ages has made them most effective when employed against enemy 
2 

fortifications and weapons or against massed numbers of enemy 

troops (and, in too many instances, civilians).

Because of its tremendous firepower, artillery has been called “the 

most important branch of a field army,” even the “King of Battle.”1

 For 

the same reason, it is generally assumed to have a limited role within 

MOOTW, where most activities do not require delivery of such destructive 

power, either because the situation constrains or does not demand the use 

of overwhelming force (or, perhaps, any force at all), or because an enemy 

does not present himself as a target vulnerable to artillery fire. This is not to 

say, however, that field artillery is irrelevant to MOOTW or, if it is relevant, 

that it is always relegated to a peripheral role. But it is often the case that 

when employed in MOOTW, those artillery tactics, techniques, procedures, 

and doctrine suitable for conventional warfare require modification and 

adjustment. It is the purpose of this short study to provide a concise overview 

of those circumstances and adjustments as they have been manifested by US 

field artillery during its use in MOOTW over the past two centuries.

Before presenting such an overview, it is necessary to offer a brief 

word about what this study does not attempt to accomplish. First of all, 

it is not a study of fire support, but of artillery only. Further, within the 

acceptable range of weapons incorporated under the latter term, the study 

focuses on field artillery, principally howitzers, but direct-firing guns 

as well; it is not a study of coastal or air defense weapons, rockets, or 

mortars, although there may be a passing reference relating the interaction 

of these weapons with the aforementioned artillery pieces.

There is also a need to say a preliminary word about MOOTW, 

laying out, to the extent possible, what it is, what it is not. To begin with, 

MOOTW is a relatively recent term, coined sometime in the 1990s. Among 

its historical antecedents is the term “small wars,” popular in the early 

20th century. Despite the appearance of the word “war” in the term, small 

wars covered many military activities that would be considered MOOTW 

today. In the 1960s, the term “stability operations” was in vogue, but by 

the mid-1970s, it had fallen into disuse, a casualty of the Vietnam War. By 

the 1980s, the numerous military operations that did not fit the definitions 

of total or limited conventional warfare had been subsumed under the 

rubric of low-intensity Conflict (LIC), but that term fell into disfavor 

within a decade, in part because the word “conflict” was inappropriate to 

many activities crowded under the LIC umbrella and, in part, because the 

doctrine overemphasized counterinsurgency at the expense of the other 

activities. As the LIC label dropped from sight, operations short of war 

enjoyed a brief endorsement, only to be replaced by MOOTW.
3

As of this writing, MOOTW and war constitute what the US Army 

calls “full spectrum operations.” In war, offensive and defensive 

operations “normally dominate,” occasionally with some “smaller-scale 

contingencies.” In MOOTW, on the other hand, stability operations and 

support operations (SASO) “predominate,” perhaps with the inclusion of 

“certain smaller scale contingencies and peacetime military engagements” 

as well.2

 Support operations, in general, cover two principal categories: 

domestic support operations and foreign humanitarian assistance. The 

range and scope of stability operations are much broader, to encompass:3

• Peace Operations

• Foreign Internal Defense (including Counterinsurgency 

[COIN])

• Security Assistance

• Humanitarian and Civic Assistance

• Support to Insurgencies

• Support to Counterdrug Operations

• Combatting Terrorism

• Noncombatant Evacuation Operations

• Arms Control

• Show of Force

Of the two principal categories of MOOTW, the presence or threat of 

violence is probably least pronounced in support operations. In domestic 

support operations, for example, the case for calling in US military forces 

may be argued more in terms of organizational readiness and manpower 

availability than in terms of their ability to threaten or dispense violence 

(although military personnel participating in riot control or even disaster 

relief may find themselves facing groups intending them deliberate physical 

harm). Participation in foreign humanitarian assistance operations may 

run the risk of deadly firefights, as during the US involvement in Somalia 

in the mid-1990s, but may often entail no violence whatsoever. Stability 

operations, on the other hand, almost invariably contain the risk of some 

degree of violence, and it is to the employment of field artillery in this 

category of MOOTW that this study will devote the bulk of its attention.

Having made this modest generalization about the categories of 

MOOTW, it is important to note the doctrinal admonition, “It is difficult 

to generalize about stability operations and support operations. They 

can be long or short, unilateral or multinational, domestic or foreign, 

developmental or coercive.” It is also difficult to generalize about the 

ways in which SASO differs from conventional warfare, although some 

suggestions as to the differences might be instructive before launching 
4 

on the study of artillery in MOOTW. To begin with, in SASO political 

considerations generally override military concerns—even what is 

regarded as military necessity—and do so at the strategic, operational, 

and tactical levels. Because of this, the forces employed may operate 

under greater restrictions and constraints than in conventional warfare, 

as witnessed by some of the more restrictive rules of engagement (ROE) 

applied in certain US stability operations during the Cold War and postCold War periods. The “battlefield” in SASO may often lack the linearity 

of its conventional counterpart and, with a frequency much greater than 

that found in war, may contain a variety of noncombatants, to include 

the civilian population, private and governmental organizations, media 

personnel, and foreign diplomats and workers. The “enemy” on that 

battlefield might be an armed opponent, or an unarmed individual—say, 

a town mayor or a local cleric—who simply is interfering with the 

accomplishment of the mission. As on any battlefield, conditions may 

change rapidly and dramatically, but in SASO, those changes are likely 

to alter the mission itself, or at least the nature of the tasks required to 

accomplish it, thus making some degree of “mission creep” likely, if not 

inevitable. Finally, but not inclusively, SASO often involves some degree 

of cross-cultural interaction. 

In an effort to make an overview of the employment of US artillery in 

MOOTW more manageable, this study will not attempt a comprehensive 

assessment of the American military experience but will look very 

selectively at events within two chronological periods. The first, while 

covering the long stretch of time from the American Revolution to the 

beginning of World War II, will concentrate on the use of artillery primarily 

in the Indian wars of the mid- to late 19th century, and the expeditionary 

activities, or “small wars,” of US forces overseas from 1898 to 1934. The 

second, shorter period will focus on the role of artillery in MOOTW in 

several cases from 1945 to the end of the 20th century. A brief discussion 

of artillery’s role in the Global War on Terror will then be followed by a 

summary of the conclusions drawn from the chronological overviews.

US Field Artillery and MOOTW, 1789-1941

An examination of the history of the United States during the 

country’s first century and a half as a sovereign nation reveals many 

examples of what today would be labeled MOOTW. In the category of 

domestic support operations alone, there are numerous cases in which the 

Army (to include regulars, militia, National Guard, and volunteers), and 

occasionally the Marine Corps and Navy, were called out to maintain or 

restore law and order at home. Two excellent volumes from the US Army 
5

Center of Military History assess these operations in detail, from the 

measures to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion and other armed uprisings 

in the early Republic; to dealing with pre-Civil War violence on the 

frontier; to putting down draft riots during the war itself; and dealing with 

range wars, labor strikes, race riots, and other forms of unrest between 

the Civil War and World War II.4

 This is not the place to offer details 

of each episode. Rather, the point to be made is that federal military 

forces involved in these operations often included artillerymen. In some 

cases, artillery units were deployed to serve as infantry; in other cases, 

artillery pieces were employed as well, generally for psychological effect. 

Prominently displayed field pieces loaded with canister provided an 

effective deterrence against mob action. In the New York City draft riots 

of 1863, for example, one group of police and soldiers with a field piece 

in tow encountered little difficulty clearing the streets they were assigned 

to patrol. In this and most domestic support operations, the employment 

of artillery was limited to its psychological impact. The specter of US 

forces firing cannons at groups of angry American citizens for the sake of 

restoring order was not a prospect that any political or military figure of 

prominence relished.

There were many more stability operations than domestic support 

operations from 1789 to 1945, and many of the kinds of activities listed 

today under the former category took place during the first century and a 

half of this country’s existence. To the extent that MOOTW represents 

nontraditional, unorthodox, and unconventional roles for the military, 

one could argue that America’s major wars during that period, beginning 

with the War for Independence and moving through the War of 1812, the 

Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and 

World War II, all contained some aspect of MOOTW, such as guerrilla 

warfare. But easily the best example of the phenomenon of stability 

operations during the late 18th and the 19th centuries is the experience of 

the US military with native Americans.

The doctrinal admonition against generalizing about MOOTW/SASO 

is readily evidenced in the history of the Indian campaigns of the United 

States military.5

 Conducted intermittently over the course of a century, 

these efforts to control Indian tribes, first east of the Mississippi, then west 

of it, involved activities ranging from police-type actions to combat. The 

terrain varied according to time and place, to include deserts, swamps, 

mountains, plains, and timberland; the climate varied as well according 

to location and season. And so, too, did the adversary. Each native group 

embraced its own way of life—from hunting and gathering to sedentary 
6 

agriculture—and in some way, great or small, stood apart culturally from 

other native groups. This diversity lent itself to frontier warfare as well, 

requiring the US military to learn and adjust to the variety of tactics it 

would confront in fighting different tribal groups.

Regarding Indian warfare, at least one generalization can be made. It 

did not resemble the European model of conventional, set-piece battles 

employing massed, organized, and well-trained and disciplined armies 

armed with weapons reflecting the best industrial technology of the day 

and maneuvering on large, open battlefields.

The problem on the American frontier was that US officers had been 

trained and educated in this European-style warfare, and there had been 

enough such wars involving the United States between 1789 and 1898 

to make this paradigm seem valid. In the 19th century, the War of 1812, 

the Mexican War, and, above all, the Civil War influenced the training, 

education, and thinking of the American officer corps. After the War of 

1812 and until the Civil War, for example, cadets at West Point studied 

conventional operations of American soldiers at Chippewa and Lundy’s 

Lane (both occurred in 1814), not the more numerous campaigns their 

countrymen waged against the Indians.6

The Civil War, of course, provided a plethora of conventional battles 

for examination, battles in which artillery, either in the offense or defense, 

had been used by armies massing their troops shoulder to shoulder to fight 

each other upon a linear battlefield. Given this mind-set, 19th-century 

thinking on artillery “emphasized the use of massive firepower to destroy 

or severely weaken enemy infantry or cavalry formations in preparation 

for an attack or to attrit the enemy when in the defense.”7 If, to most US 

officers, this represented the proper role of artillery on the battlefield, it is 

not surprising that few saw the utility of the weapon in operations against 

“primitive” Indian tribes. Compounding this view was the absence of a 

body of doctrine on how artillery could be employed in unconventional 

warfare.

In light of this traditional mind-set and the void in doctrine for 

unconventional warfare, the decision concerning whether to use artillery 

in Indian campaigns and, when it was used, the strategy and tactics 

adopted, generally reflected the preferences and prejudices of individual 

commanders. Some, such as George Armstrong Custer, saw little utility 

for the weapon when he took the offensive; others, such as Nelson A. 

Miles, employed it regularly in their operations. Often determining 

one’s choice in the matter were physical factors, particularly the size 

and weight of artillery tubes, and convenience, especially with respect 
7

to the transportability of the cannon. Could the artillery pieces available 

keep up with the cavalry columns that often led wartime expeditions? 

Could the available pieces negotiate the various terrain obstacles they 

would encounter along the march route? Did the firepower advantage 

offered by the artillery compensate for the cost in mobility exacted by 

their inclusion in a column on the move? Under what conditions did that 

firepower advantage actually make itself felt? In that artillery pieces on 

the frontier varied in their capabilities, and in that the terrain, as noted, 

varied tremendously from one part of the country to another, the answers 

to these questions were often problematic for a commander planning a 

campaign or operation.

Generally speaking, from the mid- to late 19th century, the standard 

pieces on the frontier were the 12-pounder smoothbore Napoleon (named 

not after the great European commander, himself an artilleryman, but after 

his nephew, Napoleon III), the 3-inch Ordnance rifle, and the 12-pounder 

Mountain Howitzer. The Napoleon tube weighed 1,230 pounds and fired 

both canister and spherical case-shot, the latter being the most effective 

against the Indians. The mass-produced, cast-iron 3-inch Ordnance rifle, 

while considered a light piece, weighed 830 pounds, which made it, like 

the Napoleon, cumbersome and difficult to maneuver over rugged terrain 

and in pursuit of Indian bands. The mountain howitzer, weighing in at 

220 pounds, was much lighter than its companion pieces, but despite this 

advantage, it still presented problems of mobility and was considered by 

many officers to be unsuitable for their needs on the frontier.

Surplus Civil War artillery and postwar budget trimming militated 

against the development of new, more technologically advanced field 

pieces until the 1870s. By that time, the War Department found itself 

under mounting pressure from officers such as Colonel Miles, a veteran 

of the Indian campaigns, to develop a lighter, more accurate, and more 

mobile artillery piece suited to the Indian frontier. After much discussion, 

the department ordered the Hotchkiss 1.65-inch breech-loading rifled gun 

that weighed a scant 117 pounds and employed metallic fixed ammunition. 

Given the gun’s range of 4,000 yards, its accuracy, and the mobility 

accorded it by being able to break down its carriage for horse transport, “it 

soon became the dominant field piece on the frontier.”8

During the Indian campaigns, the US Army generally operated out of 

forts positioned throughout the frontier areas. In the second half of the 

19th century, a consensus existed that each fort should have enough troops 

to conduct field operations and to protect the facility itself. In the best 

cases, a fort would have four Army units posted to it, consisting of cavalry 
8 

for reconnaissance, and infantry and artillery for security.9 While this 

standard was never uniformly met, it indicated that there was indeed a role 

for field artillery on the frontier, at least in a static defense mode. In the 

course of over a century of Indian warfare, there were numerous occasions 

on which artillery fire repelled or dispersed an organized attack by hostile 

bands against an Army fort. Often, the firing of an artillery round or two, 

or even the mere presence of the guns, had enough of a psychological 

impact on natives unfamiliar with weaponry beyond small arms to deter 

an attack or to frighten off the attackers with few or no casualties on either 

side.

