It's still redundant to say 'fire on my mark'. He could simply say 'fire' when it's time to fire.
Sure. But it's still the only sensible way of doing this thing.
In the military, you
have to be redundant, formal and repetitive. As a precaution, you
must treat all of your men as if they were so battle-fatigued that they could barely comprehend English, and so distracted that they missed most of your commands. In a matter as important as firing the ship's guns, you must prepare in advance the persons responsible, so that they know they will be getting a firing command in the next few moments and have to be ready to execute it. They must not be allowed to think that whenever they hear (or think they hear) the word "fire", they are entitled to immediately pull the trigger. It
must be a "Simon says FIRE!" type of thing, for the safety of everybody involved.
...A friend of mine was in the coastal artillery for his mandatory military service, and during training he led a fortress turret through a firing exercise. The team worked very smoothly, but there was a lot of repetition and redundancy in the procedure of commands and actions, especially in the "free fire" part of the exercise. To be able to compete with the other turrets in speed, the friend decided to streamline the process, among other things allowing the gunner to fire at the call of "Attention!" rather than wait for the whole "Attention! Cleared for free fire!" command that inevitably followed at that stage of the procedure.
...Enter a supervising Colonel who decides to visit this particular turret right when the gun is loaded and ready to fire and the target has been set. The ammunition handler spots the Colonel and barks "Attention!"...
There was a lot of ringing of the ears even after the noise of the blast had died down. (Just as well that the turret scored impossibly perfect hits that day and impressed the foreign observers that were also present.)
Timo Saloniemi