Looking back 200 years and forward to continue the legacy. (The Update Point).

The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, is celebrating its bicentennial. The Academy was founded in March 1802 largely due to the efforts of two distinguished Artillerymen: Henry Knox and Alexander Hamilton. West Point's purpose was to provide professional military leaders scientific and technical training in order to move the United States away from a dependence on a foreign officer cadre--particularly a reliance on foreign artillerists and engineers.

West Point and the Field Artillery have had a long, strong relationship. Even before the academy was founded, a Corps of Artillerists and Engineers was created in 1794 at West Point for our nation's young Army. The year the Military Academy was founded, this regiment was divided into the Corps of Artillery and the Corps of Engineers.

The FA Legacy. The history of the US Field Artillery began during the Revolutionary War when Colonel Richard Gridley's FA Regiment fought the British at Boston in 1775. But without a doubt, West Point's bicentennial also celebrates the importance of the technical branches to the Army, including its Corps of Artillerists.

It became apparent early on that West Point graduates would populate the Field Artillery. Of the 50 officers commissioned from West Point during Thomas Jefferson's eight years in office, 27 were commissioned in the Artillery, 14 became Engineers, eight found themselves in the Infantry and one poor soul was sent to the Dragoons.

Throughout the past 200 years, both the Field Artillery and the Military Academy have contributed immeasurably to the defense of our nation. Both have adapted through the years to the requirements dictated by changes in the world situation and advancements in science and technology. Significant changes in today's contemporary operating environment (COE) and tremendous developments in technological possibilities dictate that the Army and the Field Artillery transform for the future.

More to Come. As the Army transforms, Fort Sill is heavily engaged in developing Objective Force concepts for fires and effects. The Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) recently announced Boeing and the Science Applications International Corporation (Boeing SAIC), a consortium of corporations, as the lead systems integrator (LSI) for the future combat systems (FCS). TRADOC is in the process of establishing an organizational structure to support the detailed development of the maneuver unit of action (UA) FCS concepts, organizations and material requirements.

While the Mounted Maneuver Battle Lab at Fort Knox, Kentucky, has the TRADOC lead in this action, the Field Artillery Center is dispatching personnel to support the on-the-ground effort. We are linked closely with the process at every level, including through our Depth and Simultaneous Attack Battle Lab. Fort Sill continues as the Army's lead to develop fires and effects concepts for the maneuver UA and FCS.

The emerging concept calls for precision and speed to replace mass and momentum. Precision, as envisioned, includes both maneuver and fires, and the latter must include both land-based and joint capabilities.

While some may envision precision fires to imply a single round employed precisely against a single target, in the greater sense, precision fires means employing fires precisely where needed in the appropriate volume to achieve the desired outcomes. Thus, the Field Artillery must have systems for the precision engagement of both point and area targets.

Massing of effects still will be required on the future battlefield and, enabled by information dominance, can be achieved by massing effects rather than forces.

Given our anticipated method of conducting entry operations, the expected size of the battlespace and the desire to conduct simultaneous operations from disparate locations, the close and deep aspects of the battlefield framework will merge. There will be more targets that are more widely dispersed over wider operational areas in a wider variety of terrain types, to include urban and complex environments. The enemy will present fleeting targets and seek greater use of terrain and weather to mask his movements, making engaging him more difficult.

Fires units will provide both tactical and operational fires at extended ranges. The FA must have robust fires capabilities with greater range, higher rates-of-fire, enhanced precision and devastating lethality. These capabilities will facilitate initial entry operations, counter anti-access threats, enable fires to shape engagements for the maneuver unit of action and proactively/reactively destroy an adversary's ability to counterstrike, and provide reach-back lethality for precision maneuver with fully integrated and synchronized precision fires.

The Objective Force increasingly will depend on land-based precision fires for its operations. Fires must be employed early to develop the situation while the Objective Force is out of contact with the enemy, thus enabling maneuver forces to engage the enemy at the time and place of their choosing. Fires must be available on demand in continuous support of successive engagements of multiple maneuver units of action throughout the area of operations. Precision fires combined with precision maneuver will provide operationally decisive land power.

Both the United States Military Academy and Field Artillery have a great legacy of service to our Army and nation. As we celebrate this bicentennial, we are leveraging science and technology and taking the actions required to ensure that our legacy will continue for another 200 years.