Artillery pieces also served defensive purposes in field operations. 

Small detachments armed with a field gun could often repel an Indian 

ambush, as in 1862 at Apache Wells in eastern Arizona, where 700 

Apaches surprised 126 California militiamen, who scattered the Indians by 

opening fire with two mountain howitzers. (Decades earlier, in the Second 

Seminole War, US forces ambushed in a Florida swamp used a single 6-

pounder cannon to hold off the attacking Seminoles; ammunition for the 

gun ran out, however, and the unit was overrun in the infamous Dade 

Massacre that started the war.) Artillery could be used to protect smaller 

woodcutting and foraging parties from ambush as well. In a similar but 

distinct vein, artillery in the field could protect a defensive position, as 

in 1862 when Kit Carson’s New Mexico volunteers took refuge from 

pursuing Comanche in an abandoned trading post at Adobe Walls. When 

the Indians charged the position, artillery fire broke their attack.10

When terrain, enemy dispositions, and other considerations allowed, 

artillery in the course of field operations could perform a number of 

offensive roles. There was always the possibility, of course, that it would 

be used for one of its intended purposes: open battle. Such battles rarely 

occurred against Indian bands whose operations stressed ambushes, raids, 

and dispersal. Still, on those occasions when Indian warriors did gather 

in mass—not shoulder to shoulder, to be sure, but in sufficient bulk to 

offer a lucrative target—artillery fire could be devastating. It could also 

be effective when used in attacks against Indian encampments or prepared 

fortifications. An example of the former occurred in 1868 during a winter 

campaign in the Indian Territory against the Cheyenne. After elements 

of a column led by Major Andrew Evans beat back a Cheyenne ambush, 

the troopers followed the Indians to their camp. Rather than charge the 

encampment immediately, one of Evans’ subordinates brought forward 

two of the unit’s four mountain howitzers and opened fire from a distance. 

When the cavalry moved in, the howitzers continued to fire in support, 
9

deterring any Indian counterattack and ultimately compelling the warriors 

to abandon their lodgings and possessions. The soldiers moved into the 

vacated area and, protected by the artillery loaded with canister, spent the 

night destroying the contents of the village “at their leisure.” Thanks in 

part to the patient use of artillery to prepare and support the move against 

the encampment, Evans’ column suffered only one casualty during the 

entire engagement.11 

On at least one occasion, an artillery piece employed against an 

encampment by an officer not familiar with the weapon’s capabilities 

produced results not nearly so desirable as those experienced by Evans. 

In July 1877, a command of 350 troops under Brigadier General Oliver O. 

Howard, an infantryman (and former ordnance officer), was pursuing Nez 

Perce Indians when scouts observed a hostile village along the Clearwater 

River in Idaho. When this news reached the general, he ordered one of 

his two howitzers brought forward and placed on a bluff high above the 

encampment. The gun opened fire, but it did not have the range to reach 

its target. Thus, the shells “burst high in the air and did no damage beyond 

frightening the fleeing people.” The explosions also alerted warriors not 

in the village to the presence of the US force. The result was a two-day 

battle in which artillery played a significant part, at one point almost being 

overrun by the Nez Perce. In the end, however, the Indians withdrew, 

leaving many on both sides to wonder what the outcome might have been 

had Howard not lost the element of surprise through the inappropriate use 

of the howitzer.12

One of the best recorded examples of the effective use of artillery 

against a fortified Indian position (not just an unfortified encampment) 

occurred during the Modoc War of 1872-1873. During the first phase of 

the conflict, the Modocs established themselves in the rugged lava beds 

of northwestern California. The terrain, according to one account, was 

“criss-crossed with lava ridges, pockmarked with sinkholes, and studded 

with volcanic rock,” offering defenders “concealment and protection from 

enemy fire.”13 US troops, including veterans of the Apache wars who 

tended to dismiss the value of artillery support, made their initial assault 

on the stronghold on foot, with several artillery units serving as infantry. 

The cannon scheduled to mount direct fires in support of the attack fell 

victim to a dense fog that covered the battleground and obstructed the 

crews’ view. Not surprisingly, the assault was repelled. After a buildup 

of the force—a buildup that included artillery pieces brought with great 

difficulty through snow, mud, and other difficult terrain—a renewed effort 

to reduce the stronghold incorporated artillery fires, both from mountain 
10 

howitzers and Coehorn 160-pound mortars (the latter artillery weapon 

having a higher trajectory than the howitzers). The howitzers employed 

shells (as opposed to shot or canister) timed to explode in an airburst over 

the target, while the mortar rounds exploded on impact. Together, the field 

guns and mortars, by supporting a series of daylight attacks and mounting 

nighttime bombardments as well, inflicted enough casualties to cause 

the Modocs to abandon their position. Worth noting is that one soldier 

participating in the Modoc War observed that, in 23 years of frontier 

campaigning, it was the first time that he had seen artillery employed.14

The use of artillery against the Modoc stronghold produced casualties 

not just among the warriors but among the women, children, and 

elders accompanying them. While official Army policy was to spare 

noncombatants, this was not always the case. Exceptions to policy could 

be the result of women and children having the misfortune of being 

mixed in with the warriors during a battle, or it could be the result of 

US troops deliberately failing to discriminate between combatant and 

noncombatant. Given the power of artillery, the field guns were especially 

prone to inflicting what the military today refers to euphemistically as 

“collateral damage.” The Modoc War provides one example. Just four 

years later, there was another. In the campaign to round up the Nez Perce, 

Colonel Miles used a Napoleon gun against the Indian camp in the Bear 

Paw mountains. To make the flat trajectory gun effective against a wellentrenched enemy, the crew dug a hole and placed the carriage’s trail into 

it, thus elevating the gun’s barrel and using it as a makeshift mortar that 

could lob shells on top of ravines and rifle pits protecting the Indians. In 

the process several warriors were killed, but so were an undetermined 

number of women and children.15 Over a decade later, in 1890, perhaps 

the best known case of noncombatants being killed during a fight occurred 

at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where an ill-advised attempt to disarm 

Sioux warriors resulted in hand-to-hand fighting between US troops and 

the recalcitrant Indians. An artillery bombardment of the camp by four 

Hotchkiss cannon followed. Two hundred Sioux were killed, including 

62 women and children, despite compelling evidence that the Army tried 

to spare the noncombatants.16 Historically, the action that day represented 

the last major battle of the country’s Indian wars.

To recapitulate, the use of artillery on the Indian frontier varied from 

place to place and commander to commander. While the role of cannon 

as weapons of static defense was generally taken for granted, their use 

in field operations depended on terrain, mobility, logistics, weather, the 

enemy, and the personality of the US commander. Those officers who did 
11

take it into the field on a regular or habitual basis often did so as a matter 

of prudence, increasing their sense of security through the “firepower 

insurance” the guns provided. (The matter of “firepower insurance” has led 

several historians to speculate on what would have happened had Custer 

exercised similar prudence.) When artillery was employed in the field, as 

noted, it was often in a way that could be described as “conventional” on a 

small scale, as when used to good effect against massed Indians or against 

their fortified positions. Still, despite the frequent (but not continuous) 

effectiveness of artillery in the Indian campaigns, the conventional wisdom 

expressed by many military and political leaders continued to hold that the 

guns were largely irrelevant to frontier warfare. Consequently, no body 

of “doctrine” evolved for the employment of artillery in something less 

than all-out conventional warfare on the European model against another 

country. Similarly, because the United States seemed to be insulated 

from such warfare, the development of artillery, both technologically and 

organizationally, received a low priority in US military affairs until the 

very late 19th century.

There was another argument many officers made against using artillery 

on the American frontier, one that is often heard with respect to MOOTW 

in general. Engaging in the Indian campaigns, it was alleged, caused a 

degradation in the skills of artillerymen. There were only small numbers 

of cannon in the West at a given time, and these were dispersed throughout 

an extremely large area. Often, only one to four guns saw use in any single 

operation, and often they were manned by barely trained infantrymen and 

cavalrymen; conversely, artillerymen too often served as infantry and 

cavalry, roles that did not enable them to maintain their gunnery skills. 

The War Department’s attempt after the Civil War to set up a field artillery 

school at Fort Riley was short-lived and ineffectual, further aggravating 

fears that artillerymen on the frontier would not be able to perform well if 

called upon to ply their craft in formal warfare.17

Summarizing the role of artillery in the Indian wars of the post-Civil 

War period, historian Boyd Dastrup stated:

As the Indian campaigns of the 1870s and 1880s indicated, 

the challenge of moving cumbersome field artillery over 

rugged country restricted its use. When the Indians 

were running, field artillery was generally worthless 

because it could not stay up with fast-moving cavalry 

or infantry columns. However, when the Indians fought 

on the Army’s terms or when the Army defended against 

Indian charges, field artillery demonstrated its value. 
12 

Although commanders employed field guns whenever 

the opportunity presented itself, the difficulties of pulling 

cannons along when chasing the Indians reinforced the 

popularly held opinion that only cavalry or infantry 

could be effectively utilized in Indian warfare. . . . As far 

as [General William T.] Sherman was concerned, field 

artillery’s only real value was engaging massed troop 

formations on the conventional battlefield.18

Less than a decade after Wounded Knee, the United States found 

itself at war with Spain in a conflict that reflected the fact of America’s 

rise as an industrial and military power and its willingness in the name 

of security to assert that power beyond the country’s continental borders. 

Between 1898 and the American entry into World War II in 1941, US 

military forces deployed overseas in one major conflict, World War I; a 

limited conventional conflict, the Spanish-American War; and several 

expeditionary operations to include the pacification of Cuba, 1898-1901 

and again in 1906-1909; the Philippine War, 1899-1902; the occupation of 

Puerto Rico and the Canal Zone in Panama; the Boxer rebellion in China; 

the pacification of the Moros in the Philippines, 1903-1913; intervention 

at Vera Cruz, Mexico, in 1914; the Punitive Expedition into Mexico, 1916-

1917; the occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934, and the Dominican Republic, 

1916-1924; and intervention in Nicaragua, 1927-1933. Each of these 

expeditionary operations, taken in its entirety, could be categorized today 

as MOOTW. Furthermore, each was a joint operation—more than one 

service—with the Army taking the lead in the first decade and a half, 

roughly 1898 to 1916, and the Marine Corps assuming the primary role 

thereafter.

When American troops, whether soldiers or marines, deployed for 

most of these operations, they took their artillery with them. Over the 

course of four decades, the pieces would change, as breech-loading, longrange guns with recoil mechanisms and, after 1918, motorized transport, 

replaced what had been the state-of-the-art weapons of the 19th century. 

Also, as early as the 1890s, the Army looked into the concept of indirect 

fire, adopted the practice as did many European powers after the RussoJapanese War of 1905-6, and saw this decision validated in the world war. 

Doctrine in the form of updated field drill regulations, force structure, 

command and control, and tactics more or less kept pace with technological 

breakthroughs, although limited funding and, World War I excepted, the 

absence of an imminent threat from another world power constrained 

military spending.19 Yet, remarkable as these changes were, they were 
13

geared as before to fighting a world-class enemy, armed similarly to the 

United States, on a linear, conventional battlefield. This was not, however, 

the enemy that soldiers and marines confronted in Cuba, the Philippines, 

China, Mexico, or the Caribbean basin.

Indeed, in many respects, the use of artillery in the expeditionary 

operations between 1898 and 1941 bore little resemblance to how 

American artillerymen employed it in Europe in 1917-1918 and more to 

the way it was used in the country’s Indian campaigns. As in the American 

West, there were times when operations took on the form of conventional 

battles against an organized and massed, but not equally armed foe. Given 

the US advantage in firepower, artillery in these cases could be used in 

a direct-fire mode to good effect. In the Philippines, for example, what 

became a four-year guerrilla war pitting American troops against Filipino 

resistance in the northern islands began as a conventional battle in which 

US soldiers with light artillery support—the Army never shipped heavy 

pieces to the Philippines—charged Filipino trench lines around Manila, 

dislodged the defenders, and began a year-long pursuit up the island 

of Luzon in which the Filipinos mounted many rear-guard skirmishes. 

During this opening conventional phase, US artillery played an essential 

part in the American victories.20 Even after the Filipino resistance began 

relying on guerrilla tactics, the occasional conventional battle unfolded. 

Such was the case in Batangas province in January 1900, for example, 

when the guerrilla leader Malvar erected elaborate defenses, including 

antiquated field guns, around the town of Santo Tomás, only to have the 

position demolished by US artillery fire and infantry columns, with heavy 

losses for the defenders.21

Nearly two decades later, in the Dominican Republic, US marines 

were sent ashore to put down an uprising against the national government. 

At one port city where they disembarked, they encountered heavy but 

inaccurate fire from rebel forces. The marines sustained several casualties 

as they overcame the resistance, but they deliberately did not call upon 

their artillery or the naval guns offshore for fear of inflicting civilian 

casualties. Once the marines received the mission of occupying the 

country, they went after the rebel forces, which led to several engagements 

along conventional lines. The first came at a place called Las Trencheras, 

where the rebels had entrenched themselves in strong defensive positions. 

