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piersyf · 04-20-08, 10:41 PM

Hey Trex. Yeah, no argument about blast being local, but a genade in a pit is worse than a grenade in the open. Arty's biggest threat in a conventional fight is counter battery and air. In both cases digging in is counter productive. In the first case you need to move as soon as you shoot, and the old Soviet concept of moving to an alternate prepared position has been shown not to work, not least because the position can be seen and marked, so you get pounded all the way between 2 known locations and once you get there. As for air, it is a bit easier to hide a gun than the pit as well. Western armies have largely moved as far away from prepared positions as they can except where they are a deliberate blocking force or being dangled as bait.
Another way of looking at it is somewhat fatalistic; the dispersion for an average mortar shooting from around 3k is about 20 to 25m. A round going off in the clear space would tell everyone they are under attack, so they wouldn't just stand there, they'd do whatever they were told to do in that case. The frag radius might be large (50m +) but the space between fragments increases over distance. The odds of being killed or even injured are not all that high, especially with the flack gear and helmets. Look at the casualty figures for rocket and mortar attacks and you'll see a pattern of a small number of rounds and a handful of injured, maybe a death except for the 'lucky' shots. The risk is there, but not really as high as many people think. To give a hard figure, during the opening bombardment for operation veritable (end of ww2) the brits were putting 6 TONS of ammo onto every known command post, mortar and gun position(which had varying levels of protection) over a 2 1/2 hour period. People running in the open you can kill, but just simply lying down and not moving increases your chance of survival 10 fold.

04-20-08, 10:41 PM	#21
piersyf Mate Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: australia Posts: 52 Downloads: 1 Uploads: 0	shoot and scoot Hey Trex. Yeah, no argument about blast being local, but a genade in a pit is worse than a grenade in the open. Arty's biggest threat in a conventional fight is counter battery and air. In both cases digging in is counter productive. In the first case you need to move as soon as you shoot, and the old Soviet concept of moving to an alternate prepared position has been shown not to work, not least because the position can be seen and marked, so you get pounded all the way between 2 known locations and once you get there. As for air, it is a bit easier to hide a gun than the pit as well. Western armies have largely moved as far away from prepared positions as they can except where they are a deliberate blocking force or being dangled as bait. Another way of looking at it is somewhat fatalistic; the dispersion for an average mortar shooting from around 3k is about 20 to 25m. A round going off in the clear space would tell everyone they are under attack, so they wouldn't just stand there, they'd do whatever they were told to do in that case. The frag radius might be large (50m +) but the space between fragments increases over distance. The odds of being killed or even injured are not all that high, especially with the flack gear and helmets. Look at the casualty figures for rocket and mortar attacks and you'll see a pattern of a small number of rounds and a handful of injured, maybe a death except for the 'lucky' shots. The risk is there, but not really as high as many people think. To give a hard figure, during the opening bombardment for operation veritable (end of ww2) the brits were putting 6 TONS of ammo onto every known command post, mortar and gun position(which had varying levels of protection) over a 2 1/2 hour period. People running in the open you can kill, but just simply lying down and not moving increases your chance of survival 10 fold.