Comments by "Moop" (@joeis18) on "How artillery works - Featuring the M777 Howitzer" video.

I used to be Marine LAAD. We did a lot of training with the artillery and the coolest thing I ever did was call for fire. There was this set of "binoculars," but describing it as such would be an incredible understatement. One would simply look through them and immediately receive a firing solution. Of course, this was doulbe-cross-checked with GPS and math by the gun crews, but the amount of firepower available to one person is truly incredible. I finished the call for fire and waited. Maybe it was 30 seconds or a minute (the guns were relatively close), and the entire target area exploded. I'd never seen anything like that before. FOs and JTACs must be the coolest people in the entire military.
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Even if you never go anywhere, the knowledge that you were given and added to will survive you. They will end up killing someone, eventually. If you're a good leader and you train you people, then you've done your job and it doesn't matter if you got shot at or not. The point is that you said you were willing to.
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