With no fear of receiving counterbattery fire from a force outfitted mainly 

with small arms, the marine commander brought his own 3-inch guns 

onto a hill overlooking the trench lines. The ensuing volleys, followed 

by a marine bayonet charge that was covered by continuing artillery fire, 
14 

sent the rebels fleeing to a backup position. There, the sequence of the 

first attack was repeated, with artillery again playing a key role in the 

rebel setback. A few days later, the rebels tried to make another stand, 

this time entrenching themselves in locations marine gunners could not 

observe for the purpose of direct firing. Thus neutralized, the artillery sat 

out the subsequent battle, as marines equipped with small arms, including 

machine guns, managed to disperse the rebels but with considerably more 

difficulty than when the leathernecks had enjoyed artillery support.22

Once the rebel force in the Dominican Republic disbanded and 

began a guerrilla campaign of harassment, the Marine artillery lost much 

of its battlefield effectiveness. This was also the case a decade later in 

Nicaragua, when as part of their mission to stabilize the country, marines 

had to defeat the recalcitrant forces of Augusto Sandino. The initial battles 

with the sandinistas were conventional affairs, with the marines using 

aircraft bombardments for fire support. Once Sandino adopted guerrilla 

tactics, though, the Marines switched their emphasis from heavy firepower 

to mobility, the best example of which was M Company, a 32-man unit (2 

marines; 30 Nicaraguans) armed with six automatic weapons (Thompson 

submachine guns and Browning Automatic Rifles) and rifles, four of which 

had grenade launchers.23 Marine artillery did not appear among the unit’s 

weaponry and did not figure in its tactical and operational successes.

That is not to say, however, that artillery had become irrelevant to 

the unconventional side of these expeditionary operations. It could still 

serve as a defensive weapon, and as in the Indian wars, it could be used as 

protection against ambushes. In one instance in the Dominican Republic, 

shells from a 3-inch gun mounted on a flatcar in front of a locomotive 

scattered rebels attempting to waylay the small troop-carrying train.24 Also, 

as in the Indian wars, field pieces could be used, when weather permitted 

and other impediments to direct observation were lacking, to dislodge 

enemy forces from fortified positions. Thus, US artillery in the Boxer 

Rebellion effectively blew away the gates to Peking’s inner city, opening 

the way for a successful assault. Similarly, artillery was used to good 

effect against fortified positions occupied by the Moros during pacification 

campaigns directed at these people of the southern Philippines.25

Again, in another parallel with the frontier experience, some US 

expeditionary forces incorporated artillery into their operational plans 

for the purpose of “firepower insurance.” When Brigadier General John 

J. Pershing entered Mexico in March 1916 in pursuit of the Mexican 

revolutionary and bandit, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, two field artillery 

batteries consisting of eight 2.95-inch howitzers were among his forces, 
15

just in case Villa had field pieces or the expedition became embroiled with 

Mexican government troops. As it turned out, Pershing’s men fought three 

major engagements—one against the villistas, two against government 

forces—but artillery did not figure in any of the battles. It did, however, 

provide base security for Pershing, especially at the main camp of Dublán. 

The cost of this security was not cheap in terms of mobility and logistics. 

The artillery pieces did not travel well over the northern Mexican terrain, 

and the wagons, horses, fodder, and men it took to transport them were not 

insignificant. According to one account, “it required four mules to carry 

one gun, disassembled, plus another six mules to carry the ammunition; 

thus to transport one gun required ten animals, which needed shoeing 

and forage, plus a dozen men to look after the mules as well as assemble 

and fire the gun.”26 Besides the logistics issues, the presence of the 

artillery created political problems for Washington. Given the history of 

American-Mexican relations, officials in Mexico City were suspicious of 

the motives behind another US incursion into their country. The presence 

of artillery only fueled these concerns: Why, the Mexican government 

asked, would the American force employ artillery if it only intended to 

chase after guerrillas?27

In the 1920s and 1930s, both the Army and the Marine Corps took 

a serious look at their “small war” experience. Except for occupation 

duty in some countries, the Army by that time was pretty much out of 

the “small wars” business and focused almost entirely on planning for 

large-scale, conventional conflicts, thus its contribution to the subject 

was limited. The Marine Corps, in contrast, undertook a more thorough, 

systematic examination of their expeditionary ventures and, in 1940, 

published their final version of the Small Wars Manual, the closest thing 

to a comprehensive doctrinal approach to the subject then in existence. On 

the subject of artillery, the manual suggested that the “role of artillery in 

small wars is fundamentally the same as in regular warfare. Its primary 

mission is to support the infantry.” Light artillery, the text went on to say, 

was best employed “against personnel, accompanying weapons, tanks, 

and those material targets which its fire is able to destroy.”

On the other hand, medium artillery reinforced “the fire of light 

artillery, assists in counterbattery, and undertakes missions beyond the 

range of light artillery,” although except in specific situations, “the 

necessity for medium artillery will seldom be apparent.” How much 

artillery to include with a deployed force depended upon the mission, the 

terrain, the capability and intent of any opponent. “As a general rule,” 

the manual asserted, “some artillery should accompany every expedition 
16 

for possible use against towns and fortified positions, and for defense of 

towns, bases, and other permanent establishments.” The guidelines also 

recognized that artillery was best employed against an opponent whose 

forces were intact, as they often were at the outset of an expedition. “When 

the opponent’s organization is broken and his forces widely dispersed,” 

however, “the role of artillery as a supporting arm for the infantry will 

normally pass to the 81-mm. mortar platoons.”28

The Small Wars Manual also addressed the place of artillery in the 

march column, the need for artillerymen to be prepared to serve as guards 

and infantry, and procedures for parceling out artillery batteries within a 

battalion to small units. Further, the manual raised the all-important issue 

of mobility, stating that “artillery must be able to go where the infantry 

can go.” To this end, the 75-mm gun and the 75-mm pack howitzer were 

seen as the pieces best suited to this requirement. Of the two, the howitzer 

was preferred “in small wars situations,” since it could be “employed as 

pack artillery where a satisfactory road net is lacking in the theater of 

operations . . .” To carry the pack artillery, mules were needed, generally 

to be “secured locally.” The mobility afforded by the animal was deemed 

“rapid, quiet, and dependable,” and “especially suitable for operations in 

mountains and jungles.”29

The Small Wars Manual still stands as a comprehensive and insightful 

discussion of various aspects of what today is termed MOOTW. At the 

time its final version came off the presses, however, there was a war 

raging in Europe and the Pacific, and the United States was just one 

year away from entering the fray. Consequently, the manual went on the 

shelf, a compendium of wisdom about the kind of military operations 

neither the Army nor the Marine Corps had undertaken willingly and to 

which neither really wanted to return. Fortunately, in the view of most 

career officers, the chances that such operations would be in vogue again 

in the near future seemed remote. Even after Germany and Japan were 

defeated in a war fought the way most officers believed wars should be 

fought—that is, conventionally and without significant constraints on 

the use of one’s military power—the emerging Cold War focused the 

US military on the prospect of conventional warfare against the Soviet 

Union and, after 1949, Communist China in what planners predicted 

would be a near repeat of World War II in Europe and Asia, albeit with 

one significant modification, nuclear weapons. Given this mind-set, 

the Small Wars Manual gathered dust. But for those who had put it 

on the shelf in hopes it would remain there, history would prove most 

unaccommodating.
17

US Field Artillery and MOOTW: 1945-2000

The traditional military mind-set reinforced by the conventional 

nature of most combat in World War II carried easily into the postwar 

period. Although US servicemen occupying Germany and Japan 

performed what today would be labeled stability operations and nationbuilding, military planners looking to the future assumed that the next 

world war would involve a combination of conventional and atomic 

combat, perhaps with some special-type unconventional operations taking 

place behind enemy lines. Artillerymen did not dissent from this view as 

they undertook a thorough reevaluation of the role field artillery would 

play in a new global conflict. Beginning in 1945, various conferences, 

committees, and boards analyzed the weaponry, mobility, fire direction, 

organization, procedures, and command and control arrangements for 

artillery.30 The recommendations that surfaced were far-reaching and, as 

would be expected, geared to high-intensity conventional warfare similar 

to what had unfolded in the European Theater of Operations in 1944-

1945. Many of the proposals, however, fell victim to postwar budget 

constraints and higher priorities; others could not be implemented without 

extensive research and development or other time-consuming processes. 

This meant, among other things, that at the outset of the Korean War in 

June 1950, the artillery tubes in the US inventory were what they had 

been at the end of the world war despite the recognized need for more 

technologically advanced weaponry.

With the emergence of the Cold War, US policy makers and military 

strategists came to perceive Soviet and, after 1949, Chinese communist 

expansion as the principal threat to American security, to which the 

response of President Harry Truman’s administration was a policy of 

containment. While, theoretically, the communist threat was deemed 

universal, the first major act associated with containment was not a global 

initiative but, disallowing the rhetoric employed,31 a geographically 

limited program calling for military and economic assistance to Greece 

and Turkey, each of which was the object of some form of Soviet pressure. 

The approach taken in what became popularly known as the Truman 

Doctrine reflected the nature of almost all of what followed militarily 

in the Cold War: not global conventional hostilities but a series of local 

and regional crises and conflicts, most often conducted by proxy but 

sometimes involving one or the other of the superpowers directly. On two 

occasions, Korea and Vietnam, local/regional struggles pulled the United 

States into conventional but limited warfare. But those two wars aside, 

most US military activity between passage of the Truman Doctrine in 
18 

1947 and the end of the Cold War by 1990 involved several hundred cases 

of what would today be classified as MOOTW. What follows is a selective 

overview of some of the more prominent of those cases.

Greece

Truman Doctrine aid to Greece opened the door to a type of US 

military involvement that today would be categorized as foreign internal 

defense. To assist a right-wing Greek government battle communist 

guerrillas in the country’s northern mountains, the United States provided 

an impressive program of military assistance, including military advisers 

to help the Greek military plan and coordinate operations, training, and 

logistics. In December 1947, these advisers were organized into the Joint 

U.S. Military Advisory and Planning Group (JUSMAPG). In an attempt 

to create a Greek fighting force based on US doctrine, equipment, and 

organization, JUSMAPG enjoyed some quick but ephemeral successes. 

In early 1948, the Greek National Army, equipped with US weapons and 

employing US tactics including tactical air bombardment and artillery 

fires from 105-mm howitzers, cleared communist forces from one critical 

mountainous area. Subsequent sweeps, however, were less productive. 

Not until the guerrillas began to form into units geared to conventional 

combat did the civil war turn in the government’s favor. Even though 

many US military observers realized that the communists’ reversals were 

to some degree self-inflicted, JUSMAPG nevertheless drew a dubious 

“lesson” from the experience: “The combination of heavy firepower, close 

air support and good mobility, which had been the American way of war 

in World War II, was seen to be appropriate for fighting new forms of 

war.”32

The Philippines

This perception that a conventional approach to guerrilla warfare 

could overcome unconventional forces was not immediately applied 

beyond Greece, as evidenced by the case of the Philippines. In 1950, just 

after the insurgency in Greece had been defeated, the United States was 

stepping up military assistance to the government in Manila for its ongoing 

struggle with the communist-led Huk insurgents. Thanks in no small part 

to Ramón Magsaysay, the Filipino defense minister and later the country’s 

president, the approach to fighting guerrillas in the archipelago did not 

mirror Greece, but employed more of what would be regarded as classic 

counterinsurgency techniques: a combination of political and economic 

reform, psychological warfare and civic action, all supported by military 

pressure applied by lightly armed and highly mobile conventional units 
19

and by small “hunter-killer” groups. The basic antiguerrilla conventional 

unit was the battalion combat team, or BCT, consisting of three infantry 

companies; a heavy weapons company with mortars, machine guns, and 

recoilless rifles; a reconnaissance platoon; and various support elements. 

“Normally artillery was not organic,” one source has noted, “but a battery 

of towed 105-mm howitzers was attached, if required by the mission.”33 

The United States supplied the artillery as part of it military assistance 

program, but the weapon did not play a decisive role in the successful 

suppression of the insurgency.

Korean War

In June 1950, war broke out on the Korean peninsula, as the Sovietsupported communist regime in the north attacked the US-backed republic 

in the south. During the first week of the conflict, President Truman 

committed American ground troops to what was primarily a conventional 

war but one that was restricted geographically to the Korean peninsula, 

denied the use of certain weapons (no atomic bombs were used), and, 

following the entry of Communist China into the war later in the year, 

redefined America’s war aims. By early 1951, the military operations of 

the anticommunist coalition in this “limited war” were designed not to 

win a decisive victory but to prevent the other side from doing so, thus 

compelling it to seek a political settlement to end hostilities.

During the first year of the Korean War, the battlefield shifted up and 

down the peninsula. On a map, a continuous line separating the two sides 

represented these shifts; in reality, the battlefield did not become linear 

until mid-1951. The relevance of this for US artillerymen entering Korea 

in 1950 was enormous. Many had fought in Europe against the Germans; 

others had at least been trained in the tactics of the European theater. They 

were comfortable with a linear battlefield. Discarded as an “aberration” 

was the Pacific experience of World War II, in which artillery crews 

operating in hilly, mountainous country had to learn to protect and defend 

their flanks and rear. Although, once in Korea, artillerymen “quickly 

understood the need for units to protect themselves through all-around 

defense and coordinate their activities with nearby infantry and armor 

units, putting this into practice after years of training for linear warfare was 

another matter entirely.” To complicate the situation, just as artillerymen 

were learning to adjust to a nonlinear war, the battlefield, in fact, became 

linear. Consequently, the practical techniques for the perimeter defense of 

artillery units “were never fully tested against either sustained assault or 

large-scale attrition.”34 This was perhaps the most relevant point to come 

out of the Korean War, a mid-intensity conflict, for artillerymen who would 
20 

later engage in low-intensity conflicts, or MOOTW. It is also a point that 

would have to be relearned a decade later. For the remainder of the 1950s, 

however, in an effort to avoid another prolonged and limited war such as 

the one that chewed up American manpower and resources in Korea, US 

military strategy would focus again on fighting a conventional, atomic 

war in Europe. If, at the lower end of the operational scale, insurgencies 

or regional conflicts threatened to escalate into another Korea, the United 

States stood ready—or so it said—to employ massive retaliation, meaning 

tactical or strategic nuclear weapons, to defend its interests.

