Military Finds Ways to Save Lives

Staff Sgt. Michael Kain and Pvt. William Fiel display a high-explosive round and a ‘Smurf’ round.

Good Work:

WARDAK PROVINCE, Afghanistan —In combat, sometimes a small adjustment can mean preserving innocent life. Some artillerymen here have embraced that concept and developed a new way to reduce the chances of collateral damage.

Embracing the current rules of engagement, the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team’s 4th Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment (Task Force King) has begun using less-explosive training shells during the "adjustment phase" of fire support. That means the first, and possibly subsequent rounds fired while getting on target, won't cause nearly the level of damage that high-explosive rounds would. After the artillerymen ensure they're on target, the gloves come off, and they quickly transitioning to the high-explosive, lethal rounds.

The immediate result is fewer live rounds being fired, fewer chances for an errant round to cause unintentional injury or damage, and no decrease in effect of the support to ground units.


“The insurgents are choosing to fight among the people, employing them as human shields; this amounts to an avoidance strategy,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Dennis Woods, Task Force King's senior enlisted man. “Our enemy knows when we use artillery in a conventional firefight, there's a possibility of unintended collateral damage. In our efforts to avoid that, commanders have previously been far less inclined to use artillery. The enemy has been using this assumption to avoid our fire support advantage … until now.”