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Battlefield tactic employed to defeat the enemy's indirect fire elements

Counter battery fire (sometimes called counter fire) is a battlefield tactic employed to defeat the enemy's indirect fire elements (multiple rocket launchers, artillery and mortars), including their target acquisition, as well as their command and control components. Counter battery arrangements and responsibilities vary between nations but involve target acquisition, planning and control, and counter fire. Counter battery fire rose to prominence in World War I. Counter battery radar detects incoming indirect fire and calculates its point of origin. That location data can be sent by a communications link to friendly forces, who can then fire on the enemy positions, hopefully before they can reposition (the "scoot" part of shoot and scoot tactics). Counter RAM systems track incoming rocket, artillery, and mortar fire and attempt to intercept and destroy the projectiles or provide early warning to the target area.

Indirect fire was introduced so that artillery could fire from behind cover to reduce its exposure to enemy artillery by making itself more difficult to find. While armies were doing this, little thought was given to the need for counter counter measures. Perhaps the only means of finding concealed guns was observation from kites or balloons. However, effective counter battery fire needs far more than a single method of observation. Counter battery (CB) fire emerged and developed extremely quickly during World War I. Since that war, CB has continued to evolve, mainly due to improvements in technology. The targets of CB fire are usually the enemy's guns, launchers and mortars, both the materiel and the men serving them. The formal NATO definition of the term counter battery is "fire delivered for the purpose of destroying or neutralising the enemy's fire support system", with the note that it may be proactive or reactive. This may be achieved by attacks on any part of the field artillery system. In some armies at some periods CB has been called counter bombardment, and occasionally counter mortar has been handled separately.

It does not always make tactical sense to attack hostile batteries the moment they are located. This is magnified by the challenges of targeting hostile batteries. There are many factors, and their significance depends on the circumstances. The first issue for targeting is that it is difficult to knock out a battery, although smart munitions against SP guns may change this. As the quoted definition states, "destroy" is one possibility; another is "neutralization": to render the battery temporarily ineffective or unusable, including by suppressing it or forcing it to move. However, "suppression" only lasts while CB fire is falling, and if a hostile battery moves then it has to be found again. Sometimes it is best just to record the location of the hostile battery and leave it for later. An additional issue for the use of counter battery fire is the finite artillery resources available for use in a given situation.

The final aspect of the CB equation is having available CB fire units and appropriate munitions. Typically these are general supporting fire units, but direct supporting fire units are also used if they are available and not fully occupied by their primary role. With conventional HE shells it may require the concentrated fire of 5–10 batteries to deal effectively with one hostile battery. Hence a value of multiple rocket launchers is their ability to deliver a heavy and concentrated attack from relatively few launchers.

Counter measures to CB fire have emerged throughout history. These include:
Digging in. In World War I, even heavy artillery was dug in with several feet of overhead protection. Even today North Korean artillery is widely thought to be resistant to CB fire because of its deeply entrenched positions. More generally precision munitions have decreased the value of digging. Encasing guns in armour. Fully armoured self propelled guns were introduced to provide protection against conventional HE (High Explosive) fire. Shoot and scoot tactics, in which a self propelled artillery vehicle or towed gun fires a single round or salvo and immediately begins moving. Shoot and scoot tactics were first used in World War II by Soviet Katyusha rocket launchers. Spreading out. Increasing the dispersion of guns in a position has been aided by computers for technical fire control. Introduction of guns with self survey and orientation has led to the concept of gun maneuver areas where the troops, platoons or sections of a battery keep moving around, although it is questionable how sustainable this is. Concealment. While firing guns cannot escape sound ranging and radar detection, concealment and deception can reduce the likelihood of discovery from other methods. Counter battery fire, being prepared to reply to enemy counter battery fire with counter battery fire of your own. Human shields. The practice of embedding artillery assets within a civilian population to discourage enemy counter battery fire, based on the assumption that a counter battery strike would damage and destroy civilian infrastructures as well as killing innocent non combatants. The legal protections afforded to non combatants mean such tactics would generally constitute a war crime. Of course there are many potential target nodes in the field artillery system, including those dedicated to finding hostile artillery. Attacking these may significantly blind the enemy's CB capability—counter countermeasures.