Lebanon

In practice, the strategy of massive retaliation (more formally known 

as the New Look) enunciated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower rarely 

relied on nuclear brinksmanship, especially after the Soviet Union acquired 

effective means to deliver its nuclear weapons on the United States in 

the late 1950s. Military and civilian critics of the New Look spoke of a 

“Balance of Terror” in which any American threat to use nuclear weapons 

to settle some “brush-fire” conflict simply lacked credibility. Like it or 

not, the United States needed to be ready to intervene with conventional 

forces and weapons in such cases where its interests warranted military 

action. The deployment of American troops to Lebanon in 1958 seemed 

to prove the point. It was the first of what would be several contingency 

operations that involved the intervention of US conventional forces in 

local and regional crises at the lower end of the conflict spectrum.

In mid-July 1958, a military coup against the pro-Western monarchy 

in Iraq, during which the royal family was murdered, led President 

Eisenhower to order US Marine Corps and Army forces into Lebanon, 

where another friendly government seemed on the verge of falling to 

radical elements from inside and outside the country. Within 24 hours 

of the presidential decision, the first of three Marine Battalion Landing 

Teams had come ashore just south of Beirut. A few days later, a US Army 

battle group out of Germany began to arrive. (Artillerymen in Germany, 

it should be noted, had been assigned control group duties during the 

assembly and embarkation process.) The combat elements from both 

services brought artillery with them: the marines had six 8-inch howitzers, 

eight 4.2-inch mortars, and three 105-mm howitzer batteries, each with 

six pieces. By the end of July, all of these had been placed under the 

centralized command of a Force Artillery Group. The Army, for its part, 

inserted one artillery battery of howitzers and another of antiaircraft 

artillery. In perhaps the strangest development of the intervention, an 

artillery battery with two launchers for the nuclear-capable Honest John 
21

tactical rocket also appeared. The launchers were redeployed immediately 

but questions would follow as to why a nuclear-capable weapon had been 

introduced into a highly charged but clearly conventional operation.35

US troops entering Lebanon had expected combat—against whom 

they were not quite sure—but their mission quickly became one of helping 

the Lebanese army establish stability around Beirut until diplomats 

could negotiate a political settlement to the internal crisis. Under these 

circumstances, the threat faced by American forces ringing the capital city 

came not from any conventional army but from the small-arms fire of rebel 

groups in the vicinity of US positions. The Americans were well protected 

from this kind of dangerous harassment—the Americans suffered only one 

fatality to rebel sniping—and as a result, the artillery pieces located in the 

beachhead area never fired in anger. They did furnish potential support 

for the troops (a forward artillery observer generally accompanied units 

on patrol), with the guns being ready to respond if serious combat did 

occur. But, on the whole, the role of the artillery was a familiar one of 

“firepower insurance.” In the past, the mere presence of artillery pieces 

capable of direct fire would have also served as a psychological deterrent 

to hostile groups, but in Lebanon that role was usurped by the tanks the 

marines and soldiers brought with them. Thus, while Marine, Army, 

and Lebanese artillerymen conducted liaison visits and established the 

means to coordinate fire support should the situation deteriorate, the 

plans and procedures they developed were never put to the test. By the 

end of October 1958, diplomacy backed by the US military presence had 

produced a political settlement, and all American troops were withdrawn. 

Dominican Republic

Seven years later, US forces intervened in the Dominican Republic in 

an operation that bore many similarities to the one in Lebanon. In April 

1965, the pro-US Dominican government fell to armed rebels in a coup 

d’etat that Washington perceived to be communist led. Several days of 

bloodshed followed as the rebels and their opponents engaged in civil war, 

largely confined to the capital city of Santo Domingo. When the rebels 

appeared on the verge of complete victory, President Lyndon B. Johnson 

ordered US forces into the country to prevent a communist takeover and 

to stabilize the situation. Leading the way were elements of a Marine 

Expeditionary Unit and all three combat brigades of the Army’s 82d 

Airborne Division. The 82d brought its field artillery with it, but inasmuch 

as the fighting was in a highly populated urban area, a desire to avoid 

casualties among innocent civilians and major damage to the city itself 

led to a ban on fires from mortars, naval guns, and artillery.36 For a brief 
22 

period, illumination rounds were allowed, then discontinued for fear that 

one might start a fire that, given the densely packed, combustible buildings 

in the city, could destroy a substantial portion of the capital.

Within a few days of arriving, US forces bottled up the bulk of the 

rebels in the southeastern portion of Santo Domingo, and Washington 

decided to pursue a political settlement instead of a military victory. In 

the ensuing year and a half that American troops remained in the country, 

the main threat they faced was from rebel small-arms fire, snipers, and 

occasional mortar rounds. Under ROE that changed frequently, the troops 

responded with minimum force. Generally, the 106-mm recoilless rifle 

and the M-72 Light Antitank Weapon, “workhorses against hard targets 

and weapon positions,” represented the heaviest firepower employed.37

Soldiers in the division’s field artillery battalions were attached to the 

combat brigades to perform a variety of “secondary missions,” to include 

search and clear, security, food distribution, and traffic control. The tubes 

themselves were removed from the city to a division artillery training 

camp well to the northeast. There, they stood ready if needed—“firepower 

insurance” once again—while engaging in a number of training events, 

including live-fire exercises. By the end of May, less than a month 

after they had arrived, all the artillery units except one battery began 

redeploying to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In July, two months after 

an inter-American peace force began operating in the capital with US 

participation, the Brazilian commander requested that one of the 82d’s 

artillery battalions be brought back to enhance the multinational force’s 

capabilities. Political considerations delayed a decision on the request 

until October, and the battalion did not arrive in the Dominican Republic 

until December. In the meantime, two of the division’s artillery units 

deployed their countermortar radar, which, when it worked, proved 

invaluable in determining the parties responsible for launching periodic 

mortar attacks in violation of a series of cease-fire agreements.

One lesson drawn by the 82d in the Dominican Republic was that, in 

an intervention where overwhelming force made quick work of a grossly 

inferior military threat, the immediate need was for noncombat assets, 

such as engineers, military police (MPs), and signal equipment. As one 

report stated:

To make the critical airframes available to move this 

added signal equipment and the additional Infantry and 

MP units, a reduction in artillery is acceptable. The 

requirement for artillery, as well as for close air support 

and naval gun fire, will not be as great as in conventional 
23

operations. A small amount of armour [sic] is particularly 

useful: tanks have great psychological value even if 

conditions preclude the firing of their main armament.38

Vietnam

The US intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965 coincided 

with the escalation of America’s military involvement in Vietnam. In some 

ways, what followed in the Southeast Asian conflict resembled the Korean 

War: Vietnam was a limited war in terms of objectives, geography, and 

the weapons employed. Furthermore, as in Korea, political considerations 

would often override military needs at the operational and tactical levels. 

But there were also tremendous differences between the two conflicts, 

among them the fact that Vietnam, while in many respects a war pitting 

conventional US forces against conventional North Vietnamese and 

Viet Cong (VC) regular units, involved, to a much greater extent than in 

Korea, unconventional counterinsurgency against Viet Cong guerrillas 

on the nonlinear, civilian-populated battlefield of South Vietnam. At 

the peak of America’s longest war, over 500,000 US service personnel 

would be in Vietnam. Artillery was prominently represented among this 

force, although many of the artillerymen who served in Vietnam learned 

that their conventional training and tactics were not always adequate in 

confronting the enemy threat.

The conventional mind-set US artillerymen carried into Vietnam 

reflected military developments between the Korean War and the early 

1960s, when the Army had spent most of the decade trying to modernize 

its force and make it relevant to the atomic age, all on a shoestring defense 

budget that favored the Air Force and Navy over ground forces. In the late 

1950s, the Army introduced the Pentomic Division, a unit of five battle 

groups that could be dispersed on an atomic battlefield, meaning Europe. 

Critics were quick to point out the shortcomings of the new force structure, 

and by the mid-1960s, a new divisional structure—the Reorganization 

Objective Army Divisions (ROAD)—designed to fight on a conventional 

or nuclear battlefield replaced the Pentomic configuration. By the early 

1960s, the Army had also introduced new field pieces to its inventory: the 

M108 105-mm howitzer, M109 155-mm howitzer, M110 8-inch howitzer, 

and the M107 175-mm gun were self-propelled pieces; the M102 105-mm 

howitzer, M114 155-mm howitzer, and M115 8-inch howitzer were towed. 

Despite the availability of these weapons at the time President Johnson 

committed US combat forces to Vietnam, many older and nearly obsolete 

pieces remained in unit inventories. Still, in the summary of one historian, 

Army field artillery had gone through “a period of rapid transformation”: 
24 

Pressed by massive retaliation, the Army seized the 

opportunity to join the nuclear age. It introduced 

more lethal and mobile conventional field artillery, 

standardized more and better nuclear artillery, started 

adopting computerized gunnery, formed aerial artillery, 

and revised tactics, doctrine and organization to permit 

fighting a conventional or nuclear battle. As many field 

artillery officers correctly proclaimed, these developments 

revolutionized the field artillery.39

While the Army touted the advantages of ROAD in both 

conventional and nuclear warfare, little or nothing was said about 

its role on an unconventional battlefield. Likewise, training was 

geared to fighting the Soviets in Europe. President John F. Kennedy, 

to be sure, was preoccupied with Soviet promises to support local 

and regional “wars of national liberation,” including the conflict 

in Vietnam, but despite his administration’s attempt to refocus the 

military on counterinsurgency, most officers viewed guerrilla warfare 

as falling within the province of Special Forces. Thus, artillerymen 

entering Vietnam were not prepared for the unconventional aspects 

of the Second Indochina War, 1965-1973, and the first major battle 

of that war did little to elicit a reorientation in their thinking. The 

engagement occurred in South Vietnam’s Ia Drang valley in early 

November 1965, when elements of the US 1st Cavalry Division ran 

into North Vietnamese regulars. As the fierce fight began, towed US 

field artillery provided little support—the battle was being waged 

beyond the range of its guns. To remedy this, four artillery batteries 

were lifted by helicopter in mid-November to within firing distance 

of the combatants. The fires they subsequently delivered helped repel 

the threat to US forces. At least one general officer credited the tube 

artillery with giving the infantry “a vital measure of superiority.”40 

In this respect, the battle of the Ia Drang validated conventional 

wisdom concerning the concentration of field artillery fires during forceon-force engagements in which the enemy massed for a stand-up fight. 

The problem was that, after Ia Drang, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong 

generally tried not to accommodate US firepower by forming in mass 

for major offensives.41 The Americans, in response, developed tactics 

designed to force the enemy to fight. One such approach was search and 

destroy, a tactic in which small US units (generally platoons) would patrol 

the countryside, find the enemy (ranging anywhere between a two-man 

patrol to a VC regiment), disengage, and call in air, naval, and artillery fire 
25

to deal with the hostile force. Maneuver, in other words, was undertaken 

in support of firepower, rather than firepower being used to facilitate 

maneuver. This controversial approach presumably saved American lives 

but generated debate about its deleterious effect on the initiative of infantry 

units. The approach also raised questions about whether fire support could 

play a decisive role on the battlefield.

Although the enemy often deployed regular forces and US troops 

were generally trained in conventional warfare, the United States, as one 

author has noted, “remained in the uncomfortable position of fighting 

a war that was generally COIN in nature.”42 The Viet Cong continued 

to operate both as guerrillas as well as main force units, and both Viet 

Cong and North Vietnamese regulars employed guerrilla tactics when the 

situation warranted. Further, they did so on a nonlinear battlefield that 

encompassed the whole of South Vietnam. Search and destroy tactics thus 

required US forces to disperse, with battalions acquiring responsibility 

for covering relatively large sections of the country. Field artillery 

batteries accompanied the battalions, with many functions doctrinally 

reserved for the artillery battalion being performed at the battery level 

by junior officers whose scope of responsibilities in decentralized 

operations quickly expanded well beyond the training they had received. 

Dispersal also required mobility, and in a country lacking a sophisticated 

road network through difficult terrain, the helicopter became a principal 

method of displacing artillery pieces (the lighter 105s were better suited 

than 155s for this kind of transport) and ammunition and of putting them 

in positions from which they could achieve maximum effect. Also, as 

in the Korean War, a nonlinear battlefield allowed the enemy to attack 

from any direction, meaning that, once set up, the artillery required 

perimeter—“6,400 mils”—protection. This need, together with mobility 

requirements, led to the creation of a network of fire support bases (FSBs), 

at which artillery pieces were generally located with a maneuver battalion 

command post. The tactics generated to defend the FSB included the use 

of the artillery’s counterbattery radar, indirect fire from nearby FSBs, and 

artillery in a direct-fire mode using canister.43

From these dispersed and fixed positions, “located so that any point in 

the area of operations could be reached by at least one battery and usually 

two or more, the maneuver commander conducted offensive operations, 

while field artillery, ranging from 105-mm. howitzers to 175-mm. guns, 

furnished fire support and helped defend other fire bases as required. This 

arrangement guaranteed a rapid response by the artillery when called 

upon, simplified furnishing fire support in guerrilla warfare, and saved 
26 

lives.” In what proved to involve very complex procedures, field artillery 

also coordinated with air and sea power to maximize fire support within a 

given area.44

These arrangements, many US officers believed, would help 

compensate for friendly ground forces falling far short of the 10:1 ratio (10 

counterinsurgents to 1 insurgent) theoretically needed to prevail in COIN. 

