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aviadefen · 8 months ago

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Global 155mm Artillery Shell Market

Aviationanddefense

The Global 155mm Artillery Shell Market: Trends, Drivers, and Future Outlook

The global 155mm artillery shell market has been experiencing significant growth, driven by the increasing demand for advanced artillery systems and the modernization of military forces worldwide. As a critical component of modern warfare, these artillery shells are essential for long-range firepower, battlefield support, and precision strikes. This blog explores the current state of the market, key trends, driving factors, challenges, and what the future may hold.

1.Introduction to the 155mm Artillery Shell

The 155mm artillery shell is one of the most widely used calibers in modern artillery systems, favored by many military forces due to its effective range, firepower, and versatility. It is typically fired from howitzers and can be equipped with various types of warheads, including high-explosive, smoke, illumination, and even precision-guided munitions.

2.Market Size and Growth

The global market for 155mm artillery shells has been growing steadily, spurred by military modernization programs, geopolitical tensions, and increased defense spending by various nations. According to industry estimates, the market size was valued at several billion dollars in recent years, and this trend is expected to continue as defense budgets rise across regions like North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

3. Key Market Drivers

Several key factors are driving the growth of the 155mm artillery shell market:

Military Modernization: As global military forces strive to maintain technological superiority, many are replacing outdated artillery systems with advanced 155mm howitzers and shells that offer better range, precision, and lethality.

Geopolitical Instability: Conflicts and territorial disputes in regions such as Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific are pushing countries to bolster their defense capabilities, driving demand for 155mm artillery systems.

Precision-Guided Munitions: The rise of precision-guided artillery shells, such as the Excalibur, is transforming the role of artillery in modern warfare. These munitions reduce collateral damage and increase mission success rates by hitting targets with greater accuracy.

Increased Defense Spending: Countries like the U.S., China, India, and Russia have significantly increased their defense budgets in recent years, allocating more resources to artillery systems.

4. Challenges Facing the Market

While the 155mm artillery shell market is poised for growth, it is not without challenges:

High Costs: Advanced artillery shells, especially precision-guided munitions, can be expensive to develop and produce, limiting their widespread adoption by smaller defense budgets.

Environmental Concerns: The environmental impact of artillery testing and use, including unexploded ordnance and contamination, is becoming a growing concern for militaries and governments.

Supply Chain Disruptions: Global supply chain issues, especially in the wake of events like the COVID-19 pandemic, have affected the production and distribution of artillery shells and related components.

5. Regional Insights

North America: The U.S. is a dominant player in the global 155mm artillery shell market, with extensive R&D programs and high defense spending. The U.S. Army’s focus on upgrading its artillery systems and the development of the ERCA program underscores the region’s leadership in this sector.

Europe: European nations, particularly NATO members, have been enhancing their artillery capabilities in response to heightened security threats. Germany, the UK, and France are investing in modern artillery systems and collaborating on joint development programs.

Asia-Pacific: The region is seeing substantial growth in the 155mm artillery shell market, driven by countries like China and India, which are both modernizing their artillery forces. Territorial tensions in the South China Sea and the India-Pakistan border have further accelerated demand for advanced artillery systems.

6. Technological Advancements

Technology is a major force shaping the future of the 155mm artillery shell market. Key advancements include:

Extended Range: The development of shells with greater range, such as the XM1113 rocket-assisted projectile, is a major trend. These shells can engage targets at distances beyond 70 kilometers, increasing battlefield effectiveness.

Precision-Guided Munitions: The growing use of GPS and laser-guided artillery shells like the M982 Excalibur is reducing the need for large volumes of ammunition and allowing for more surgical strikes.

Automated Artillery Systems: The integration of AI and advanced targeting systems into artillery platforms is enabling faster response times and more accurate firing solutions.

