The guns of (this) August: Ars gets a demo of digitally enhanced artillery

Shooting things you can see is hard enough. Shooting things you can't see based on directions someone being shot at is giving you over a staticky radio is even harder. But a digital addition to the Army's most nimble of artillery pieces is making the job of delivering explosive packages accurately and on time a lot easier.

Over the past two years, the US Army has been applying technology that was once the province of submarines and strategic bombers to a piece of weaponry with a somewhat more humble history: light field artillery. The M119 howitzer, the modern descendant of the towed cannons that have been used to lob shells at enemies since the Middle Ages, has been upgraded with a digital inertial navigation system that makes it possible for a gun crew to set it up within minutes and start firing in support of soldiers in the field.

The M119, technically speaking, is a "gun-howitzer"—a cannon that can be used both for direct fire (aimed at the target with an optical sight or radar) and indirect fire aimed based on positions provided by a spotter. Howitzers were originally guns with shorter barrels relative to their shell caliber that were used to lob shells in a high arc, at greater distances than the even shorter-barreled mortar.