Field of fire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

See Field of Fire (DS9 episode) for the "Star Trek DS9" episode, and Fields of Fire, for the 1978 book by James H. Webb.

The field of fire of a weapon (or group of weapons) is the area around it that it can easily and effectively reach by gun fire.

The term fields of fire today is mostly used in reference to machine guns. Their fields of fire incoporate the so called beaten zone.

The Beaten Zone is a concept in indirect infantry small arms fire most specifically machine guns. It describes the area between the "first catch" and the "last graze" of a bullets trajectory. At the first of these points a bullet will hit a standing man in the head, at the last of these points, as the bullet drops, it will hit a standing man in the feet. Anyone standing within the beaten zone will be hit somewhere from head to foot.

The concept works best as part of a static defence with the area covered by a position plotted out before hand. Usually the machine guns will be mounted on a tripod and indirect fire sights (such as a dial sight) fitted in addition to, or instead of, direct fire ones. Fire can then be called in by spotters to engage specific points in the guns field of fire, even if out of sight of the machine gunners.

Overlapping machine guns, creating a crossfire, using the concept beaten zone, together with the idea of enfilading fire formed part of the geometry of death into which a generation of young men marched during the First World War.