page_title: Artillery
section_title: Types of ordnance
hierarchical_section_title: Artillery / Classification of artillery / Types of ordnance
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: &#160; Beschreibung: Panzerhaubitze 2000 (PzH 2000) in der Fahrschule FahrSimKette Baumholder Datum: Februar 2002 Autor: Sonaz
context_page_description: Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons built to launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and led to heavy, fairly immobile siege engines. As technology improved, lighter, more mobile field artillery cannons developed for battlefield use. This development continues today; modern self-propelled artillery vehicles are highly mobile weapons of great versatility generally providing the largest share of an army's total firepower.
  Originally, the word "artillery" referred to any group of soldiers primarily armed with some form of manufactured weapon or armor. Since the introduction of gunpowder and cannon, "artillery" has largely meant cannons, and in contemporary usage, usually refers to shell-firing guns, howitzers, mortars, and rocket artillery. In common speech, the word "artillery" is often used to refer to individual devices, along with their accessories and fittings, although these assemblages are more properly called "equipment".
context_section_description: The types of cannon artillery are generally distinguished by the velocity at which they fire projectiles.
  Types of artillery:
  Heavy artillery: capable of firing a long distance to bombard its target. See also Large-calibre artillery
  Field artillery: mobile weapons used to support armies in the field. Subcategories include:
  infantry support guns: directly support infantry units.
  mountain guns: lightweight weapons that can be moved through difficult terrain.
  field guns: capable of long range fire.
  howitzers: capable of high angle fire, they are most often employed for indirect-fire.
  gun howitzers: capable of high or low angle fire with a long barrel.
  mortars: typically short-barreled, high-trajectory weapons designed primarily for an indirect-fire role.
  gun mortars – breech-loaded mortars capable of high or low angle fire.
  anti-tank artillery: weapons, usually mobile, designed primarily for attacking tanks and other armored fighting vehicles.
  anti-aircraft artillery: weapons, usually mobile, designed for attacking aircraft from the ground. Some guns were suitable for the dual-role of anti-aircraft and anti-tank warfare.
  rocket artillery: rocket-launched instead of shot or shell.
  Railway gun: large-caliber weapons that are mounted on, transported by and fired from specially-designed railway wagons.
  Naval artillery: guns mounted on warships and used either against other ships or in support of ground forces. The crowning achievement of naval artillery was the battleship, but the advent of airpower and missiles have rendered this type of artillery largely obsolete. They are typically longer-barreled, low-trajectory, high-velocity weapons designed primarily for a direct-fire role.
  Coastal artillery: Fixed-position weapons dedicated to defense of a particular location, usually a coast (for example, the Atlantic Wall in World War II) or harbor. Not needing to be mobile, coastal artillery used to be much larger than equivalent field artillery pieces, giving them longer range and more destructive power. Modern coastal artillery (for example, Russia's "Bereg" system) is often self-propelled, (allowing it to avoid counter-battery fire) and fully integrated, meaning that each battery has all of the support systems that it requires (maintenance, targeting radar, etc.) organic to its unit.
  Modern field artillery can also be split into two other subcategories: towed and self-propelled. As the name suggests, towed artillery has a prime mover, usually an artillery tractor or truck, to move the piece, crew, and ammunition around. Towed artillery is in some cases equipped with an APU for small displacements. Self-propelled artillery is permanently mounted on a carriage or vehicle with room for the crew and ammunition and is thus capable of moving quickly from one firing position to another, both to support the fluid nature of modern combat and to avoid counter-battery fire. It includes mortar carrier vehicles, many of which allow the mortar to be removed from the vehicle and be used dismounted, potentially in terrain in which the vehicle cannot navigate, or in order to avoid detection.
caption: German Army PzH 2000 self-propelled artillery
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