Counter battery fire in 30 seconds in Ramadi

Stars & Stripes:

The “hot guns” from Giessen, Germany, are giving insurgents the swiftest artillery payback in Iraq, if not the entire Army, according to Col. Sean MacFarland, commander of 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division in Ramadi.

“Those guys have probably fired more high-explosive projectiles against the enemy than any artillery battery in the Army,” MacFarland told Stars and Stripes in a Friday telephone call from his Camp Ramadi headquarters. “And they’re probably the fastest at it of anybody in the Army, too.”

Once Army radars detect incoming rockets or mortar fire, MacFarland said, the unit often has “artillery landing on the enemy mortar team within 30 seconds of them firing their last round.”

Without getting into specifics that might be useful for the enemy, MacFarland said, the 2-3 Field Artillery is routinely responding to threats with their counter-battery fire “in less than one-third of the time you’ll generally find elsewhere in training situations.”

“It’s amazing to me,” MacFarland said. “Absolutely amazing.”

...

There is more praise for other units under his command too. It is not clear to me why Israel is not reacting to the Lebanon rockets in the same way. It could be that they are out of artillery range. Isreal has been using the Air Force to attack launch sites according to this story.

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