Artillery

During the early years of the 21st century, field artillery achieved unparalleled accuracy with the introduction of precision-guided munitions. Such munitions allowed a gun crew to hit a target with one round or to engage a target without adjusting fire as long as the target was precisely located. In Iraq and Afghanistan in the first decade of the 21st century, the US Army fired Excalibur precision munition from its 155-millimeter (mm) howitzers and the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System precision munition from its Multiple Launch Rocket System to destroy insurgent safe houses and other pinpoint targets. This precision capability revolutionized field artillery because massing fire to compensate for the lack of accuracy dominated field artillery tactics since the late 18th century with the introduction of relatively light, mobile field guns to complement siege artillery, coast artillery, garrison artillery, and pack artillery. Precision artillery munitions gave armies, especially the US Army, the capability of destroying a target with minimal collateral damage, meaning the destruction of civilian property or deaths of noncombatants who were near the target but not part of the target. This precision came centuries after gunpowder siege artillery in the form of bombards and heavy cast-bronze cannons had replaced mechanical siege engines, such as trebuchets and onagers, as a means of battering down fortification walls and after European armies started employing lighter cannons on the battlefield.