Leader's Recon - Day 1

My first day in Mosul, I was able to witness a demonstration of the Iraqi Mortar Company. This demonstration was done before the Mayor of Mosul and the Commander of the 2nd Iraqi Army Division.

I was very impressed with the professionalization of these Iraqi soldiers. You could see they have all been trained on the crew drills for firing a heavy mortar. While I could not understand the fire commands (in Arabic) I could decipher which step in the crew drills they were performing by watching the demonstration.

I will be very interested in learning the Iraqi Army's methodology for indirect fire. My guess is that things are still done manually with perhaps some computers involved for computation. I'm curious to see how the Iraqi Army accounts for the 5 requirements of accurate predictive fires (target location and size, fire unit location, weapon and ammo info, Met info, and computational procedures). As a former Artillery Officer, this demonstration certainly peaked my interest and I would like to participate in an Iraqi Army indirect live fire exercise while deployed in Iraq.