David Hambling
Forbes
July 17, 2024
The artillery war in Ukraine may be shifting, with indications that the Ukrainians are destroying Russian guns at a greatly increased rate. If these indications are accurate, it could mark a turning point in the war. It may also be a sign that traditional artillery is vulnerable to new weapons.
An Army Of Artillery
Artillery is central to the Russian way of war. Some have described Russian ground forces as mainly an artillery army which happens to have a lot of tanks. “Put simply, Russia uses artillery as its primary form of lethality in the deep and close battles,” states a 2023 report on Russian artillery by think tank RUSI.
Shortcomings in quality of equipment and personnel in tank and infantry units can be made up for by sufficient artillery firepower. Taking towns street by street requires highly trained and disciplined infantry, but instead Russia can simply use its artillery to level block after block. In the attack, it’s Russian artillery which does most of the damage and Russia’s advantage in artillery that makes Ukrainian counteroffensives expensive. According to one much-quoted figure, Russian artillery is responsible for about 80% of the casualties they inflict in this conflict.
Ukraine has been heavily outgunned, both in artillery pieces and volume of ammunition. Figures vary with time and place, but in April General Christopher Cavoli, commander of European Command, told the House Armed Services Committee that Russia was firing five artillery shells for every one fired by Ukrainian forces. An urgent drive to get more artillery ammunition to Ukraine will only partly redress the balance.
Things could change dramatically though if Ukraine could easily locate and destroy Russian artillery. Deprived of its primary weapon, Russia would be de-fanged. And that may have started.
Calculus Of Destruction
Russia has staggering amounts of artillery, both in the field and in reserve. A February 2024 report from RUSI estimated that Russia had just under 5,000 artillery pieces in the field, of which about 1,000 are self-propelled guns on tracked vehicles, the rest being old-fashioned towed artillery.
Losses have been replaced by reserve stocks drawn from vast open-air storage yards, mainly Soviet-era equipment, which can be seen and counted on high-resolution satellite images. At the start of the conflict, Russia had some 19,000 artillery pieces in storage, but many of these were unusable after decades of rusting in the open air. Several OSINT analysts have worked at assessing exactly how much Russian equipment remains in these storage sites, how much has been removed and how much of the remainder is still usable.
HighMarsed has published some of the most detailed analysis, going through site-by-site and trying to identify every single piece of equipment at every storage location. This work, along with the results published by CovertCabal and others, is widely quoted in defense circles as the best evidence of Russia’s remaining capacity. However, HighMarsed is careful to hedge everything around with caveats and cautions. For example, towed guns are especially tricky. “The identifications I made are very uncertain and we also don’t really know which types should actually be considered ‘useless,’” HighMarsed told Forbes. He gives the example of the 1950’s era M-46 130mm gun, long out of service, but now unexpectedly being brought back from the artillery graveyard. “They have also recently started to remove the very old 130mm M-46 from storage, probably because of ammunition provided by Iran or North Korea,” says HighMarsed. “Although this could also be due to insufficient numbers of long-range guns.”
The situation with self-propelled guns is also complex. “They have so far not treated the reactivation as a priority for some systems such as 2S1 and 2S3,” says HighMarsed. “And it is not clear if they have actually built the capacity to reactivate hundreds of them per year. Other systems have been removed in larger numbers and remaining storage has been cannibalized. Personally I think it’s likely that maybe 40% of the prewar stocks still remain in storage.” The big question is the ‘burn rate,’ the rate at which Russian artillery is being destroyed.
Unlike tanks and infantry vehicles which are destroyed close to the front line, artillery losses are more seldom seen. Oryx’s detailed study of visually confirmed Russian losses only counts 382 towed artillery and 783 self-propelled guns.
According to HighMarsed’s figures, Russia has removed perhaps 1,500 self-propelled guns from storage, to add to the 2,500 before the war (from the IISS Military Balance). But rather than having 4,000 in the field they only have 1,000. Some of the missing 3,000 will still be in the restoration pipeline being refurbished, but most are likely losses which cannot be visually confirmed. “Personally I just don’t like relying on any claims that can’t really be proven,” says HighMarsed. But if we are willing to take a step into more speculative territory an interesting pattern emerges.
