Artillery in Afghanistan - Observations from the Front

[FJAG]

As many of you already know, Old Sweat, Petard and I have been commissioned to write a book about the Canadian Artillery's experience in Afghanistan. We are slowly working our way through the different rotos but are already seeing some general trends. We're looking for some insight from any and all who were there, and in some cases even from those who weren't but were supported by artillery or were gunners supporting combined arms training. There are some general themes which we'd like covered although don't consider that a limitation. These are:

a) were your training experiences in Canada prior to deployment adequate to let you assess what value artillery brings to the fight? Did this differ from training in general and predeployment training during TMST or at CMTC?

b) how did your impression of artillery change, if at all, from prior to deploying to during the deployment?

c) can you provide some examples of where your artillery support on operations was either effective? or ineffective?

c) what recommendations do you have for providing a better understanding of the role of artillery?

Feel free to have at it. I would appreciate it if you could start your comments setting out your point of view: e.g. infantry platoon commander; armoured tank crewman etc. and the roto.

If you wish to keep your comments off the open web but would still like to contribute, feel free to PM them to me.