Talk:Indirect fire

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This definition of indirect fire manages to miss most of the key points.

Indirect fire has to be used when a target cannot be seen through the gun's sights. It may be visible to the crew and it may be used even if the target is visible through the sights. Modern indirect fire emerged in theory in the 1880s and in practice in the 1890s when all necessary instruments became available. Indirect fire originally emerged to get gun positions out of direct fire from the enemy. Subsequently the primary purpose became to engage targets that were not visible from the proximity of the gun position.

Indirect fire involves setting firing data on the sights. This data involves something to give the azimuth to the target and something to give the range to the target. The former involves some sort of aiming point as a reference and the latter is usually converted to something relative to the horizontal plane. Modern practice is to take the target's grid reference or coordinates and calculate firing data between this and the gun's location, early indirect fire used other methods.

Indirect fire may be observed or predicted. Observed fire means a human observer or target acquisition system locates the target and can if necessary adjust the points of impact of the projectiles. The firing data for observed fire may or may not include corrections for non-standard conditions. In modern armies it usually does but this was not always the case.

Predicted fire means the target is accurately located by some means and firing data always includes corrections for non-standard conditions. The basic methods were developed and refined in World War 1. The objective of predicted fire is to avoid having to adjust the points of impact or to attack targets that cannot be observed due to their position, weather or darkness. Variations to standard conditions are caused by differences from standard air temperature, air pressure, wind speed and direction and the muzzle velocity of the gun (which has several sources including propellant temperature, projectile weight and the extent of barrel wear).

Nfe 02:54, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] redirect!

Is this some sort of a joke to redirect the direct fire to indirect?! The two have almost nothing in common as forms of ordnance delivery other then using basic ballistics principles.--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 02:36, 5 April 2008 (UTC) I take it back, this was not a joke...just written by someone not seemingly aware of military history and technology--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 02:38, 5 April 2008 (UTC)