7. Future Outlook

The future of the 155mm artillery shell market looks promising, with increasing demand from both traditional military powers and emerging nations. Key trends that will likely shape the market include:

Smart Munitions: Continued investment in smart artillery shells will drive the next phase of market growth, with a focus on improving accuracy, reducing collateral damage, and achieving mission success in complex environments.

Sustainability Initiatives: As environmental concerns become more prominent, the industry may see a shift toward developing more eco-friendly artillery systems and solutions for handling unexploded ordnance.

Increased Collaboration: Joint ventures and collaborations between defense companies and nations will likely accelerate technological advancements and expand the market further.

Conclusion

The global 155mm artillery shell market is set for steady growth, driven by technological advancements, increased defense spending, and the need for modernized military capabilities. While challenges such as high costs and environmental concerns persist, innovations in precision-guided munitions and extended-range artillery will continue to shape the future of warfare. Countries around the world are placing a greater emphasis on artillery systems, ensuring that the 155mm artillery shell market remains a critical component of global defense strategies.

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cyberbenb · 1 year ago

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The Invisible War: Ukraine, Russia locked in dizzying electronic warfare arms race shaping the battlefield

When Ukraine received Excalibur artillery shells in March 2022 from the U.S. shortly after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, it was immediately the military’s weapon of choice. Thanks to thei Source : kyivindependent.com/the-invis…

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militaryleak · 1 year ago

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Spanish Army to Purchase M982 Excalibur-S 155mm Precision-guided Shell

The Spanish Army is set to bolster its artillery capabilities with the acquisition of the Excalibur-S 155mm precision-guided artillery shell, an upgraded variant of the M982 Excalibur munition. This advanced projectile features semi-active laser terminal guidance, providing the capability to engage both moving land and maritime targets with an impressive precision radius of under two meters. The decision to acquire the Excalibur-S comes on the heels of successful live-fire tests of the M982 Excalibur 155mm precision-guided artillery shells in October 2023, as reported by Army Recognition. These tests, which involved the SIAC 155/52 towed howitzer and the M109 A5 155mm self-propelled howitzer, marked the culmination of an extensive training program.

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kragnir · 2 years ago

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"The country 'likely only has a very limited number left in Ukraine,"'

This is a very positive trend for Ukraine. Without counter battery systems, the mafia artillery will be much less effective and Ukraine has more freedom of when, where, and for how long it uses its own artillery, MLRSs and mortars.

"The hardware has a range of around 25 miles, and can target with an accuracy of about 6 feet."

That's a bullseye for a 155 mm shell.

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theculturedmarxist · 2 years ago

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>Ah yes, because the American military industrial complex has totally run out of weapons

Yeah, actually.

‘We haven’t got this figured out just yet’: Pentagon, industry struggle to arm Ukraine

“High-end conflict consumes a lot of munitions and a lot of weaponry,” Mike McCord, the Pentagon’s top budget official, said in an interview. “We are also looking at the supply chain limitations. We haven’t got this figured out just yet.” She cited recent deals for tens of thousands of 155mm artillery rounds that the Ukrainians are using up almost as soon as they arrive. By the spring, “we will be able to do 20,000 rounds a month,” she said. But it will take time to manufacture enough of them, she said, adding that the U.S. will get that rate up to 40,000 rounds a month in the spring of 2025.

The Return of Industrial Warfare

Presently, the US is decreasing its artillery ammunition stockpiles. In 2020, artillery ammunition purchases decreased by 36% to $425 million. In 2022, the plan is to reduce expenditure on 155mm artillery rounds to $174 million. This is equivalent to 75,357 M795 basic ‘dumb’ rounds for regular artillery, 1,400 XM1113 rounds for the M777, and 1,046 XM1113 rounds for Extended Round Artillery Cannons. Finally, there are $75 million dedicated for Excalibur precision-guided munitions that costs $176K per round, thus totaling 426 rounds. In short, US annual artillery production would at best only last for 10 days to two weeks of combat in Ukraine. If the initial estimate of Russian shells fired is over by 50%, it would only extend the artillery supplied for three weeks.

