The second element is accurate battery location. This element essentially comprises two points: one, knowing where the guns are; and two, knowing which way they are pointing. Barring jamming, knowing where the guns are is a foregone conclusion with GPS availability. Knowing where the guns are pointed though is a significant challenge on the heaving deck of a ship at sea. Conventional gunnery requires laying the guns on a known azimuth, usually designated by an aiming circle or stakes, and offsetting to the desired azimuth. At sea, assuming a ship could accurately steer to within +/- one degree, guns would have an inherent error of about +/- 18 meters in deflection per 1000 meters of range. This means that at 5 km, the minimum advertised range for the navalized MRLs, barrages would be +/- 80 meters off without any additional factors such as target location error. However, this is an acceptable tolerance for a rocket barrage that saturates a square kilometer. Modern advances offer the use of ring laser gyros to accurately determine azimuth. Some nations currently field these devices with their towed weapons, and these could be mounted on a ship. For example Kentron, a South African electronics firm, manufactures a laser gyro inertia system that automatically lays the 155mm G5 howitzer on target [11]. These laying systems have been sold to India and Malaysia. It's quite conceivable this technology could make its way onto armed cargo ships and further improve accurate battery location.

The third element of accurate indirect fire is having accurate weapon and ammunition information. This includes knowledge of trajectories expected with each shell and charge type, and individual ballistic variations between weapons. These individual variations are very small and induced by such factors as barrel wear and manufacturing irregularities. Ammunition information is obtained through extensive ballistic testing, and individual weapon information is obtained through the use of chronographs, bore measurements, and records. Modern armies know how to obtain and accurately factor this data into firing solutions, the PLA should be no exception.

The fourth element is accurate metrological information. This includes the winds aloft, temperature, and barometric pressure. This information is obtained through the use of weather balloons and simple instruments. The two battalions of PLZ-45 howitzers sold by NORINCO to Kuwait included special metrological vehicles, it would be reasonable to believe this technology would be available on armed cargo ships.

The fifth and final element of accurate indirect fire is accurate computational procedures. If these computations were to be done manually, one could expect errors and a very slow firing process. However, the first vacuum-tube computers built were designed to calculate artillery ballistics, and since then things have only progressed [12]. At recent arms expositions, many different ballistic computers have been displayed by NORINCO, and these would surely be incorporated into armed cargo ships.

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