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Artillery is a class of large military weapons built to fire munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry's small arms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach fortifications, and led to heavy, fairly immobile siege engines. As technology improved, lighter, more mobile field artillery developed for battlefield use. This development continues today; modern self-propelled artillery vehicles are highly mobile weapons of great versatility providing the largest share of an army's total firepower. In its earliest sense, the word artillery referred to any group of soldiers primarily armed with some form of manufactured weapon or armour. Since the introduction of gunpowder and cannon, the word "artillery" has largely meant cannon, and in contemporary usage, it usually refers to shell-firing guns, howitzers, mortars, rockets and guided missiles. In common speech, the word artillery is often used to refer to individual devices, along with their accessories and fittings, although these assemblages are more properly called "equipments". However, there is no generally recognised generic term for a gun, howitzer, mortar, and so forth: the United States uses "artillery piece", but most English-speaking armies use "gun" and "mortar". The projectiles fired are typically either "shot" (if solid) or "shell" (if not). "Shell" is a widely used generic term for a projectile, which is a component of munitions. By association, artillery may also refer to the arm of service that customarily operates such engines. In some armies one arm has operated field, coast, anti-aircraft artillery and some anti-tank artillery, in others these have been separate arms and in some nations coast has been a naval or marine responsibility. In the 20th Century technology based target acquisition devices, such as radar, and systems, such as sound ranging and flash spotting, emerged to acquire targets, primarily for artillery. These are usually operated by one or more of the artillery arms. The widespread adoption of indirect fire in the early 20th Century introduced the need for specialist data for field artillery, notably survey and meteorological, in some armies provision of these are the responsibility of the artillery arm. Artillery originated for use against ground targets—against infantry, cavalry and other artillery. An early specialist development was coast artillery for use against enemy ships. The early 20th Century saw the development of a new class of artillery for use against aircraft. Artillery is arguably the most lethal form of land-based armament currently employed, and has been since at least the early Industrial Revolution. The majority of combat deaths in the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, and World War II were caused by artillery.〔Christopher Bellamy, Oxford Companion to Military History: artillery〕 In 1944, Joseph Stalin said in a speech that artillery was "the God of War".〔 ==Artillery piece== Although not called as such, machines performing the role recognizable as artillery have been employed in warfare since antiquity. The first references in the western historical tradition begin at Syracuse in 399 BC, and these devices were widely employed by the Roman legions in Republican times well before the Christian era. Until the introduction of gunpowder into western warfare, artillery depended upon mechanical energy to operate, and this severely limited the kinetic energy of the projectiles, while also requiring the construction of very large apparatus to store sufficient energy. For comparison, a Roman 1st-century BC catapult using stones of 6.55 kg fired with a kinetic energy of 16,000 joules, while a mid-19th-century 12-pounder gun firing projectiles of 4.1 kg fired the projectile with a kinetic energy of 240,000 joules. From the Middle Ages through most of the modern era, artillery pieces on land were moved by horse-drawn gun carriages. In the contemporary era, the artillery and crew rely on wheeled or tracked vehicles as transportation, though some of the largest were railway guns. Artillery used by naval forces has changed significantly also, with missiles replacing guns in surface warfare. Over the course of military history, projectiles were manufactured from a wide variety of materials, made in a wide variety of shapes, and used different means of inflicting physical damage and casualties to defeat specific types of targets. The engineering designs of the means of delivery have likewise changed significantly over time, and have become some of the most complex technological application today. In some armies, the weapon of artillery is the projectile, not the equipment that fires it. The process of delivering fire onto the target is called gunnery. The actions involved in operating the piece are collectively called "serving the gun" by the "detachment" or gun crew, constituting either direct or indirect artillery fire. The manner in which artillery units or formations are employed is called artillery support, and may at different periods in history refer to weapons designed to be fired from ground-, sea-, and even air-based weapons platforms. ==Crew== The term "gunner" is used in some armed forces for the soldiers and sailors with the primary function of using artillery. The gunners and their guns are usually grouped in teams called either "crews" or "detachments". Several such crews and teams with other functions are combined into a unit of artillery, usually called a battery, although sometimes called a company. In gun detachments, each role is numbered, starting with "1" the Detachment Commander, and the highest number being the Coverer, the second-in-command. "Gunner" is also the lowest rank and junior non-commissioned officers are "Bombardiers" in some artillery arms. Batteries are roughly equivalent to a company in the infantry, and are combined into larger military organizations for administrative and operational purposes, either battalions or regiments, depending on the army. These may be grouped into brigades; the Russian army also groups some brigades into artillery divisions, and the People's Liberation Army has artillery corps. The term "artillery" is also applied to a combat arm of most military services when used organizationally to describe units and formations of the national armed forces that operate the weapons. During military operations, the role of field artillery is to provide support to other arms in combat or to attack targets, particularly in depth. Broadly, these effects fall into two categories, either to suppress or neutralize the enemy, or to cause casualties, damage, and destruction. This is mostly achieved by delivering high-explosive munitions to suppress, or inflict casualties on the enemy from casing fragments and other debris and blast, or by destroying enemy positions, equipment, and vehicles. Non-lethal munitions, notably smoke, can also be used to suppress or neutralize the enemy by obscuring their view. Fire may be directed by an artillery observer or other observer, including manned and unmanned aircraft pilots, or called onto map coordinates. Military doctrine has played a significant influence on the core engineering design considerations of artillery ordnance through its history, in seeking to achieve a balance between delivered volume of fire with ordnance mobility. However, during the modern period, the consideration of protecting the gunners also arose due to the late-19th-century introduction of the new generation of infantry weapons using conoidal bullet, better known as the Minié ball, with a range almost as long as that of field artillery. The gunners' increasing proximity to and participation in direct combat against other combat arms and attacks by aircraft made the introduction of a gun shield necessary. The problems of how to employ a fixed or horse-towed gun in mobile warfare necessitated the development of new methods of transporting the artillery into combat. Two distinct forms of artillery developed: the towed gun, which was used primarily to attack or defend a fixed line; and the self-propelled gun, which was designed to accompany a mobile force and provide continuous fire support. These influences have guided the development of artillery ordnance, systems, organisations, and operations until the present, with artillery systems capable of providing support at ranges from as little as 100 m to the intercontinental ranges of ballistic missiles. The only combat in which artillery is unable to take part in is close quarters combat, with the possible exception of artillery reconnaissance teams. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Artillery」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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