The US is not the only country facing this challenge. In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days.

Unfortunately, this is not only the case with artillery. Anti-tank Javelins and air-defence Stingers are in the same boat. The US shipped 7,000 Javelin missiles to Ukraine – roughly one-third of its stockpile – with more shipments to come. Lockheed Martin produces about 2,100 missiles a year, though this number might ramp up to 4,000 in a few years. Ukraine claims to use 500 Javelin missiles every day.

The expenditure of cruise missiles and theatre ballistic missiles is just as massive. The Russians have fired between 1,100 and 2,100 missiles. The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually, meaning that in three months of combat, Russia has burned through four times the US annual missile production. The Russian rate of production can only be estimated. Russia started missile production in 2015 in limited initial runs, and even in 2016 the production runs were estimated at 47 missiles. This means that it had only five to six years of full-scale production.

US and NATO grapple with critical ammo shortage for Ukraine

The US and Europe are struggling to provide Ukraine with the large amount of ammunition it will need for a prolonged counteroffensive against Russia, and Western officials are racing to ramp up production to avoid shortages on the battlefield that could hinder Ukraine’s progress.

The dwindling supply of artillery ammunition has served as a wake-up call to NATO, US and Western officials told CNN, since the alliance did not adequately prepare for the possibility of a protracted land war in Europe following decades of relative peace.

UK Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace told CNN last week that while NATO was poised early on for a “night one, day one” offensive, “no one had really asked themselves the question, well, what if ‘day one, night one’ becomes ‘week two, week three, week four?’ How much of our exquisite capabilities have we actually got in stock? And I think that’s been the broader question.”

US officials emphasized to CNN that there is a set level of munitions in US stockpiles around the world, essentially an emergency reserve, that the military is not willing to part ways with. The levels of those stockpiles are classified.

But officials say the US has been nearing that red line as it has continued to supply Ukraine with 155mm ammunition, the NATO standard used for artillery rounds. The US began ramping up ammunition production last year when it became clear that the war would drag on far longer than anticipated. But the ammunition will still take “years” to mass produce to acceptable levels, National Security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN Sunday.

[...]

A year and a half into the war, Ukraine’s rate of artillery fire has hardly abated, even as its own stockpiles have been on a slow, steady decline. Ukrainian troops now typically fire between 2,000 and 3,000 artillery shells per day at Russian forces, a US defense official told CNN. The rate was higher before the counteroffensive began, as Ukraine conducted shaping operations to prepare to advance on Russian positions.

[...]

Using the example of a Lockheed Martin production line for Javelin anti-armor missiles that could produce 2,100 missiles a year while Ukraine was using 500 of the missiles a day, Fischer said, “That’s a red flag right there.”

Focus: Shrinking U.S. Stinger missile supply faces re-stocking challenges

Since February, the U.S. has shipped 1,400 Stingers to Ukraine, according to an administration official. But sourcing more will be difficult.

The Stinger production line was closed in December 2020, said Pentagon spokesperson Jessica Maxwell. Since then, Raytheon Technologies (RTX.N) won a contract in July 2021 to manufacture more Stingers, but mainly for international governments, according to the U.S. Army. The sole Stinger facility, in Arizona, only produces at a low rate.

The Pentagon has not ordered new Stingers for about 18 years, but has ordered parts or made other efforts to increase its supply. For example, the Army is in the middle of a "service life extension plan" for some of its Stingers that were to become obsolete in 2023 and is extending what the military calls their "useful life" until 2030.

Two sources familiar with the meeting said Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes noted that it can require six to 12 months to restart a munitions production line.

Hayes told analysts on a post-earnings conference call on Tuesday that "we have a very limited stock of material for Stinger production."

"We've been working with the Department of Defense for the last couple of weeks," Hayes said. "Some of the components are no longer commercially available, and so we're going to have to go out and redesign some of the electronics in the missile of the seeker head. That's going to take us a little bit of time."

