13F Soldiers rejoining Field Artillery Battalions

At the end of the day, the field artillery is a customer service oriented organization. that customer is the infantry. It makes more sense for FSOs to be co-located to better provide advice and expertise on fires.that said, having been an FSO for well over 4 years, the infantry does not develop FSOs as well as they develop infantry officers. I know there is a lot of tendency by commanders to protect their infantrymen by using their FOs incorrectly.An artillery BN will better train and develop 13Fs, while an IN BN will benefit form having thier fire supporters co-located. There are two very strong sides to the argument.

I think it will prove beneficial in the long run to expose the Fire Supporters to their artillery brethren a little more. I think the artillery community as a whole will be advanced with better trained FSOs able to lobby the maneuver commanders to better use the assets that we make available to them.

If nothing else, it will make it easy to standardize FIST training.  As a BN FSO, I witnessed wide variations across the Brigade when it came to training Fire Supporters. This is a good thing.