And, in fact, there was much the artillery could accomplish to make up 

the difference. As noted, the enemy could mass for a major conventional 

attack only at its peril, as witnessed by the casualties the North Vietnamese 

and VC suffered in the Tet Offensive and at Khe Sanh in 1968. In the latter 

battle, close air support and tube artillery cut apart waves of attacking 

North Vietnamese in a manner that bore some resemblance to the carnage 

of the Western Front during World War I. (Perhaps it turned out to be 

irrelevant, but US forces are said never to have lost a major conventional 

engagement in South Vietnam.) American artillery could also protect 

friendly patrols by destroying obstacles blocking their paths or by 

answering the call for fire support once the enemy was encountered. If, in 

the course of an engagement, the infantry could isolate the enemy, artillery 

could help close down avenues of retreat or reinforcement. As in past 

conflicts, artillery also proved effective—although there is a debate over 

just how effective—against the enemy’s fortified positions. For the Viet 

Cong, these positions tended to be the underground tunnels and bunkers 

from which the guerrillas could emerge to wreak havoc on an exposed 

and surprised US or South Vietnamese unit. Once discovered, however, 

these underground complexes could be “busted” by the combined use of 

air power, armor, and artillery, in which the latter used airburst shells from 

105s to keep the enemy under cover, and delayed-fuse rounds from 155s 

and 8-inch howitzers to destroy the bunkers.45

Other uses of artillery included “preparing” landing zones for the 

arrival of troop-carrying US helicopters. There was also the “artillery raid,” 

in which pieces were taken out of the FSB and placed where they could 

reach targets beyond the range of the guns at the base. Usually a battery 

of 105-mm guns and three 155-mm pieces, with an infantry company 

providing security, deployed via helicopters, fired several hundred rounds 

at the designated target, and then returned to the FSB.46 In addition to the 

raid, artillery served up fires on concealed areas, forcing enemy troops into 

the open, where US helicopters and fighter planes waited to unleash their 

own firepower. There were also the frequent, highly important, and highly 

controversial “harassment and interdiction” fires, “the primary U.S. tactic 

for preempting attacks on bases by Communist indirect fire.”47 The tactic 
27

was effective when the response to an incoming enemy round was rapid. 

The controversy arose (1) from the excessive amount of ammunition that 

was too often expended, (2) from the belief of numerous observers that 

too many rounds “were wasted on empty ground” and did only marginal 

damage to the enemy, (3) from the observation that harassment and 

interdiction fires contributed significantly to civilian casualties, and (4) 

from the realization that rounds which failed to explode provided VC 

guerrillas with ordnance for making booby traps and mines that could be 

used effectively against US troops in the jungle.48

Finally, in those cases where artillery was present but could not be 

employed, artillerymen often served, as had their predecessors, as light 

infantry or in other capacities that had nothing to do with firing the 

weapons on which they had trained and honed their skills.

As the war continued, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese modified 

their tactics in an effort to neutralize the effectiveness of American artillery. 

One response was to dig in deeper and to fortify their bunkers even more. 

Another was to lure US troops into terrain in which artillery could not be 

employed. Enemy elements also tried to “hug” the Americans, getting so 

close to them in combat that artillery and close air support could not be 

called in for fear of friendly fire. Operating in small bands, the Viet Cong 

could also wait until the last minute before launching an attack on a US 

position or on a village or hamlet, hoping to inflict the desired damage 

before artillery and other fire support weapons could be brought into 

action. In many cases, the VC actually lived in the villages and hamlets, 

mingling among the population as part of the guerrilla infrastructure. This 

presence often provoked violent American responses, including the use of 

fire support weapons, that would kill civilians, destroy civilian homes and 

belongings, and alienate the survivors.49

In fact, US firepower exacted horrendous casualties among Vietnamese 

civilians and created thousands upon thousands of refugees. This degree 

of “collateral damage” seemed to contradict American proclamations that 

the war was being waged to allow the people of South Vietnam a better, 

freer life than they could hope to have under communist domination. 

Killing friendly or indifferent civilians to save them was regarded as 

counterproductive by both supporters and opponents of the war, helped 

fuel antiwar sentiments within the United States and around the world, 

and complicat ed efforts by American troops in South Vietnam to win 

the “hearts and minds” of the indigenous population. But civilians were 

an inescapable part of the battlefield in Vietnam, and their proximity to 

enemy forces meant that they would suffer from the actions of both sides. 
28 

The American practice of calling in overwhelming firepower contributed 

to this problem. A burst of AK-47 fire aimed at US troops, for example, 

was often enough to bring in a massive air and artillery response in 

retaliation.50

Finding ways to avoid or at least minimize civilian casualties thus 

became a political and military imperative, and efforts undertaken to this 

end had a profound impact on the way field artillery would come to operate 

in the latter years of the Second Indochina War. According to one author, 

U.S. forces were aware of the problem [of civilian 

casualties] and tried to strike a balance between immediate 

military requirements and longer-term interests by 

imposing controls on fire-planning. In some areas “nofire zones” were established to curtail the massive weight 

of fire that was often the automatic prescription for even 

minor targets. Elaborate clearance procedures were 

imposed, recognizing that while a short round may be a 

disaster in conventional war, a long round may be equally 

unfortunate when fighting guerrillas, not least for friendly 

troops. . . .

Calls for fire were carefully monitored and a slower 

response time accepted in exchange for greater accuracy. 

This was particularly important in heavily populated 

areas where the target lay between friendly troops and 

civilians and it was not possible to adjust fire. The need 

to hit only confirmed targets, and with greater accuracy, 

resulted in the proliferation of forward observers and in 

turn the expansion of low-level communications, which 

needed greater control.51

Under a variety of complicated controls and procedures and restrictive 

ROE, field artillery, another author observed, “was often accused of being 

too slow and unresponsive in Vietnam because to achieve the accuracy 

demanded in many cases, double and triple checks were cranked into the 

fire support process.”52

In the end, the adjustments made by the US military on Vietnam’s 

conventional/unconventional battlefield enabled firepower at times to 

inflict crippling casualties on the enemy, but they could not bring victory 

in what was at heart a political-military struggle that placed restrictions 

on where the war could be fought and on the weapons that could be used 

in fighting it. In 1973, the last conventional American combat units left 
29

South Vietnam, and its government fell two years later to the communists. 

The war had been a traumatizing experience for all involved and had 

left US ground forces, especially the Army, a shell of the professional, 

well-trained entity that had entered the conflict in 1965. Reacting to the 

experience, the Army eschewed unconventional warfare and promulgated 

the position that it should never again be committed piecemeal to an 

open-ended conflict in which political constraints would prevent the 

achievement of victory in a traditional sense.

Battered by the Vietnam experience, the Army began the task of 

rebuilding itself and, in the process, turned its focus once again to highintensity, conventional warfare, namely fighting Warsaw Pact forces in 

Europe. Developments in field artillery during the remainder of the 1970s 

and into the 1980s took place within this framework, to include advances 

in computerized/automated data processing systems for fire control and 

targeting, the adoption of new counterbattery and target acquisition 

systems, new precision-guided munitions (the Copperhead, for example), 

more accurate countermortar and counterbattery radars, the testing of 

remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) for target acquisition, the creation of 

the Fire Support Team (FIST) to consolidate forward observation and 

direct fire support planning at the company level, and at higher levels the 

consolidation of all fire support planning under the Fire Support Officer/

Fire Support Element (FSO/FSE). Also with an eye on the Soviet threat in 

Europe, the Army reorganized its heavy division and revised the allocation 

of division artillery.53

Even while these innovations were taking place, the US military 

conceded that a war in Europe was not likely. Indeed, for the remainder 

of the Cold War, the United States continued to be involved militarily 

in local and regional crises, as it had been all along. In the late 1970s 

and throughout the 1980s, Washington was deeply engaged against a 

communist-led insurgency in El Salvador. In deference to the Vietnam 

experience, no conventional US combat units deployed to that country 

and the American military advisory group was limited to 55 personnel. 

Meanwhile, the administration of President Ronald Reagan turned to the 

CIA and US Special Forces to support an insurgency movement against the 

communist sandinista government in El Salvador’s neighbor, Nicaragua. 

By the end of the decade, both situations had been resolved on terms 

acceptable to the United States. So, too, had the outcome of US support 

to Afghanistan “insurgents” fighting Soviet troops in the Central Asian 

country. US field artillery units played no part, or at least no significant 

part, in any of these ventures.
30 

Grenada

Besides having to deal with insurgency and counterinsurgency 

in the post-Vietnam years, the US military also found itself involved 

in interventions that bore more resemblance to stability operations in 

Lebanon and the Dominican Republic than to Korea or Vietnam or 

to what was being planned for the Fulda Gap in Europe. In October 

1983, President Reagan ordered US forces into the Caribbean island 

of Grenada to evacuate American medical students, neutralize hostile 

forces, topple the island’s unstable Marxist regime, and set the stage 

for democratic government. Field artillery accompanied the deploying 

marines and the paratroopers from the 82d Airborne Division’s 2d and 3d 

Brigades but played only a small part in the inevitable American victory. 

In the three major instances in which Army artillery did fire, the results 

were mixed. The first case concerned a paratrooper attack on a hostile 

target; the second was the rescue of medical students at one of three 

student enclaves on the island. In both cases, field artillery successfully 

joined with aviation assets or mortars to provide an effective preparatory 

bombardment.54

In the third case, the target was the Grenadian military camp at 

Calivigny, not far from the Salines airstrip on the southern tip of the island, 

where US Rangers and paratroopers had begun their assault two days 

before. The Rangers planned to assault the camp but not before it had 

received 30 minutes of bombardment from field artillery, naval guns, and 

Air Force fighters and an AC-130 gunship. Three batteries of Army 105s 

opened the barrage. Of the 500 shells fired, one hit the camp, while the rest 

fell into the sea. Later it was discovered that “the artillery had misplotted 

their own positions by 700 meters, had inaccurate coordinates for Calivigny, 

and had left their artillery aiming circles (compasses on tripods) behind at 

Fort Bragg.”55 Since no fire support officer was in the helicopter flying near 

the target, no one could correct the fires. For a variety of reasons, naval 

gunfire fared little better. Only when the fighters and AC-130 launched 

their ordnance was the camp demolished. The Rangers then assaulted the 

fortifications, which turned out to be deserted. A helicopter accident at the 

site, however, left three Rangers dead and four injured.

In assessing the effectiveness of field artillery in Operation URGENT 

FURY, one Army artilleryman concluded that the 82d had “employed 

sound fire support techniques at the unit level during the pre-deployment 

phase.” There were, however, “significant breakdowns” at the joint 

level, in his opinion, because of “inadequate planning” at the US Atlantic 

Command (in whose area of responsibility Grenada fell), “insufficient 
31

staffing” of the operational joint task force (JTF) with Army personnel 

versed in “Army procedures and requirements for the employment of 

indirect fires,” the late deployment of Navy air and naval gunfire liaison 

company (ANGLICO) teams and Air Force tactical air control parties, and 

an overemphasis on operational security that “restricted key fire support 

personnel from participating in the planning.” Once the operation was 

under way, communications and procedural problems complicated joint 

interaction with respect to fire support.56 The breakdown of jointness 

in several areas, including those affecting firepower, provided much of 

the justification for passing the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986, with its 

emphasis on improving interservice cooperation.

Panama

Six years after Grenada, in December 1989, President George H.W. 

Bush ordered the US invasion of Panama to displace the dictatorial regime 

of General Manuel Antonio Noriega, the commander of the Panamanian 

Defense Forces (PDF). The main elements of the ground assault force 

were a variety of special operations elements; Marine Corps and Army 

units already in Panama; the 82d Airborne Division; and the 7th Infantry 

Division (Light). The latter was one of the light divisions that the Army, 

in grudging recognition of the “full spectrum” of military threats it faced, 

had created in the 1980s to fight on a low-intensity battlefield. Among 

the light division’s artillery pieces was the newly fielded M198 towed 

155-mm howitzer designed for firepower and mobility.57 Field artillery 

deployed with the conventional units, but given that much of the fighting 

took place in densely populated cities and that the PDF was considered 

an inferior opponent, field artillery could only be used for indirect fire if 

approved by a battalion commander or higher ranking officer.58 If any 

such request was actually made, it was not granted. AC-130s and attack 

helicopters—direct-fire weapons—pounded PDF targets with enough 

firepower and, more important, precision to produce the desired effects. 

In one case, however, a 105-mm howitzer was used successfully in a 

direct-fire mode against a PDF infantry company barracks at Fort Amador. 

Once the fighting in Panama subsided, so did any further need for the 

artillery. As was the case in Grenada, US field artillery played no role in 

the stability operations that accompanied and followed the combat.

