"Naturally, we'll go "cold" on the firing point before we break out the juice." Suits me. I was never nailed for a safety viloation in ten plus years. Why break that tradition. I will draw the line at starched OD field uniforms. Hated those things & will stick my fave the loose fitting cammie untilitys. Flak jackets & helmets off, soft covers & beer at 1600, roger.

"Suits me. I was never nailed for a safety viloation in ten plus years. Why break that tradition." Nor I. As both a former instructor of firing btry safety procedures at FAOBC/OAC, and a former Range Control Officer at Sill, the professional embarassment would have been overwhelming. Sharp objects removed and strait-jacket applied. Carl, I come from a time before flak jackets. I've never worn one. Don't know, unless local range regs require it(suspect they all do now), that I'd wear one now. I will be standing tall though. Boots spitshined and pressed-starched cammies for the first round. Local conditions will ensure that I'm a mess shortly thereafter. It was a rare day on a firing point when I didn't look like a pig by the end! hah!!

In the Marines flak jackets were de riguer. Dont leave the barracks without one. Every salty old Viet Nam veteran had a story about a save by the flack jacket. The extra ten pounds became normal and I learned how it could help me nap comfortably at 0300 hrs.

Thanks guys! I presume the 0.3% range/0.3mills is the mean error, is this correct? Also, if that is the case, does anybody know the standard deviation? (BTW: If my recollection is correct, 1 mil is equal to 1/6000 of a full circle - please correct me if I am wrong.) I also have a follow up question: Do you think any guns currently in the works or in the design stage can significantly improve on this accuracy level (again, excepting guided munitions)? If so, by how much?

The Soviet artillery used 6000 mil circles. NATO used 6400 mil, which is 17.77778 mils to a degree. I dont know about mean error & standard deviation. Cant recall if they were mentioned in basic gunnery training. We did not use either term in actual manual gunnery computations, tho that does not suggest no one did. And, I'm finding no reference to either in my fourhundred & ninety page firing table. those may be language used in British gunnery. We did use (and misuse) a term "probable error" (PE). The three pages (with chart) concerning this give a method for computing components of the PE which is a mathmatical description of the dispersion pattern about the Mean Point of Impact. The specific definition of PE is nearly a paragraph, but it can be summed up as the area around the MPI that 50% of the rounds will land in. For the M 155mm projectile at a range of 18,000 meters (charge 8) the range PE is +/- 52 meters & the deflection PE is right/left 15 meters. In other words half the rounds fired will land inside a elipse 104 meters on the long axis & 30 meters on the short axis, with the long axis corresponding to the gun/target line. PE was one of the 'nice to have but not critical' components of computing the firing solution. It was important when computing the safety zone for a live fire shoot.

Apologies to Carl for reading his post in excessive haste. Point is that FTs only deal in consistency. You have to look long and hard for real data about accuracy. The corrections for non-standard conditions in FTs improve accuracy significantly (compared to just firing at the data for standard conditions). Correcting for non-standard conditions has been going in for the last 90 years. The issue, therefore, is the residual innaccuracy and I previously listed the main sources, ie mostly the data that is combined with FT data or put into the computer. Of course before the days of computers one of the biggest sources of inaccuracy was measuring map range, particularly at 1:50,000 but 1:25,000 wasn't too sharp either. While the FT data isn't perfect, because it involves approximations and doesn't entirely compensate for all cross-term effects (although I'd have to give that a bit of thought), they're also irrelevent because nobody uses them these days(outside some of the third world who probably aren't too hot on providing met, good survey and calibrating either!) Computers do it differently and don't use FT data. Incidentally I think a WP mil is 6200 to a circle not 6000, but am not totally sure. The difference between PE and standard deviation is simple. PE slices it into 4 'bands' around (or either side of) the mpi, SD into 3. The advantage of 4 is that 50% fall into the inner band.

I havedone my military service in Field Artillery in Finland. I was in firing side of guns. (Gun emplacements) I dont know wht you call them in US parliance. Tuliasemat in Finnish 8). I dont fire guns anymore. last time I was in refresment training I spent my time calculating the the shooting variables.

As I understand it, Finland's indirect fire philosophy stems from Russian gunnery. Perhaps I'm wrong. I, like Carl S., was taught that the Soviet model calculated firing data based upon 6000 mils to a 360 degree circle. Perhaps you can confirm or correct?

The FM on Soviet or Warsaw pact Artillery would confirm the mil question. Unfortunatly I cant find my copy from 1983. (note to self: clean book cases)

Since we are close to the subject here are a couple web site on Finnish artillery. Hopefully IsoT will tell us they are reasonably accurate and not misleading. The first site discusses WWII. Interestingly it suggests Finnish artilly was influenced by French practice of that era, rather than German or Soviet. http://www.winterwar.com/forces/FinArmy/FINartiller.htm The next site presents a little infor on modern Finnish artillery http://www.mil.fi/moavoimat/jouot/tykpr/index_en.dsp