Artillery refers to heavy weapons and their crews used to deliver projectiles over long distances. It requires special housing, indirect fire techniques, and mathematical formulas. Artillery can be stationary or mobile and is used in various situations, including airfield defense and covering ground troops.
Artillery is a term used to refer both to heavy weapons designed to deliver projectiles over fairly long distances, and to the crews who operate such weapons. People also use the term more generally to refer to the study of firearms, known as artillery. Artillery of one form or another has been used in warfare for centuries, and is often on the cutting edge of military technology; especially in the 20th century, artillery became particularly important.
Several things distinguish artillery from other types of weapons. First, an artillery weapon typically requires a special housing and the efforts of several people are required to operate the weapon. The weapon is also designed to fire extremely large caliber shells, which can inflict significant damage when they land. Additionally, crews use indirect fire techniques to operate their weapons, meaning that instead of visually acquiring a target and aiming at it, the crew uses mathematical formulas to establish a distance from the enemy to fire the weapon at a greater distance.
Thanks to indirect fire, artillery can be used even when visibility is poor, as long as soldiers on the ground have an idea of where the enemy is. It is common for artillery to fire a short opening salvo to find range, and then adjust after this salvo as needed. Sometimes, a short salvo is enough, especially with shells that detonate explosively, scattering shrapnel over a large area. An artillery position is known as a battery.
Artillery can be stationary, as in the case of coastal and anti-aircraft batteries, or it can be mobile, as in field artillery. Fixed weapons are often extremely heavy, and many are optimized for specific ranges so that they can be used effectively for airfield defense, coastal defense, and so on. Field artillery is lighter in weight, but still typically requires the use of a heavy truck to move.
Most militaries have an artillery division, typically within the Army, and artillery members may choose to focus on specific theoretical situations or weapons in their training. Modern guns are quite sophisticated, doing a lot of the math for their operators, and allowing people to input basic range information and known weather conditions in order to fine-tune their operation. There are all sorts of uses for artillery, ranging from covering an area with fire before advancing ground troops to shooting enemy aircraft from the air.
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