Stars and Stripes reported Gen Ordierno the Army Chief of Staff announced today the opening of all Army artillery specialties except for 13F (Fire Support Specialist or what is commonly called a Forward Observer) to women.  Since the decision has not been officially made to gender integrate Armor and Infantry branches.  This decision will be revisited later.

Ordierno said the decision followed detailed testing.  Has anyone seen the video of loading a 155mm howitzer?  The round weighs 98lbs.  How about women carrying the ammunition from the ammo carrier to the gun?  You don’t stockpile a lot of ammunition around the gun in the event the enemy identifies where the artillery fire and launches a counterbattery strike against the position.

When facing a nation that has counterbattery capabilities (e.g. Russia, China, N. Korea) our artillery has to have the ability to fire a half dozen rounds quickly, pick up, move, emplace/position and fire again (aka “scoot & shoot” at 5:10 video shows crew emplacing 155mm howitzer).    They would normally move to a new position at least 500m away and be back in action in well under 10 minutes.

Another mission requiring high physicality from artillery gun crews are firing “final protective fires”.  We have not had a requirement to do these missions as the enemy for the last decade has generally not  been able to mass on our positions except for a few instances like Wanat and Kamdesh but it is common practice to give an infantry unit “final protective fire” support.  This is a last ditch attempt to place a wall of steel between friendly troops and the enemy and the artillery fires until the supported unit asks it to stop or it runs out of ammunition.  Here’s a video of a 155mm howitzer firing a multi-round mission.  Would a decreased ability by a crew to “feed the gun” impact the Infantry’s survivability?

Have these questions been asked, tested and answered?  If they have why not share the results to ally any fears and quiet any objections?  Is anyone objecting?  BTW, Ordierno is a former artillery officer…