Artillery

Artillery is a term for devices, their supporting infrastructure, techniques and personnel for propelling payloads or projectiles, over distances and obstacles, to hit a target. Usually, the target is a physical object such as a building, a tank, or an aircraft. The target may also be a location in space to which the payload will burst, scattering materials as nonlethal as propaganda leaflets, or as dangerous as fragmenting explosives or nuclear weapons.

Categories of artillery launchers

Artillery includes cannon, unguided rockets, and guided missiles. It can include aircraft cannon and unguided rockets, but is not usually considered to include gravity bombs or air-launched guided missiles. Artillery is most often fired from land, but also from warships.

Artillery existed before the invention of gunpowder and rocket propellants; medieval artillery used mechanical, rather than chemical, energy to propel projectiles.

Type	Propulsion	Guidance
Historical weapons (ballista, catapult, trebuchet, etc.)	Mechanical energy from tensed rope or fiber, or counterweight	Ballistic setting
Cannon	Energy of propellant exploding behind projectile Note 1	Ballistic setting of cannon; some guided shells
Unguided rockets	Propellant burning for at least part of the trajectory	Ballistic, preset fins Note 2
Guided missile	Jet or rocket burning for at least part of the trajectory	Many types

• Note 1: Some projectiles may have supplementary rockets, glide wings, or both, but the primary energy comes from the propellant gases in the cannon
• Note 2: Some multiple rocket launchers are deliberately inaccurate, firing tens of rockets whose variations cover an area.

Artillery, of all types, falls into the general category of direct fire or indirect fire. Indirect fire needs either preplanned trajectories for specific targets, a forward observer giving corrections to the firing unit, or the use of precision-guided munition that will adjust their course to go to location in space (GOLIS) or go onto target (GOT).

Most modern artillery must be operated by several people (i.e., crew-served weapon), and rarely can be moved by muscle power alone. It will be towed by a vehicle, lifted by a helicopter, or may be self-propelled artillery

Payload types

True artillery rarely uses direct fire except in final self-defense, although self-propelled artillery may assist assault troops in clearing obstacles.

Indirect fire

• High explosive, producing blast and fragmentation effects
• Cluster submunitions
  • "Dual-purpose" or antipersonnel
  • Antitank, often guided
  • Scatterable antitank mines
• Smoke
• Illumination
• Propaganda leaflets
• Chemical weapon, not known to be in the stockpile of any country
• Guided shell

Direct fire

• Antitank
• Obstacle clearing (e.g., concrete-shattering)
• Close-in antipersonnel, historically grapeshot or canister, now flechette or controlled fragmentation