The OP Ack

The OP organisation never changed since WW1

The OPO has an OP assistant, called OP ack. Remember him in the OP party? Yes he is the BDP member of the OP group. He has an important role to play to assist the OPO. He should be as qualified to call for fire and observe the fall of shots and give corrections.

But alas are our OP Ack well trained? Truth be told I have never really had to depend on my OP ack throughout my time as an OP or FOO. I never remember training him for his roles too. Worst still was when we were having training ammunition allocation. We never did have adequate life firing training for the OP ack in Asahan range. I did OP drills all by myself.

If I remember correctky the OP ack is responsible to be familiar with the zone of observation. The OPO should indicate every target to his OP ack to which the OP ack is suppose to work out the OT factor, apex angle etc etc for the OPO. He continues to watch out for the target as ordered by the OPO. He is to check the OPO’s fire orders for any possible errors, but never to counter them.

His main role to to check his OPO for gross errors and also to count down for the time of flights. He reports “stand by” 5 seconds before shell burst for every round fired. At the end of every shoot the OP ack is to enter the shoot in the OP log, and if a target is recordered by the GPO, the OP ack is to mark it into the target map. Maybe there are more duties for the OP ack, but I forgot them already.

Now that we know the importance of an OP ack. Anybody knows what he does? except to follow the OPO around? Is he redundant in the Malaysian Artillery OP organisation? If I had not taken action to train him, circa 30 years ago, what about now? I hope all present COs take note to what troubles me as I start to hear about the state of our regiments training and our competency levels. Least we forget gunnery. 

Allen Lai

Once a Gunner