WARDOGS Artillery Guide: SPH-2 Tank and FOB Mortars

Two Ways to Shoot Something You Cannot See

The SPH-2 artillery tank — a purchased vehicle with a long-range 155 mm gun, parked far behind the line.
FOB mortars — built emplacements that draw ammo from the FOB’s stock, best for hitting enemy FOBs and choking advances.

Both need someone marking targets. A spotting scope on a teammate near the zone turns either system from area denial into aimed fire — and pays that teammate cash and Recon XP for the assist.

SPH-2: Getting One

Early Access requirements, per BULKHEAD’s Season 1 changelog (September 9, 2026), with the beta figures StratzFPS reported in the War College series for comparison:

Step	Detail
Requirement	Career (War Dog) level 90 — was level 55 in the beta; gated by account level, not the Driver track
Unlock cost	$500,000 one-off at the vehicle vendor — was $400,000 in the beta
Cost per purchase after that	~$8,000
Spawn location	Under an awning to the left or right of your team spawn, announced by a horn
Armament	L52 cannon firing 155 mm HE shells, plus a top-mounted M249
Crew	Driver, gunner and top gunner — but it is workable solo

Resupply note: 155 mm artillery shells are not the same as main battle tank shells. If you ask a pilot for a resupply, say which.

Why the jump from 55 to 90: the Season 1 patch notes say the beta XP curve was tuned for weekend-long tests; for launch BULKHEAD slowed levels 10 to 20 and flattened the curve from 35 up, so a median player at 20 to 25 hours lands around level 20, and “those wanting the big ticket items, the top 5%, will need to grind”. Artillery was moved to Career 90 explicitly as one of those items. The heavy tank, by contrast, moved to the Driver track at level 35 — see vehicles.

Parking and Setup

Park 1,600-2,000 m from your spawn. Maximum effective range is around 2,700 m, so this keeps the whole Control Zone in reach while staying far enough out that infantry has to make a real trip to kill you.
Stop the engine. Two reasons: you can hear approaching helicopters and infantry, and you save the fuel you need to drive home for more shells.
Stabilise the turret. The status reads “unstabilised” until you do; stabilising keeps the crosshair on the same spot between shots. Skipping this is the most common reason shots wander.
Stock up before you leave. Buy as many shells as you can hold at the vendor, plus 5.56 for the top gun if someone is riding with you.

Ranging a Shot

The map does most of the work:

The scale bar on the right tells you what one grid square is worth at your current zoom — one kilometre at the default zoom.
Hovering the cursor over a point shows its X value; subtract your own X from the target’s for lateral distance, and do the same on the Y axis for range.
Expect to miss the first shot. Correcting from a visible impact is faster than trying to compute a perfect first round.

A community tool, the WARDOGS artillery calculator, does the trigonometry for you on a second screen or phone. It is a fan project rather than an official feature, and like every beta-era resource its map data will need updating after Early Access.

FOB Mortars

Mortars are built at a FOB once you have the hammer tier for them — the same tier that unlocks anti-air and kamikaze drones. Two things to plan for:

They eat FOB ammo. Supply runs are what keeps a mortar firing.
They are the counter to enemy FOBs. Mortar fire on an enemy FOB stops their drill, their mortars and their spawn support at once, and destroying enemy emplacements pays Support XP and cash.

Maps

Beta artillery footage covered two maps by name: Bukurani and the newer Ossetti. Ranging habits are map-specific — the parking spots that cover a zone on one will not translate to the other.

Sources: StratzFPS “WARDOGS War College” Ep. 4 (Aug 2026) for SPH-2 figures; TacticalNed and DemoMan0351 for FOB mortar mechanics. All figures are from the August 21-23 Closed Beta build.

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