Pentagon Set to Allow Calculator Use on Military Entrance Exam as Recruiting Slumps::The change would put the ASVAB on par with how test-taking has evolved in the past decade, with calculators being widely used in math classes and on college entrance exams such as the ACT and SAT.
why would you do math in your head if you had pen and paper?
Because you’re in the middle of a war?
Do logistics experts get shot at regularly?
And when they are shot at, are they expected to continue organizing supplies under fire?
Everyone has a role in an army. Not necessarily in the high stress world of Frontline infantry. But engineers design bridges for tanks to cross, while logistics counts food and bullets.
The weapons that do this stuff on the front lines are all computers today. M777 artillery automatically calculates based off of GPS and a computer. Distances on shorter weapons are calculated using laser rangefinders.
There remains a key group of soldiers who need to perform without computers due to low supply lines and extended missions behind enemy lines. But those are Commandos are called Army Rangers or Green Berets and are a very very small group in practice.
And mortar men and snipers?
I’m no “gun guy”, but I do know how to zero-out a rifle.
Laser Rangefinder figures out the distance to target. It will say… I dunno, 400 yards or something.
Plug the number (400) into your elevation turret. Bam, you’re now hitting dead center.
Hey look, no maths involved. When you’re using standard rounds from a standard rifle, you can calculate everything by yards (or meters) so no math needs to be involved. The turret itself is your calculator, twisting it to 400 yards automatically sets the MoA appropriately.
Mortar Men IIRC just reach the target location, point the muzzle in the elevation + bearings commanded, loads the mortar with the appropriate additional charges and then fires. Those calculations are done on a computer, possibly GPS-assisted these days.
Your standard operating procedures for infantrymen is to get all that math out of their head. Everything has been pre-calculated. All the infantryman has to do when they reach the target is point the gun and decide to fire. Whether its mortar, sniper, or whatever. The procedure is to make this as simple as possible so that the infantry can think about all the other things going on (ie: covering fire, working together as a team, communication, etc. etc.)
The last thing they want to be doing in the field of battle is running a few arithmetic calculations.
I’ve sat in more than a couple mortar pits in my time, and have pulled rear security for sniper teams.
There’s always technical solutions, ballistic calculators, holds for known targets on mortars, etc, but absolutely no way you’ll catch charlie or a sniper not capable of the mental math to run their weapon system.
Mortars; often they just drive around with truck mounted systems and get sent coords, pull out a map and start calculating, snipers range find and then adjust with the markings in their scopes via mental math. They don’t dial their scope to 648 meters or whatever you’re thinking. I’ll admit I’m less clear on sniper math, but they usually all have notepads with them on performance data, DOPE, of their weapons systems to make needed adjustments to their calculations.
I do want to be clear that the math isn’t crazy, and there’s often tech solutions available, but it’s definitely trained and often practiced.
Pen and paper readily available in a warzone isn’t common I believe… Just guessing, never been in an active warzone. Have tried to keep track of stuff doing multi days backpacking hiking trips. Finding a pen and paper in a hurry would suck.