FORT SILL, Okla. (Oct. 1, 2015) -- Senior officers and noncommissioned officers gathered on a small field off Sheridan Road for refresher training on the howitzer, Sept. 21 and 22.
Staff Sgt. Damiun Walker, instructor for 1st Battalion, 78th Field Artillery, said the event's goal is to help leaders within the unit fine tune their skills with the artillery piece.
While the weapon does have digital capabilities to acquire targets, Walker said Soldiers need to know how to manually find their targets.
"Basically it's like if your GPS fails, you know how to read a map," said Walker.
The training worked on two aspects of howitzer operations: sighting and firing. The first day Sgt. 1st Class Michael Guilin demonstrated how to set up the aiming circle, a device that helps artillery Soldiers point the howitzer in the correct direction. The aiming circle must be set up in two minutes, then Soldiers use magnetic north to orient it.
From there they use three known points to change the aiming circle's orientation from magnetic north to grid north to fire on a target.
"We do this so the guns will be accurate," said Sgt. 1st Class Booker Brown, senior school chief and master gunner. "In combat it can be the difference between life and death."
Brown said without proper refresher training, the tasks can be difficult to perform, especially for officers who often have other duties to take care of the unit. This training allows them to step out of the office and relearn, hands on, what "right" looks like, he said.
"They can learn from a subject matter expert the safe way to do things so when they come to the field, or if there is an incident, they can understand and know what went wrong," he said. "If they don't know how to do it, how will they know when it's wrong or when it's right?"
On the second day the Soldiers went to step two, where they position the howitzer for a dry fire. The howitzer is aligned based off their work with the aiming circle. Once the weapon was aligned, they then returned to the aiming circle to double-check their work.
"We always double-check our work," said Staff Sgt. Jason Quinn, instructor with 1-78th FA. "There is also someone double-checking behind the checker."
Traditionally, once the aiming and the firing have happened, a third component, observing, is implemented. For this training event, the howitzers are not firing live ammunition so observation is not needed.
Even without the live-fire portion, Quinn said the training is effective in its goal: to refresh Soldiers on the howitzer. Following the training Soldiers will take a written test to become certified. Those who fail can retest the following Friday.
"No one will fail though, because we have excellent instructors," said Quinn.
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