Hayes said he could ramp up production in 2022, but larger replenishments will be in 2023 or 2024.

CNN Exclusive: Biden says sending cluster munitions to Ukraine was ‘difficult decision,’ but ‘they needed them’

“It was a very difficult decision on my part. And by the way, I discussed this with our allies, I discussed this with our friends up on the Hill,” Biden said, adding, “The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition.”

Biden told Zakaria that the cluster munitions were being sent as a “transition period” until the US is able to produce more 155mm artillery.

“This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it,” Biden said. “And so, what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to – not permanently – but to allow for this transition period, while we get more 155 weapons, these shells, for the Ukrainians.”

Ukraine is burning through ammunition faster than the US and NATO can produce it. Inside the Pentagon’s plan to close the gap

Running full-tilt, as it was on a recent January morning, the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant churns out roughly 11,000 artillery shells a month. That may seem like a lot, but the Ukrainian military often fires that many shells over just a few days.

Bush told CNN the Army intends to double the production of Javelin anti-tank missiles, make roughly 33% more Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) surface-to-surface medium-range missiles a year, and produce each month a minimum of 60 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles – which were “almost not in production at all,” according to Bush.

Stinger and Javelin missiles are some of the most critical and relied-upon munitions by Ukraine to thwart Russian ground advances and aerial assaults, who previously told the US that it needs 500 of each every day.

Indeed, according to Bush, it will take anywhere from 12 to 18 months for the US to reach its “max” production rate of 70,00 artillery shells a month.

A recent report authored by Seth Jones, the director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ International Security Program, warns that America’s assistance to Ukraine has “depleted US stocks of some types of weapon systems and munitions, such as Stinger surface-to-air missiles, 155mm howitzers and ammunition, and Javelin anti-tank missile systems.”

Jones also told CNN that CSIS war games showed in a Pacific conflict, the US runs out of “key long range munitions,” like long-range anti-ship missiles, in “less than a week of the war.”

“No defense company in their right mind is going to start producing munitions if by the end of every fiscal year, the Marine Corps, the Navy, the Air Force takes what it had allotted in budget and moves it to a different pet platform or program,” said Jones of CSIS.

usa: We’re giving Ukraine cluster munitions because we’re out of everything else.

russia: Oh, are we using cluster munitions now? Neat! (You realize they work much better on infantry charges running dick-first into enemy territory than they do on hardened defensive positions, right?)

usa: Russia’s use of cluster munitions is a war crime.

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intergalactic-fireworks · 2 years ago

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#Buy Wholesale Fireworks #buy wholesale fireworks #wholesale fireworks in pennsylvania #low-cost fireworks for sale online #low cost fireworks for sale online #wholesale fireworks #excalibur artillery shells

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captain-price-unofficially · 2 years ago

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Video from the Ukrainian 51st Separate Territorial Defense Battalion, 100th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade + Volyn Police showing them hitting a Russian T-90M with an Excalibur 155mm guided artillery shell near Kreminna.

#T-90 #tanks #russian armor #russian tanks #modern #Russo-Ukrainian War #combat footage

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fapangel · 3 years ago

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Artillery Usage Comparison (March 16th)

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[Apologies for being late; I was rather ill yesterday and couldn’t keep working.

There is much to talk about. Maneuver/force positions will come later, I will cover more general background things here, and go into detail on a few matters which the preponderance of evidence now gives me more solid ground to speculate on.]

Field artillery has been present on the battlefield since Roman times, but when the corned gunpowder revolution arrived it quickly grew in stature to become the “king of the battlefield.” Infantry was still the queen, but as the saying goes, “everyone knows what the king does to the queen.” The lethality of artillery is hard to overemphasize. In modern combat between unsupported light infantry forces, by the time ammo is exhausted and one side has lost or won, 20% casualties are considered very high. This is the point of flanking; when you gain a positional advantage on your opponent that negates their cover and/or lets you apply your firepower to them more effectively than they can do to you, they either have to withdraw or accept destruction (and obviously, they usually withdraw.) This is how firefights are won and ground taken.

