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Field artillerymen return to the big guns

FORT DRUM, N.Y. — For the field artillerymen of 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, the deployment switch from a year in Iraq to a year in Afghanistan has a silver lining.

In Afghanistan, they’ll be doing the job the Army hired them to do: manning the big guns.

The requirement to shoot howitzers in Iraq has been minimal because operations most often are conducted in crowded urban environments.

Instead, field artillerymen have been called upon to perform a wide variety of alternate missions such as infantry maneuvers, truck driving, convoy support, radar operation and “whatever we’ve been needed to do, we’ve done,” said Lt. Col. Paul Gabel, commander of 4th Battalion, 25th Field Artillery.

“This is exciting because we’re a fires battalion in support of a brigade combat team with a system that’s organic to it,” Gabel told Army Times on Monday.

The 3rd BCT was redirected to Afghanistan from its scheduled January deployment to Iraq as part of a requirement identified by commanders on the ground.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sept. 23 that three more brigades would be available by spring or summer for rotations in Afghanistan, but those brigades have not been identified.

Only by diverting brigades from Iraq deployments, he told a Senate panel, could the number of troops in Afghanistan be increased, as pledged by President Bush and NATO leaders.

There are about 33,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan now, and that number will increase by 5,300 with the deployment of a Marine Corps battalion in November and the 10th Mountain’s 3rd BCT by January.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey flew to Fort Drum Monday to take the brigade’s pulse and find out how they were preparing for the change of mission.

Haight, who had returned only hours earlier from a reconnaissance trip to Afghanistan, told Casey his soldiers are training for the higher altitude, more austere terrain, challenging logistics missions, colder weather and, most importantly, a different type of combat.

“It’s a more tenacious enemy there, they stay and fight for three or four hours,” Haight said, recounting his meetings with Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schlosser, commander of Combined Task Force 101. “We trained for Iraq scenarios and drinking chai and that’s OK, but in Afghanistan it’s a little more carnal than that.”

Casey told the leaders “I feel sorry for the enemy.”

The challenge for 3rd BCT is that it will not be falling in on any previous unit’s equipment, and, unlike the environment in Iraq where there is a fairly well established supply line and infrastructure, Haight said he envisions early complications with moving into an area and setting up basic services.

The brigade is approaching full manning, but some enlisted skills are still needed and brigade Command Sgt. Maj. Delbert Byers said he’s been unable to get Training and Doctrine Command to open up school slots so he can retrain other soldiers who have similar military occupational specialties to fill those jobs.

Gabel said he expects that by the time they get to Afghanistan, they’ll have taken delivery of a dozen M777s, the Army’s new lightweight 155mm Howitzer, which has a greater range and lethality than the M119 105mm they currently use.

In the meantime, the battalion will qualify on the M198 155mm, which is heavier and a little harder to move around the battlefield.

Gabel took command in June 2007 and spent the first eight months re-acquainting his soldiers with their field artillery craft, but toward the end of the summer, as the presumed Iraq rotation neared, they began training for maneuver missions.

Before they deploy in January, he said, his gunnery chiefs will be qualified on three weapons systems, which will include training on the M777 at Fort Bragg, N.C.