With the Cold War drawing to a close, Operation JUST CAUSE in 

Panama refocused the Army on force projection and was regarded as a 

model for future operations in what was seen by some as a new world 

order, by others as the “coming anarchy” in world affairs. JUST CAUSE 

as a “paradigm shift” was still in the conceptualization stage when it was 
32 

abruptly swept aside by the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 by Iraq’s dictator, 

Saddam Hussein, setting the stage for the first Gulf War. Some observers 

argued that, after 40 years, the US military finally had the chance to fight 

the kind of war for which it had allocated so many of its resources in 

preparation: force-on-force in which US armor, state-of-the-art technology, 

and overwhelming firepower could be used to maul a credible opponent 

(as the Iraqi army was regarded, at least before the war began) in a standup fight. Field artillery played a significant role in the war, especially in 

destroying the Iraqi artillery, but because sensitive political considerations 

compelled the US-led coalition to halt its advance far short of Baghdad, 

thus leaving Saddam in power, there was no follow-on occupation of Iraq 

that would necessitate occupation and nation building. What postcombat 

operations took place, such as PROVIDE COMFORT, were humanitarian 

efforts to feed and assist groups within Iraq who, having unsuccessfully 

risen up against the regime, had been decimated by what was left of 

Saddam’s elite forces. These forces did not interfere with the US-led 

humanitarian effort, so field artillery once again was not called into play.

Somalia

During the remainder of the 1990s, the United States military intervened 

in a number of post-Cold War local and regional crises, including Somalia, 

Haiti, and the Balkans. All of these could be categorized as MOOTW, and 

all saw the deployment of field artillery, although not always for the same 

purposes. When a US-led coalition, ultimately called the United Task 

Force (UNITAF), deployed to Somalia in December 1992, its mission 

was to secure the southern third of the country so that humanitarian relief 

agencies could get food to Somalis starving as a result of drought and 

civil war.59 Within the coalition, the principal US combat elements came 

from the 1st Marine Division and the Army’s 10th Mountain Division 

(Light). The marines brought with them one artillery battalion of 155-mm 

howitzers, while the 10th Mountain sealifted a 105-mm battalion and a 

155-mm battery.

Once it became apparent that the two most powerful warlords in 

southern Somalia would not oppose coalition operations, the UNITAF 

commander, a Marine Corps lieutenant general, listed field artillery 

among the assets he considered as “low-priority.” But even if fighting had 

broken out, especially in the heavily populated capital city of Mogadishu, 

UNITAF would not have been able to employ its artillery without inflicting 

heavy casualties among innocent civilians. For these reasons, one Marine 

battery commander brought only two M101A 105-mm howitzers ashore 

to provide illumination if needed. The battery’s remaining artillerymen, 
33

serving as riflemen, performed security duties in Mogadishu. Marines 

from another battery came ashore soon thereafter, leaving their gun 

tubes on ship and assuming duties as members of a provisional infantry 

battalion. The UNITAF commander canceled the deployment of other 

Marine artillery while the pieces were still in the United States.

Elements of the 10th Mountain Division followed the marines into the 

country, but the field artillery being shipped with them was returned to the 

United States. The unit’s fire support requirements, it was believed, could 

be fulfilled with attack helicopters and mortars. As with the marines, 

artillerymen found other duties. When elements from the division moved 

south of Mogadishu into the Kismayo area, 10th Mountain’s artillery staff, 

bolstered by other division assets, formed the headquarters of Task Force 

Kismayo. When UNITAF completed its mission on 4 May 1993, US field 

artillery pieces in Somalia had fired a total of one illumination round.

The United Nations took over operations in Somalia upon UNITAF’s 

departure. With a countrywide mission that amounted to nation building, 

and with much less military force than UNITAF to accomplish the 

mission—a force that included an American quick reaction force (QRF) 

and US logistic support—the endeavor quickly ran into trouble, mainly in 

the form of opposition from the Somali faction leader Mohammed Farah 

Aideed. After Aideed’s people killed 24 Pakistani troops serving under 

the UN on 5 June, a hunt for the warlord began. Over the ensuing weeks 

and months, several major firefights took place in Mogadishu, culminating 

in what is popularly referred to as Black Hawk Down, the 3-4 October 

battle between Aideed’s militia and supporters, on the one hand, and US 

special operations forces (SOF) and the QRF, on the other. Because of the 

US casualties suffered in the fight, the United States decided to withdraw 

its forces from Somalia within six months. To provide protection for those 

troops in the meantime, President Bill Clinton decided to reinforce US 

combat capabilities in the country, doubling the size of the American force 

on the ground and adding tremendously to its firepower. These assets 

came under Joint Task Force Somalia, which deployed in October 1993, 

and field artillery was an integral part of that force.

Major General Carl Ernst served as the JTF commander, and upon 

his arrival in Mogadishu, he began putting the firepower at his disposal 

to use. Through a variety of exercises and operations, he conveyed to 

Aideed and other possible troublemakers what they would be up against 

should they take military action against US forces. Ernst’s biggest show 

of force was a joint amphibious operation that employed “every piece of 

the Joint Task Force,” including an Army mechanized/tank company team, 
34 

a Marine battalion landing team, two mechanized company teams, carrier 

and other aircraft, and AC-130 gunships. Furthermore, “We positioned 

artillery throughout the area to provide fire support if needed,” Ernst 

related later. “That gave us the Copperhead capture angles we needed 

to shoot into Mogadishu if it became necessary. The artillery fired out to 

sea for precise registration that night . . . . [The operation] was just a big 

firepower demonstration.”60

In the event of combat operations against friendly forces, JTF Somalia 

had to be ready to launch retaliatory actions that would overwhelm the 

offending forces. Ernst drew up contingency plans for such an eventuality, 

the first phase of which called for defeating factional militia in Mogadishu 

while avoiding street-to-street fighting and the killing of innocent civilians. 

The key to success, should the plan need to be executed, was precisionguided weapons, beginning with trained snipers and escalating to AC130s, wire-guided TOW missiles, Marine laser-guided Hellfires, and 

laser-guided bombs from Marine and Navy aircraft. The inventory also 

included Army laser-guided Copperhead artillery rounds. Most of these 

weapons were highly complex, making it essential that the units involved 

train and rehearse daily to synchronize the operating systems.61 As it 

turned out, the warlords, well aware that all US forces would withdraw by 

the end of March 1994, took no action that would risk the devastating and 

presumably precise retaliation that JTF Somalia stood ready to inflict.

Haiti

Later that year, in September 1994, elements of the 10th Mountain 

Division (Light) found themselves en route to Haiti. Three years before, 

the elected president of that country had been ousted in a military coup. As 

fallout from that event, hundreds of Haitian refugees had begun cramming 

into boats and sailing toward the United States to seek asylum. Some 

drowned en route; other were turned away. As the tide of “boat people” 

continued, their plight became a political embarrassment for the Clinton 

administration, compelling the president and his advisers to consider 

military intervention in Haiti to end the humanitarian debacle at sea and to 

reinstate the controversial but democratically elected Haitian president.

Assuming that US intervention would meet with resistance, the 

XVIII Airborne Corps planned a forced entry option that featured the 82d 

Airborne Division, together with its division artillery. The lead elements of 

that force were in fact in the air and minutes away from a combat drop into 

Haiti when, in a last-minute agreement with American representatives, the 

Haitian military junta that ruled the country agreed to step down peacefully. 
35

The inbound US assault force was recalled, and a second force in which 

the 10th Mountain Division was the principal element took its place for 

what amounted to a permissive entry. The US “intervasion” in Haiti was 

now essentially a stability operation with strict ROE. US commanders 

perceived no critical need for the division’s artillery, so the pieces were 

left behind and the artillery staff became the core of one of three maneuver 

element headquarters, Task Force Mountain. This was similar to the 

organizational arrangement the division had applied with much success 

in Somalia, and it proved effective in Haiti as well. In addition to this 

headquarters function, artillerymen and other fire support personnel “had 

to adapt warfighting skills to unique conditions.” Members of the brigade 

fire support element, for example, helped plan and conduct civil-military 

operations (CMO) and established and ran a CMO Center, or CMOC, 

which was daily involved in such matters as local government, public 

administration, public works, infrastructure repair, and the organization 

of law enforcement agencies. In addition to carrying out these missions, 

artillerymen also constructed a multipurpose range complex at which 

they could conduct training, including live-fire exercises, using whatever 

artillery assets they were allowed to bring into the country.62 

Bosnia 

Soon after Haiti appeared to be stabilized, US forces in December 1995 

began deploying to Bosnia, where they represented one of several nations 

taking part in Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR, a stability/peace operation 

following a peace agreement among the warring parties in that part of the 

Balkans.63 The centerpiece of the US deployment was a heavy division, 

the 1st Armored, which served as the nucleus for Task Force Eagle, one 

of three multinational divisions that made up the Implementation Force 

(IFOR) under the command and control of the NATO Allied Ready 

Reaction Corps, headquartered in Sarajevo. The Bosnian situation 

was extremely complex and the peace agreement tenuous. While 

IFOR activities would feature information operations, civil affairs, and 

psychological operations (PSYOP), each task force had to be prepared 

to engage in conventional combat should the situation warrant. It was 

hoped, however, that the combat power of a heavy division, including its 

self-propelled 155-mm howitzers, would deter the various armed groups 

in Bosnia from provoking such a step. To this end, several artillery assets 

served to demonstrate a task force’s firepower and resolve. A platoon of 

self-propelled howitzers—“mobile pillboxes”—on patrol or serving as 

escorts for IFOR troops on a mission had an intimidating effect, as did 

illumination rounds fired above potentially hostile mortar positions or 
36 

personnel. The timely arrival of these weapons at a “hot spot” generally 

had a similar calming effect. If deterrence failed, however, artillery units 

had preplanned targets and procedures that would facilitate the transition 

to combat.

In some parallels to Vietnam, IFOR troops operated out of fixed 

firebases, for which the self-propelled howitzers provided much of the 

base protection. If a base should come under ground attack, the circled 

howitzers and their accompanying armed vehicles could fire directly 

into the enemy. Artillerymen also plotted likely counterfire targets and 

practiced reaction times in case a base should come under indirect mortar 

or artillery fire. Counterfire radar, while not in enough supply to distribute 

throughout the IFOR, was also available for this purpose (and was actually 

used at times to locate snipers, a function for which it was not originally 

designed). Furthermore, artillery staff officers worked to provide close 

protection to friendly troops who had left the base without armor, air, or 

artillery escort to perform their various duties. As a result, infantry troops 

on patrol knew that friendly artillery had targeted potential ambush sites 

along their route and that, in contrast to close air support, those fires could 

be called in within minutes of encountering armed resistance.

Finally, as in countless past operations, artillery units provided 

personnel for tasks and duties that had nothing to do with artillery. In 

Bosnia, artillerymen conducted mine strike investigations, inspected 

weapon storage sites, mounted patrols, stood guard, helped beef up 

convoys, and pulled KP. In one particularly unusual case, two artillery 

officers received a directive to meet with friendly troops and civilians 

performing nonlethal missions—for example, police work, civil affairs, 

humanitarian assistance, psychological and information operations—and 

help them apply the artillerymen’s fire planning methodology and matrices 

to the work they were doing to stabilize the situation in Bosnia.64 As of this 

writing, that mission is still ongoing.

The War on Terror and the Role of Field Artillery

After the terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center buildings and the 

Pentagon on 11 September 2001, the United States took the leading role 

in what the administration of President George W. Bush called the Global 

War on Terrorism. One of the first prominent military targets in that war 

was the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which had supported and provided 

training bases and sanctuary for the al Qaeda network that had engineered 

and executed the 9/11 attacks. Initially, in what was called Operation 

ENDURING FREEDOM, the US military deployed SOF to Afghanistan 

to assist the Northern Alliance, a loose coalition of forces that had been 
37

fighting the Taliban for some time. American air power and the Alliance’s 

own firepower forced the Taliban out of key cities and other defensive 

positions, bringing down the hostile government in the process. In early 

2002, conventional US ground forces, mainly from the 10th Mountain 

Division and the 101st Airborne Division, arrived in the country and, with 

SOF and Afghan fighters, launched Operation ANACONDA to round up 

groups of recalcitrant Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in the Shah-e-Kot 

mountains. At this point, the war in Afghanistan was still in a conventional 

phase, but the tactics and “unstructured” organization of enemy forces, 

combined with the country’s mountainous terrain, gave operations a 

definite nonconventional feel. While outnumbered and outgunned, the 

enemy fighters put up a fierce and effective resistance, which included the 

use of D-30 cannon and mortars. The antiterrorist coalition responded by 

raining enormous amounts of firepower down upon the well-entrenched 

defenders. Of the numerous and diverse weapon systems employed, one 

was conspicuously missing: field artillery pieces.

The omission was deliberate, a decision made by General Tommy 

Franks, commander of the US Central Command.65 Taking issue with 

Chief of Staff of the Army Eric Shinseki, who wanted the Army’s Crusader 

howitzer deployed, Franks argued that the airlift was not available to move 

artillery pieces into position and that artillery pieces would be affected 

adversely by the altitudes involved. As a result, howitzer crews who did 

deploy with the 10th Mountain and 101st Airborne were trained to fire 

120-mm mortars, a more mobile weapon than the 4,400-pound M119 

105-mm howitzer but one that trailed the M119 in range and accuracy. As 

the battle in the Shah-e-Kot mountains unfolded, therefore, mortars and 

air power provided close support for the infantry units committed. The 

results only fueled the debate that started with the decision to keep the 

field artillery pieces at home.

