FIELD ARTILLERY ROADMAP

INTRODUCTION

On the battlefields of the 21st Century, the destructive power of fires will play an increasingly decisive role in achieving land power dominance. From the killing ground of the close fight through the vast distances of operational depths, Army XXI commanders will attack and defeat the enemy with precision fires which are inherently maneuverable, adaptive, versatile, and tremendously lethal. Major General Randall L. Rigby

1994 marked the beginning of a far-reaching endeavor to envision America's Artillery in the year 2020. The initial result of this effort, Vision 2020, offers intriguing insights into the powerful synergy existing between technological advances and future warfighting concepts. In essence, it is a bold assertion of what the Field Artillery could and should be by the third decade of the 21st Century.

Vision 2020 serves as a distant aiming point for guiding the evolution of Field Artillery to a position of increased importance on the battlefields of the next century. It combines advanced warfighting concepts with potential technologies to provide a glimpse of the future of combined arms, a dynamic source of combat power describes as the Ascendency of Fires.

Our challenge then is to transform a notional view of the world of 2020 into a 21st Century warfighting reality. The task at hand is to adopt a strategy with sufficient "meat and muscle" for transitioning the Field Artillery to its rightful place in the Ascendency of Fires.

Success in this ambitious venture ultimately rests on the ability to assess the myriad known factors impacting on our future development. We can discern the obvious trends affecting our near-term growth. We know the years ahead will be characterized by severe fiscal constraints. The ability to focus on a specific threat is difficult and yet the world remains a dangerous place. While we cannot predict the future, we can and must prepare for it. We must have a workable plan.

The Field Artillery Roadmap fulfills this requirement. It charts a course for achieving the full potential of the future Field Artillery. Our goal is clear and unwavering. We will provide Army 21 and the Army After Next with the most effective and lethal fires possible. To this end, the Field Artillery Roadmap provides leaders of today and tomorrow with an invaluable tool for incisive planning and decision making, for checking progress, and above all, for keeping the evolution of the Field Artillery on track toward our vision of the future.