Tri-Service

Fire It Up: 1 LANCS And The 81mm Mortar

Deep in the Jordanian desert Somme Company’s mortars are raining down fire on an 'enemy' position.

The troops from The 1st Battalion, Duke of Lancaster's Regiment (1 LANCS) are here taking part in Shamal Storm.

It's a huge military exercise designed to test how well the UK could deploy an armoured force overseas, on the scale it did during the invasion of Iraq more than a decade ago.

For the mortars, the huge desert provides a rare chance to fire live ammunition.

With a range of nearly six kilometres (around three and a half miles) the 81 millimetre mortars were used to support troops in Afghanistan.

After firing two rounds to bed their weapons into the dusty ground, 1 LANCS begin laying fire onto the mock battlefield.

Sgt Sam Batty of 1 LANCS Mortar Platoon described the equipment and how it is used.

"The 81mm mortar is what every infantry battalion holds. It can provide up to about 80% of the battalion's fire power. So its quite a useful bit of kit."

"We work on a 2k principle where we are 2k behind the friendly troops and that will give us a range of just over 4k, so we can cover them up to there."

"Once we're starting getting out of range the other mortar line will move up, set up and once they're good to go, we'll pack up, move up, and follow the battle."

Many of Kingsmen are new to the battalion and this is a chance test their training under pressure in a battlefield scenario.

Kingsman Jordan Duce described how the mortar platoon gets its instruction.

"We get 'Fire for effect' which is basically they tell us how many rounds we've got to fire and we get them down the barrel as fast as we can. After that we probably get a rate of fire. Rates of fire can go up to 12. Which is one round every five seconds."

The next day on the battlefield a platoon attack exercise involves three sections of eight soldiers occupying an abandoned police station.

The area of desert, nearly 2,000 metres above sea level is covered in mist that the platoon pushes out into.

1 Lancs CO, Lt Col George Maund, described the week's activitities.

"We started the exercise off with a live firing phase. That's going to continue for the next three or four days and ultimately each of the rifle companies will build to a company day, and a company night attack. We'll then go into a dry firing phase of the exercise with blank rounds only. And we'll focus on some more specific skils."

More: VIDEO - Ready For Anything - 1 LANCS On Exercise Shamal Storm

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