In at least one interview after Operation ANACONDA, which ended 

with many enemy fighters killed and with what the coalition regarded 

as too many others able to escape, Major General Franklin Hagenbeck, 

the 10th Mountain Division commander, supported the decision not to 

deploy 105s, asserting that he “knew we could accomplish the mission 

without them.” Reviewing his own reasons for preferring the mortars 

over the howitzers, he said that the airlift available to him was better used 

for taking soldiers and their mortars into the battle area. In addition, he 

listed the “constraints” on helicopter lift capabilities at the high altitudes at 

which the howitzers would have had to have been positioned, the danger 

involved in setting field pieces and their ammunition down on rugged 

terrain, the weather conditions that prevailed, and the drain on air power 
38 

and ground combat units that protection of the howitzers would have 

demanded. Thus, even if the howitzers had been in theater, he asserted, 

he would not have brought them in on the first day. “So there were tradeoffs which, again, I didn’t face because we didn’t have 105s in country.” 

Hagenbeck went on to praise the fire support provided by Apache AH-64 

attack helicopters, A-10 attack aircraft, and AC-130 gunships. But he was 

critical of the tasking procedures that sometimes resulted in hours passing 

before a request for close air support was executed. He also noted that 

the noise of the arriving aircraft often allowed the enemy to get into their 

caves, which were virtually immune from anything but a direct hit by a 

2,000-pound explosive.66

While many officers in the field artillery community were also critical 

of close air support in ANACONDA and believed that howitzers, under 

certain conditions, could have provided effective and, equally important, 

more timely fires than friendly aircraft, they took issue with the arguments 

posed by Franks and Hagenbeck for not employing the artillery. The 

counterarguments began at the beginning, with deployment, by claiming 

that field artillery batteries, perhaps somewhat reduced, would not have 

required that much more airlift to deploy into the theater than did the 

mortar units sent in. Proponents of this view conceded the mortar’s 

lightness and greater maneuverability compared with the howitzer but 

maintained that the howitzer’s greater range, firepower, and accuracy 

compensated for its comparative disadvantage in mobility. Mortars, for 

example, had to move much closer to a target to be in range, and this 

took time and support assets. More time was required to seat the mortar’s 

baseplate firmly into the ground, a step necessary for allowing the weapon 

to cover certain ranges. Furthermore, because of the mortars’ proximity 

to the target, they proved vulnerable in ANACONDA to enemy mortar fire 

that would not have been able to reach the howitzers. Another point in the 

howitzer’s favor brought forth analogies to Vietnam. The mortars could 

not clear a “hot” landing zone as howitzers could, a shortcoming that the 

howitzer’s advocates argued had cost lives when friendly forces, receiving 

heavy fire upon arriving at their landing zone (LZ), did not receive timely 

fire support. To those making these arguments, then, the howitzer was 

clearly a better weapon than the mortar for close supporting fires and for 

destroying enemy artillery. It should have been deployed to Afghanistan, 

they maintained, and employed in ANACONDA. To have howitzer crews 

in Afghanistan manning 120-mm mortars was regarded as “a step in the 

wrong direction for the artillery.”67

To many, the big battles early in the Afghanistan campaign raised 

questions about the relevance of field artillery for low-intensity hostilities. 
39

The issue continued to fester when, following Operation ANACONDA, 

the conflict in Afghanistan shifted to unconventional, guerrilla-like 

warfare. When a brigade of the 82d Airborne Division entered the country 

in July 2002, it brought with it a battery of M119 105-mm howitzers 

and, in doing so, set a precedent that successive conventional brigades 

rotating in and out would follow. In the new phase of the conflict, the 

artillery took part in three kinds of undertakings: major combat operations, 

firebase and forward operating base support, and logistics operations.68

Some of the artillery units were undermanned and underequipped; they 

also often found themselves in operations that were decentralized, once 

again summoning up for some an analogy with Vietnam. In such an 

environment, battery officers and fire supporters were often compelled to 

operate in “a nontraditional and equally nondoctrinal manner for many 

missions.”

The combat operations lasted anywhere from several hours to several 

weeks, with mortars and artillery pieces being inserted either by ground 

convoy or airlift. Whatever the method, problems of mobility often arose, 

as the following case describes.

Due to constant moves along these tough valleys . . . C 

Battery (105-mm) had trouble maintaining the pace of 

the anti-tank company ground movement and other air 

assault assets; the large amount of howitzer ammunition 

had overloaded the trucks (we only brought two). The 

B Battery platoon of mortars also experienced difficulty 

in repositioning with just gators for transport and had to 

rely on help from the maneuver battalion’s supply and 

transport (S&T) platoon.69

Despite these problems and the large number of combat operations in 

which the unit in question was involved, “firing was limited.” Most of 

the time the howitzers fired illumination or high explosives to establish a 

“presence” or as a show of force to “demonstrate resolve to a sometimes 

recalcitrant local population.”

Most of the artillery pieces in Afghanistan were located at firebases 

from which they fired in support of maneuver units, SOF, and other friendly 

forces. When enemy groups began ambushing patrols, a “combined arms 

approach” employing well-armed infantry and high explosive rounds 

from supporting artillery proved an effective response. The main threat 

posed by the enemy came from 107-mm rockets fired at the firebases. US 

artillery units used their Q-36 Firefinder radars to determine the location 

from which the rockets had been launched, but a counterfire response was 
40 

problematic. The radars could not tell US gunners whether the incoming 

ordnance had been launched from a deserted or highly populated area, 

and strict ROE prohibited a lethal response that risked killing innocent 

civilians. The artillery could fire illumination rounds to let enemy mortar 

and rocket teams know their location had been discovered, but such 

rounds also gave the enemy a chance to escape. The usual response to 

hostile fire, therefore, was to launch a patrol or attack helicopter into the 

area pinpointed by the radars and hope to catch the enemy still in place. 

The ability of artillery to locate but not dispatch the enemy again raised the 

issue of artillery’s relevance on a low-intensity battlefield.

Artillery units in Afghanistan also conducted logistics operations 

and, as in the past, performed a host of other duties as well, to include 

base security (which often required taking artillerymen off gun crews), 

information operations (IO), CMO, and airfield support, all of which 

competed with traditional artillery duties. Still, despite the multitude of 

problems understrength artillery units faced in Afghanistan, the officers 

who served there believed they had made a significant contribution to 

unseating the Taliban and in keeping the remnants of Taliban and al 

Qaeda fighters at bay. But, as skeptics continued to argue, until the Army 

developed a lighter, more mobile field piece, doubts would still surround 

“the practical uses of artillery in non-conventional settings.”70

In 2003, the Second Gulf War, Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, 

pushed the controversy to the background briefly, as field artillery 

played a prominent part in the mid-intensity operation that “seemed 

in many ways unexpectedly old-fashioned, although the term enduring 

might better describe many of its essential characteristics.”71 Yet, as 

the transition took place from war to a stability operation, artillerymen 

serving in Iraq were once again performing tasks for which few had 

trained. A recent issue of Field Artillery contains several articles about 

the postwar activities of artillery units; the list includes force protection, 

IO, CMO, PSYOP, dismounted patrols, securing oil facilities, guarding 

a bank, overseeing a detention facility, helping set up elections and 

establishing provincial governments, clearing buildings and weapons 

caches, setting up a nongovernment organization (NGO) reception 

center, and training.72

As for the insurgencies that erupted in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s 

defeat, to the extent that they were urban based, field artillery was 

constrained in what combat actions it could perform. The Q-36 would 

often pick up a target, but battalion and brigade headquarters would have 

to study the data to determine if friendly units or civilians were in the 
41

target area. Several minutes would often pass before the gunners received 

instructions to shoot or to hold their fire. When they did shoot, they often 

received no feedback on how effective their fires had been.73 Frequently, 

the resulting mood was one of disappointment and frustration, triggered 

in part by doubts as to whether the artillery was accomplishing any good 

against the hit-and-run tactics of the insurgents. Somewhat more satisfying 

was the role played by artillery in the counterinsurgency operations in 

Fallujah in late 2004. Before US and Iraqi ground troops entered the 

city, American aircraft, artillery pieces, and mortars pounded insurgent 

targets. Once the ground attack started, Army M109A6 Paladin selfpropelled 155mm howitzers, Marine artillery pieces, and US mortars fired 

at strongpoints and other insurgent areas identified by field observers and 

air surveillance. In most cases, the rounds landed within 5 yards of their 

target. When the artillery did not attain that degree of accuracy, aircraft or 

other weapon systems were often called in. Generally speaking, though, 

field artillery helped accelerate the pace of the successful operation.

Conclusions

From its rudimentary beginnings in the late Middle Ages down to the 

present day, field artillery has evolved technologically in ways that are 

quite impressive. The cumbersome, highly inaccurate, virtually immobile, 

direct-fire siege weapons of the 13th and 14th centuries stand as curious 

relics when compared with today’s much lighter, rapid-firing, mobile, 

indirect-fire towed and self-propelled howitzers and guns. In the process, 

the stone and solid shot fired by the antiquated pieces over past centuries 

have gone by the wayside, quaint artifacts in a world of precision-guided 

ordnance. But as the artillery has developed, so have all aspects of the 

battlefield on which it is employed. Today, an increasing number of 

weapon systems can deliver powerful and accurate ordnance on enemy 

forces. Coordinating the fire support necessary to accomplish a mission has 

become a complex process requiring advanced, computerized technology 

together with officers capable of making the process and equipment work 

efficiently and effectively. And while the varieties of military operations 

have not changed in their typologies, artillery is no longer confined, as it 

was in its infancy, to high-intensity warfare between conventional forces. 

In the US experience alone, field pieces have been employed throughout 

the history of the republic in high- , mid- , and low-intensity conflicts. It 

is the role of field artillery in the latter category of operations—currently 

identified as MOOTW—and how that role coincides with, or differs from, 

what is required at the other two levels of conflict, that has been the focus 

of this extended essay.
42 

In summarizing the experience of US field artillery in MOOTW over 

the course of more than two centuries, one should begin by remembering 

that in many of the categories that constitute stability operations, the 

possibility for combat exists, and that under certain circumstances, field 

artillery might be able to function as though it were in a high-intensity, 

unlimited, conventional war. More often than not, however, stability 

operations are guided by political considerations that impose constraints—

among them restrictive ROE—on the friendly forces involved. US 

Army Field Manual 3-07, Stability Operations and Support Operations, 

emphasizes both of these situations with respect to fire support in general 

and field artillery in particular, referring to the destructive combat power 

the artillery provides a commander but also stressing the deterrent value of 

field pieces, the usual requirement to use “minimum essential force,” and 

the need in many situations to avoid collateral damage.74

The historical experience of the US field artillery supports these 

doctrinal observations. From the Indian wars through the current 

deployment of artillery units in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the 

role of artillery on the nonconventional battlefield has revealed patterns 

and repeated themes. 

• In combat, the field pieces proved effective, both in the offense and 

defense, when hostile, unconventional forces have come together in mass 

to fight or to seek the protection of a fortified position.

• Even when these conditions did not prevail, and were not likely 

to, some commanders deployed artillery pieces just to be ready for any 

eventuality, the “firepower insurance” cited so often in this essay. 

• In situations short of combat, the artillery often served as a deterrent, 

a “presence,” or a show of force.

• Finally, US artillerymen for over 200 years have learned to perform 

a vast variety of other duties—usually by way of “on-the-job training”—

most having nothing to do with firing their weapons but which were 

deemed essential to the accomplishment of the stated mission.

During the Indian wars, there were those US officers who, like Custer, 

believed field artillery had no role to play in unconventional warfare, 

much less in an environment that did not involve hostilities at all. That 

point of view has resurfaced more recently in the debate over military 

transformation. As US armed forces reorganize to adapt to the post-Cold 

War world and GWOT, the Army Campaign Plan calls for fewer field 

artillery, armor, air defense, engineer, and logistics units and an increase 

in MP, transportation, civil affairs, military intelligence, and special 

operations units. The arguments for cutting back on field artillery center 
43

on the mobility, accuracy, and redundancy of the weapon system. In other 

words, can other weapons be deployed more easily and provide similar or 

better results than field artillery? In addressing these issues, the discussion 

tends to focus on the role of artillery in conventional warfare. It is hoped 

that this essay has made a case for extending the discussion to MOOTW 

as well.

If field artillery is on the defensive in some quarters, it is probably too 

early to write it off as a contributor to US stability operations.75 It is still 

faster than most aircraft in responding to calls for close support fires by 

units receiving hostile fire, even from unconventional forces. Also, the 

number of highly sophisticated, precision-guided munitions available to 

other weapon systems may be limited in number because of their expense. 

At the same time, more precise munitions are being developed for artillery 

pieces that should allow them to increase their accuracy against fortified 

targets or targets located within civilian areas. And if artillery no longer 

enjoys its preeminence as a ground-based show of force weapon, its 

illumination and high explosive rounds can still have a deterrent effect on 

hostile forces or restless populations.

In short, field artillery was constructed primarily to operate on a 

conventional, high-intensity battlefield, but over the centuries, and 

certainly in the history of American military operations, it has adapted to 

unconventional warfare and various kinds of stability operations in which 

a threat of violence is inherent. To this point, it has generally adjusted 

well to MOOTW, as this essay has demonstrated, and despite problems 

of battlefield mobility and the requirement for restraint in most stability 

operations, there is every reason to believe that field artillery will continue 

to have many roles to play in MOOTW for the foreseeable future.

Notes

1. J.B.A. Bailey, Field Artillery and Firepower (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute 

Press, 2004); Boyd L. Dastrup, King of Battle: A Branch History of the U.S. 

