Crew served weapon

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Crew-served weapons are operated by a crew of soldiers. In most conflicts, they cause the majority of casualties.^{[citation needed]} Crew served weapons fall into three basic classes: munitions delivery, intelligence, and command-and-control.

[edit] Munitions delivery

The clearest example of a crew-served munitions delivery weapon is artillery. Artillery has unique advantages over most personal weapons. It can be resupplied on an industrial scale, sometimes by trains. It can throw huge tonnages of explosives and antipersonnel weapons, reducing both fortresses and masses of men with equal ease. With coordinated fire, it can create barrages that form moving fences (rolling barrages) or that systematically attack every point of an enemy (a rastered barrage). It has essentially perfect mobility of attack within its range, which can easily reach 40km (25 mi). When artillery is collected in a redoubt or "fire base," it is relatively secure from counter-attack by individual soldiers. When artillery is mounted, it can shoot-and-scoot, giving it good security even from aircraft and counter-battery fire.

Machine guns are light antipersonnel artillery that shoot line-of-sight. Usually the crew consists of gunner, and a loader.

A missile or ICBM is simply a longer-ranged form of artillery, operating against high value targets with a larger cost per shot.

Another example of a crew-served weapon is the modern navy. A navy is artillery, or artillery-like missiles, mounted on water-going platforms. As modern warfare becomes more fluid, the historic tactics of naval engagements are migrating into land and aerial conflict. The basic principle of mobile warfare is to maneuver for a decisive ability to attack, or a decisive ability to decline attack.

Another example of a crew-served weapon is a modern military aircraft. Most such weapons are essentially systems that consist of a base, and vehicles. Their basic mission is to deliver artillery-like munitions over a longer range or to faster-moving targets than conventional artillery can handle.

While weapons platforms are impressive, and difficult to overcome, they also greatly increase casualties to their crews. Normally, when a weapons platform is destroyed, all or most of its crew dies as a group.

[edit] Surveillance

The classic form of surveillance is a screen of troops, or well-placed spies. Aside from these, almost all other forms of intelligence come from crew-served devices.

Modern network-centric warfare depends on fast, reliable intelligence that can be easily digitized. The prototypical example is an air-mounted ground surveillance radar. Such radars can have a multiple-hundred-mile range, and report every ground or naval vehicle in thousands of square miles. They provide a priceless view for a theatre commander. If friendly forces are networked with GPS, the command's computers can simply subtract every friendly vehicle, giving detailed position and movement information about all civilian and enemy vehicles in the theatre.

Military vehicles often follow unusual routes or use unusual groupings that make them easy to distinguish from civilian traffic. Modern "swarm" tactics are in part an attempt to disguise military vehicles from computerized radar surveillance.

When more detail is needed, helicopters or other mobile viewing platforms can identify the traffic more precisely, though with some risk. Signal processing in a radar set is almost always preferable, but not always good enough.

Satellite radars and cameras have similar abilities, but less loitering time, and lower power.

Historically, aerial photography was crucial to warfare. Even though it passed through a time-consuming photointerpretation stage, its mobility and clarity was priceless.

[edit] Command and Control

All military forces are, broadly speaking, crew-served weapons. Their coordination and command is a complex, technical professional specialty carried out by headquarters groups. These groups usually consist of a commander who makes policy decisions, supported by a staff that implements the policy. At the lowest levels are the house-keeping, communications and security forces that feed, talk and protect for the staff and commander.