Lies And Statistics
The daily count of Russian equipment destroyed issued by Ukraine’s ministry of defence is much higher than Oryx’s confirmed kills. At over 8,000 tanks and 15,000 artillery pieces, this looks seriously inflated or at least ‘optimistic.’
What is significant though is how the artillery figure has been going up in recent months, while the claims for Russian tank kills has remained more or less steady. In May 2023 the figure for artillery destroyed was 553. This rose unsteadily to a (then) record of 1160 in May 2024, twice as high as a year before.
The total for June was 1460.
The total to July 15th was 769, suggesting that the figure for the month will be even higher.
We see the same trend, though much smaller numbers, in confirmed kills. Statistics from the kill videos gathered by Andrew Perpetua show 75 hits on Russian artillery in the first two weeks of July, the highest ever seen.
The figures released by Ukraine’s Army of Drones show a similar spike in artillery casualties. Again, the absolute numbers may be off and the data might be regarded as propaganda, but when claims of artillery kills triple while the number of tank kills stays more or less the same, it suggests something has changed.
New Weapons, New Danger
Destroying enemy artillery is a three-stage process. First it has to be located, which might be from data provided by satellites or other foreign intelligence-gathering sources, by counter-battery radar supplied by the U.S. which tracks artillery shells back to their source, or by the ubiquitous drones. Secondly, that information is routed to the command-and-control system so that commanders can assign a weapon to hit the artillery in the brief window before it moves. And thirdly, there has to be a weapon capable of hitting a target far behind the front lines.
Ukraine has had the first two of these for some time, but has lacked long-range strike capability. That may now have been rectified. Certainly there is HIMARS, but this is still only present in small numbers.
FPV drones typically have a maximum range of 12 miles/ 20km. Previously most Russian artillery could stay out of range, but in recent months they have been using more smaller caliber guns – 122mm rather than 152mm – which have shorter range making them highly vulnerable to FPV strikes. This could account for more artillery kills, and there are a lot of videos of hits on these systems. There are also plenty of videos of FPVs hitting 152mm weapons, suggesting they may have been carelessly positioned or drone operators launching from closer than expected.
However, since April we have also seen numbers of ‘Ukrolancet’ drones – slightly larger FPVs, with wings rather than rotors and a much greater range than their rotary-winged cousins, equivalent to the Russian Lancet. We do not know exactly how far, but operators talk about ranges being doubled or tripled; this would be 24-36+ miles, bringing the vast bulk of Russian artillery within range. The Lancet has a maximum range somewhere between 25 and 50 miles. “Russia deploys Lancets to attack priority targets and they have become increasingly prominent in the key counter-battery fight, striking enemy artillery,” noted the UK Ministry of Defence last year.
Russian Lancets have only been deployed in small numbers so their impact has been limited. If Ukraine has been able to produce equivalent weapons by the thousands, they may be able to destroy Russian artillery as soon as it is detected and located.
The lack of videos of such kills is entirely understandable for security reasons; Ukraine has no reason to let Russia know what is hitting it. There is one such video however, from drone fundraiser Serhii Sternenko, apparently showing a strike by a DARTS fixed-wing FPV on a Russian 2S7 long-range self-propelled gun. Sternenko’s efforts have financed a large number of these drones.
Burning Down To the End?
As HighMarsed notes, Russia’s front-line artillery strength does not seem to have been affected, losses are being replaced and ammunition supply appears to be the limiting factor. There is still more artillery in storage, though stocks have been severely depleted. So how long will it last? At the previous loss rate, Russian artillery stock could be expected to last through 2025. If the loss rate keeps going up, then Russia will start to have trouble maintaining its frontline strength much sooner, perhaps as early as the end of the year.
This would have a huge effect on Russia’s ability to fight. Drones and glide bombs might make up some of the lack, but with limited artillery, Russia would be severely limited in both offensive and defensive operations.
One question is just how rapid the artillery burn rate is now, and whether it will continue to increase. Another is whether Ukraine can hold on for long enough for a war of attrition against artillery to work.
David Hambling is a freelance science and technology journalist and author based in South London. His non-fiction books include Weapons Grade, Swarm Troopers: How small drones will conquer the world and We: Robot. His Lovecraftian science fiction includes the popular Harry Stubbs series set in 1920s South London, and his time-travel adventure City of Sorcerers will be out in 2022.