Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder

The Army is not allowed to have its own planes to support its troops the way the Marines have (and as the Navy has for naval warfare and ground attack). Yet still the need for ground support remains.

This Army project does not speak well of the Army's confidence in the Air Force's willingness to provide close air support:

In 2017, the US Army established a collection of cross-functional teams (CFTs) aimed at rapidly pushing forward key technologies to advance the services' next generation of capabilities. One of those teams was the Long Range Precision Fires "pilot," an effort to develop the next generation of Army artillery—including "deep fires," an artillery capability that can strike at strategic targets well within an adversary's defenses.

That effort has spawned what Army Futures Command chief Gen. John Murray described to Congress last year as "the Strategic Long Range Cannon, which conceivably could have a range of up to 1,000 nautical miles" (1,150 miles, or 1,850 kilometers).

As I've said, it is a matter of trust. The Air Force doesn't want the Army to have combat aircraft but isn't terribly eager to support the Army in direct combat with Air Force aircraft.

Surely the Air Force can't deny the Army cannons.

And then brush up on Lanchester's Square Law.

UPDATE: The Russians, too, want better artillery.