Army’s Field Artillery (Fort Monroe, VA, and Washington, DC: U.S. Army 

Training and Doctrine Command, and Center of Military History, 1993).

 2. FM 3-07: Stability Operations and Support Operations (Washington, DC: 

Headquarters, Department of the Army, February 2003), 1-1.

 3. Ibid., 1-2.

 4. Robert W. Coakley, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic 

Disorders, 1789-1878 (Washington, DC: United States Army Center of 

Military History, 1988); Clayton D. Laurie and Ronald H. Cole, The Role 

of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1877-1945 (Washington, 

DC: United States Army Center of Military History, 1997).
44 

 5. Unless otherwise noted, the following section on the Indian campaigns 

is taken from Larry Don Roberts, “The Artillery with the Regular Army in 

the West from 1866 to 1890,” Ph.D. dissertation (Stillwater, OK: Oklahoma 

State University, May 1981); Fairfax Downey, Indian Wars of the U.S. 

Army, 1776-1865 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1963); Major Prisco 

R. Hernandez, ARNG, “No Master Plan: The Employment of Artillery in 

the Indian Wars, 1860-1890,” Field Artillery (July-August 2000), 12-17. 

 6. Sam C. Sarkesian, America’s Forgotten Wars: The Counterrevolutionary Past 

and Lessons for the Future (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), 108-10.

 7. Hernandez, “No Master Plan,” 12. 

 8. On the field pieces used on the Indian frontier, see Dastrup, King of Battle, 

132-33; Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the 

Indian, 1866-1890 (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1976), 72; 

Roberts, “Artillery,” 20, 32-35. The weight cited for each of the field pieces 

refers to the tubes only, not to the combination of tube and carriage.

 9. Robert Wooster, The Military & United States Indian Policy, 1865-1903

(Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 29-30.

10. Hernandez, “No Master Plan,” 13-14; John K. Mahon, History of the 

Second Seminole War, 1835-1842 (Revised, paperback ed., Gainesville, FL: 

University of Florida Press, 1991), 104-6.

11. Roberts, “Artillery,” 53-61.

12. Jerome Greene, Nez Perce Summer, 1877: The U.S. Army and the Nee-MePoo Crisis (Helena, MT: Montana Historical Society Press, 2000), 77-83 

(with the quoted material appearing on 78); Utley, Frontier Regulars, 305.

13. Roberts, “Artillery,” 85. This brief description of the use of artillery to 

assault the Modoc stronghold is based on Roberts’ longer account, 82-108.

14. This observation is cited in Wooster, Indian Policy, 149.

15. Roberts, “Artillery,” 195. 

16. A brief account of the action at Wounded Knee can be found in Utley, 

Frontier Regulars, 406-8. 

17. Dastrup, King of Battle, 133.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., Chapters V-VII. Dastrup’s study concerns the US Army. For a brief 

overview of the artillery pieces employed by the Marine Corps during this 

period, see Major A.D. Nastri, USMC, “USMC Artillery, 1900-1941,” Field 

Artillery Journal (July-August 1977), 32-36. 

20. Conversation between Professor Brian M. Linn and Dr. Lawrence A. Yates, 

22 May 2004.

21. Glenn Anthony May, Battle for Batangas: A Philippine Province at War

(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 96, 108, 110-11.

22. Captain Stephen M. Fuller, USMCR, and Graham A. Cosmas, Marines in 

the Dominican Republic, 1916-1924 (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. 

Marine Corps, History and Museum Division, 1974), 16, 18.

23. Neill Macaulay, The Sandino Affair (Paperback ed., Durham, NC: Duke 

University Press, 1985), 173.
45

24. Fuller and Cosmas, Dominican Republic, 20.

25. Michael Davis, “Boxer Rebellion,” in Jerold E. Brown, ed., Historical 

Dictionary of the U.S. Army (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 65; 

Remarks by Charles Byler at the Society for Military History 2004 Annual 

Meeting, 21 May 2004.

26. Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr., The Great Pursuit (New York: Konecky & 

Konecky, 1970), 84.

27. Donald Smythe, Guerrilla Warrior: The Early Life of John J. Pershing (New 

York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 224-25.

28. U.S. Marine Corps, Small Wars Manual (Reprint of the 1940 Edition)

(Washington, DC: Headquarters, United States Marine Corps, 1987), Chapter 

II, 60, 62.

29. Ibid., 61-64.

30. For the post-World War II discussion of artillery issues, see Dastrup, King of 

Battle, 241-52.

31. In asking Congress to authorize US economic and military assistance to 

Greece and Turkey, President Harry Truman sought to shock his audience by 

employing universal rhetoric in support of the regional initiative. “I believe,” 

Truman proclaimed, “that it must be the policy of the United States to support 

free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or 

by outside pressures.”

32. Larry E. Cable, Conflict of Myths: The Development of American 

Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Vietnam War (New York: New York 

University Press, 1986), 9-29 (the quotation used above is located on page 

29; italics added).

33. Ibid., 57.

34. This paragraph on Korea, including the quotations, is based on D.M. Giangreco, 

Artillery in Korea: Massing Fires and Reinventing the Wheel, Korean War 

Anthology (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 2003).

35. This brief look at US artillery in Lebanon is based on Jack Shulimson, Marines 

in Lebanon, 1958 (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Historical 

Branch, 1966); Major General David W. Gray, USA (Ret.), The U.S. Intervention 

in Lebanon, 1958: A Commander’s Reminiscence (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat 

Studies Institute, 1984); 24th Infantry Division, After Action Report, Lebanon, 5 

November 1958; Headquarters, American Land Forces, Beirut, Lebanon, After 

Action Report, 15 July – 25 October 1958, 25 October 1958; Headquarters, 24th 

Airborne Brigade, Command Reports, 1-31 August 1958, no date.

36. This brief look at US artillery in the Dominican intervention is based on U.S. 

Forces Dominican Republic, Stability Operations, Part 1, Vol. II; Part 1, Vol. 

IV; Part II; Part III.

37. Ibid., Part 1, Vol. II.

38. Ibid., Part 1, Vol. IV.

39. Dastrup, King of Battle, 278. This quote comes at the end of a section (265-

78) in which the author provides a succinct overview of developments in field

artillery between 1954 and the early 1960s.
46 

40. The general officer was Major General W. O. Kinnard. His quotation is from 

ibid., 281.

41. Robert H. Scales, Jr., “Firepower and Maneuver in the Second Indochina 

War,” Field Artillery Journal (September-October 1986), 51.

On the rare occasions when North Vietnamese and VC troops did mass 

and mount a major offensive, they tended to suffer enormous casualties. 

The Tet Offensive in 1968 is perhaps the best example of this. Once the 

United States had withdrawn most of its forces, however, such conventional 

offensives proved quite effective and ultimately brought the defeat of the 

South Vietnamese military and government.

42. Bailey, Field Artillery, 370-71.

43. On the purpose of the FSB, as well as its layout and the tactics employed for 

defending it, see James J. Carafano, “Fortresses and Firepower in Vietnam,” 

Field Artillery (August 1988), 39-40. See also Carafano, “Letters from 

Vietnam,” Field Artillery (October 1987), 26. On the dispersion of US 

combat forces, including field artillery, see Bailey, Field Artillery, 370. 

Bailey writes, “The priority was not so much the concentration of fire as the 

dispersal or mobility of assets in order to provide coverage over a large area. 

For this reason fire control, which in Europe was increasingly focused at 

battalion level, was reinforced in Vietnam at battery level.” 

44. Dastrup, King of Battle, 284; Bailey, Field Artillery, 370.

45. Bailey, Field Artillery, 371, 378; Carafano, “Fortresses,” 37-39; Carafano, 

“Letters,” 28.

46. Bailey, Field Artillery, 372. 

47. Ibid., 379.

48. Ibid., 379-80; Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: 

The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 201. In this same citation, 

Krepinevich argues that “Artillery was employed not so much out of 

necessity as out of sheer availability . . .” He adds that, with “the exception 

of the Tet Offensive, 70 percent of U.S. artillery rounds in Vietnam were fired 

in situations of light or inactive combat.”

49. Bailey, Field Artillery, 380; Carafano, “Letters,” 29.

50. Carafano, ”Letters,” 28.

51. Bailey, Field Artillery, 381-82.

52. David Ewing Ott, Field Artillery, 1954-1973, Vietnam Studies (Washington, 

DC: Department of the Army, 1975), 231-32.

53. For the lessons of Vietnam as applied to field artillery and for the developments 

in field artillery during the 1970s and 1980s, see Dastrup, King of Battle, 290-

312; Ott, Field Artillery, 231-36; Bailey, Field Artillery, 383-84.

54. Major Scott R. McMichael, “Urgent Fury: Looking Back and Looking 

Forward,” Field Artillery Journal (March-April 1985), 10-11.

55. Mark Adkin, Urgent Fury: The Battle for Grenada (Lexington, MA: 

Lexington Books, D.C. Heath and Company, 1989), 282-83.

56. McMichael, “Urgent Fury,” 8-13.

57. The advantages and disadvantages of the M198 155-mm howitzer in its role 
47

as a light division’s direct support weapon are discussed in Major Walter B. 

Brown II, “The M198: New Howitzer For Light Divisions,” Field Artillery 

(July-August 1982), 26-29.

58. XVIII Airborne Corps, OPLAN 90-2 (BLUE SPOON), 3 November 1989.

59. This brief assessment of the role of artillery during UNITAF operations in 

Somalia from December 1992 to May 1993 is based on Robert F. Baumann 

and Lawrence A. Yates, “My Clan Against the World”: US and Coalition 

Forces in Somalia, 1992-1994 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies 

Institute Press, 2004, 45; draft histories of UNITAF, one by Dennis P. 

Mroczkowski, another by David Dawson; US Army Forces, Somalia, 10th 

Mountain Division (LI) After Action Report Summary, 9, 61-62.

60. Carl F. Ernst, “The Urban Area During Support Missions Case Study: 

Mogadishu—The Operational Level,” in Russell W. Glenn, ed., Capital 

Preservation: Preparing for Urban Operations in the Twenty-First Century 

(Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001), 384.

61. Baumann and Yates, My Clan, 188-89.

62. Walter E. Kretchik, Robert F. Baumann, and John T. Fishel, Invasion, 

Intervention, “Intervasion”: A Concise History of the U.S. Army in 

Operation Uphold Democracy (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CGSC Press, 1997), 

51, 58-59, 102; 10th Mountain Division (LI), Operation Uphold Democracy 

After Action Report, nd, 60-63.

63. On the use of artillery in Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR, see U.S. Army 

Center for Lessons Learned (CALL), Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR: Task 

Force Eagle Initial Operations (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CALL, May 1996; 

Robert F. Baumann, “IFOR Redefines the Bosnian Situation,” draft chapter in 

a larger CSI study of the US role in Bosnia coauthored by Dr. Baumann; Major 

James W. Vizzard, “Field Artillery in Stability and Support Operations,” paper 

for A645: Case Studies in U.S. Interventions and Contingency Operations, 

Fort Leavenworth, KS, May 2004. 

64. Oral History Interview, Lieutenant Colonel Roderick M. Cox, 17 May 2004, 

CSI, Fort Leavenworth, KS, interviewed by Dr. Lawrence A. Yates. 

65. For the controversy surrounding the decision to not to deploy field artillery 

pieces with the 10th Mountain Division and the 101st Airborne Division, 

see Anthony H. Cordesman with Patrick Baetjer, The Ongoing Lessons of 

Afghanistan: Warfighting, Intelligence, Force Transformation, and Nation 

Building (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2004), 

110-11; Bailey, Field Artillery, 425-27; Captain Joshua D. Mitchell, “A Case for 

Howitzers in Afghanistan,” Field Artillery (November-December 2003), 6-9; 

Robert H. McElroy with Patrecia Slayden Hollis, “Afghanistan: Fire Support for 

Operation Anaconda,” Field Artillery (September-October 2002), 5-9.

66. The McElroy and Hollis article cited in the previous note contains the 

interview with Major General Hagenbeck.

67. Lieutenant Colonel Dennis D. Tewksbury and Major Joel E. Hamby, 

“Decentralized Fires in Afghanistan: A Glimpse of the Future?” Field 

Artillery (November-December 2003), 12.
48

68. What follows on the use of artillery after Operation ANACONDA is based 

on Ibid.; Mitchell, “Howitzers”; Joshua D. Mitchell, “Afghanistan: Firing 

Artillery Accurately with Air Force Met Support,” Field Artillery (JanuaryFebruary 2003), 38-41; Scott E. Prochniak and Dennis W. Yates, “Counterfire 

in Afghanistan,” ibid. (September-October 2002), 15-18.

69. Tewksbury and Hamby, “Decentralized Fires,” 13. One method used to 

facilitate the airlift of howitzers in the field was to load them inside a CH-47 

Chinook helicopter, rather than have them slung below the aircraft.

70. Cordesman with Baetjer, Ongoing Lessons of Afghanistan, 111.

71. Bailey, Field Artillery, 440.

72. See various articles in Field Artillery (January-February 2004).

73. Robert Hodierne, “Ready to return fire: Artillery unit watches, waits, targets 

enemy rockets,” Army Times, 23 February 2004.

74. FM 3-07, 2-6.

75. The reader may note at this point that the MOOTW category of domestic 

support operations, raised earlier in this paper because artillery was often 

employed, has been dropped from the discussion. Once artillery became 

capable of indirect fire, its size and capabilities are far in excess of anything 

that a political leader would wish to see employed in domestic disturbances, 

even if only for its psychological effect.
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