Firing hundreds of KM in some cases, accurate within a few hundred feet? How is that possible? And how do they “dial in” new coordinates exactly? It all seems like magic to me
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If you want to see how this actually happens at the moment by the Russians, you should check out this video: https://youtu.be/9VJb7Zrxc6Q. It’s from last week or so and shows practically everything you asked.
You need to think about how fast _you_ think about things.
Now imagine a machine that can think billions of times quicker than you.
It doesn’t see things the same way you do, it sees them much more slowly and it can react faster.
You’re thinking in terms of your own capabilities, the machine’s is far greater.
For an extended but well made and fun explanation, i recommend this video:
It’s a great YTtuber, he’s pretty darn god at making it clear and accurate without being boring.
This is for navy shooting, I think is the most comprehensive as there is a moving target, long ranges, and the shooting platform is a moving ship that also rolls and pitches with waves. So it covers really all the possible variables of the thing.
Too long didn’t watch: starting from shoot-check-adjust-shoot, the tech improved by using aiming sight, then tables to estimate the gun elevation for the range, then sync the shot with the ship roll, then getting better and better distance measuring equipment, better estimate of target and shooter relative movements, then complex tables to calculate the firing solution as fast as possible, then factor in weather, earth rotation, then mechanical computers to get the solution even quicker, radar distance measuring, then digital computers. With the goal to reduce as much as possible the time between spotting and hitting. End result: the best ever shot was a moving ship vs a moving ship at 26Km distance. The quickest was a 16km long hit at the first salvo. If I recall correctly.
In addition to all the maths that others have talked about, there’s also guided munitions.
M927 Excalibur, to be more precise. It’s a shell that uses fins to change its trajectory in the last bit of the path.
I believe there are artillery rounds now with fins that can auto steer to the target to make them even more accurate.
Very, very smart soldiers who are great at math and extremely precise mapping.
A request for a strike on a precise location gets called in. The request is granted, and a team of absolute mathematical *Chads* get to work.
They have computers to help calculate trajectories but are more than capable of doing the work by hand.
The order for elevation, alignment, and charge strength gets sent to the team at the cannon and they do the boom.
Excellent answers so far. Here is a simplification, how this might evolve.
You can imagine you are throwing a ball. If you throw a ball often enough, through experience you will get better at it. You can somewhat predict where the ball will land. It’s even better, if you practice the same throw over and over again.
It would get even better, if you built a machine to throw the ball. If the machine throws the ball the same way it did last time, you will get the same result. (Except for windspeed).
Then you can test the machine with different configurations. You try different angels and speeds, until you hit, let’s say exactly 10 meters away. You write that configuration down.
Now whenever you want to hit something 10 meters away with that machine, you look it up.
If you were bored and had lot’s of time, you could save configurations for every spot you might want to hit.
And then we have math. Math is great 😀 Instead of testing all of this, you can only test let’s say 3 spots. Then you take the angels and speeds and locations, and you put them into a formula, that can be solved for the location, if you have speed and angle. If with your formula, you can predict and confirm a 4th and 5th spot, you have done it.
With that formula you can now predict the location you will hit, if you have speed and angle.
And then you get computers to math for you, and you have lasers that can measure distance, and gps and coordinates, and again computers that take all of these infos into account in realtime. And then you just have to point a laser at whatever you want to be blown up, and a bombardment will hit it.
And then you have smart ammunition, where the bomb itself has a computer, and can steer. Basically a self driving flying car, with explosives.
It’s basically the same way that we learn how to throw the ball into the hoop or to pass the ball to another player on the move. Whilst we learn based on practise they rely mostly on maths with a side of practise. Just judging the distance of the target and the speed of the object being thrown/ deployed.
Modern artillery doesn‘t fire hundreds of kilometres. The ‚Schwerer Gustav‘ is a massive artillery in rails built by the germans and has a range of 130km. It‘s the longest shooting artillery afaik.
For comparison the American m777 can shoot up to 70km, the pzh2000 up to 80km.
Rocket artillery can obviously shoot much further and there your answer would be: gps and it can adjust trajectory mid flight. Or you don‘t, just point it in the rough direction and delete an entire 1km by 1km grid.
And m777 is aimed with math and sticks. Seriously, sticks.
You put up a couple sticks with specific markings, make sure your cannon is level and then adjust based on where your first shot lands.
Something like the pzh2000 is guided entirely by computers. Just put in the coordinates and push the button.
Math is the correct answer the second half of this is precision manufacturing.
The engineers makes assumption, x amount of firepower, x barrel length, x materiale, x weight/shape of projectile and so on.
If all these assumptions are correct the projectile will land on the exact spot everytime.
So the better manufacturing and QA is the better the precision.
Variations come from things you can’t control, weather ( you can account for some of it) what is your gun standing on etc.
The longer you shoot the more variations and calculations are more complex.
The most precise guns also use guided/active gps projectiles and they are a huge increase in cost. Which can then correct for movement of target or variations (weather forexample).
Also even the best western artillery fires ranging rounds where they correct fire after seeing how far they land from the target. Then they correct and shoot multiple rounds to destroy the target.
So it’s not perfect just a lot better than WW2 mass artillery barrages.
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