Abstract
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News, trends and evidence in artillery
The artillery in the next decade
After the fall of Berlin wall on November 10th 1989, and the des-tructuring
of Warsaw Pact, a lot of analysts considered that the
threat of a traditional conflict with two conventional armies face
to face had disappeared.
This belief went on for some decades, when the counter-insur-gency
operations carried out were only against enemies with very
few or no air or indirect fire support capabilities. This led to ig-nore
or disregard the development of both indirect fire systems
and the air defence, and keep the typical capabilities of the 70s
in last century.
Current operational environments and new threats have shown
the need to retake these capabilities and look for better range and
accuracy through the evolution of traditional systems or the use
of new technologies.
Force air defence. Some examples of future commitments
In the last five years, Air Defence organization programmes in our
neighbouring countries have significantly changed in order to be
able to adapt their capabilities to present scenarios and threats.
This article aims at explaining the starting point and transforma-tion
programmes in some NATO countries, so that we can assess
the tendency and learn how they value the future of Air Defence.
Air defence Artillery, the key to victory?
In both World Wars, the field artillery increased its range and
capabilities, which changed decisively the battlefield, and tur-ned
firepower into a key factor for victory. After the end of the
Cold War, Western armies have been involved in long stabiliza-tion
operations for more than thirty years, facing no air threat;
consequently, air defence artillery has undergone through a long
period of lack of interest. However, technology improvements in
the air defence domain will lead, in a short time, to an important
increase in range and capabilities for the air defence artillery, and
make it a key factor to shape the battlefield, and, as a consequen-ce,
to determine the outcome of combat.
Organization
Spanish Antiaircraft Artillery, SBAD or AOAD?e
Although in the Spanish Armed Forces most air defence is un-der
the Army, it is used not only to defend the Army units and
targets, but also to defend joint objectives, which means that the
capabilities and targets to be defended must undergo an in-depth
study during operational planning. Close collaboration and coor-dination
between component commands is essential. The Spa-nish
Antiaircraft Artillery is a benchmark, since it has been able
to keep its capabilities under the Army and support other com-ponent
commands in their planning, as well as in national and
international operations and exercises with the double role of
SBAD and AOAD.