Artillery does not afford soldiers the luxury of a chance to withdraw – it arrives quickly, mows down those who are exposed without cover, and keeps the more fortunate pinned down in their foxholes as long as it’s falling. Artillery can kill more men in ten minutes than a raging close-quarters firefight will kill in a day. Thus it’s been a cornerstone of military affairs for a hundred and fifty years, and especially so for Soviet-legacy armies (e.g. Russia and Ukraine.) Western doctrine uses fire to enable maneuver; i.e. artillery pins down and constrains the enemy, allowing maneuver forces (viz. tanks) to close with them and apply their direct firepower to destroy them. (The point of maneuver is to apply firepower.) Russian doctrine always emphasized using maneuver to enable fire; with mobile units locating, engaging and stopping the enemy so heavy artillery can obliterate them. In practice these doctrines are flexible and any competent field commander can switch from one to the other as needed, but this does guide the general procurement strategy of these forces. The nature of the Russian “Battalion Tactical Group,” which adapts for Russia’s severe manpower shortage by pairing relatively scant mechanized infantry with the tank and artillery resources of an entire regiment, increases the artillery focus even more. Thus the performance of Russian artillery fires is a crucial factor in understanding their performance in the ongoing war.

Pre-war, the largest single materiel factor weighing in Russia’s favor was artillery. Significant superiority in tanks was a close second, but it was generally understood even by the layman years ago why the Javelin was such a significant boon to Ukraine; upgraded Soviet-era tanks wading into the face of the most modern anti-tank guided munitions was always going to be ugly. (Even the United States has only equipped a fraction of its tank force with active-protection systems for shooting down guided missiles; much like the small drone threat everyone understands this is the future, but adapting vast equipment stockpiles for it is a very costly and time-consuming task.) Artillery, however, worked as well as ever, and its one of the few weapons systems where “quantity has a quality all its own” still rings true. Even the USA, who has insane munitions like the “Excalibur” (basically a GPS-guided glide-bomb fired out of a howitzer) still relies on simple unguided HE shells as the mainstay, for they’re cheap, plentiful and effective. Reliable numbers of specific systems are hard to come by, but Russia started the war with at least seven thousand artillery units, compared to Ukraine’s total of three thousand.

Far worse, Ukraine’s artillery is biased more towards towed guns than self-propelled ones; a severe disadvantage in modern maneuver combat. Because of artillery’s power, the first target for any artillery battery is typically their enemy counterpart; “counter-battery fire.” Self-propelled gun systems mount the cannon on a tracked (or occasionally wheeled) chassis and protect the gun, its ammunition and its crew under armor that shrugs off shrapnel from hostile units. This lets them “shoot and scoot” to avoid retaliation, as well as keep up with tanks and mechanized infantry. Standard artillery cannons, that are towed behind vehicles, then unlimbered and set up in a stationary firing position, are still important for any military – much cheaper and easier to transport/deploy, and thus are essential for volume. But self-propelled guns are essential for the forces that make areas safe enough for such stationary firebases to get set up; the units that dodge hostile fire while firing back and eliminating the stationary guns of the enemy.

Then there’s the MLRS – Multiple Launch Rocket System – artillery. Based on the Katyusha of WWII fame, rocket artillery excels at shooting long-distance and achieving area coverage. Rockets are inaccurate and spread out a lot, but this is also a feature; it lets them plaster wide areas. Rockets also excel at salvo weight; they can put more steel into the air in one minute than an entire battery of self-propelled guns can deliver in thirty. This allows them to plaster entire wide-open fields with munitions; they can engage and destroy entire armored formations that are on the move. They’re awful at picking off single targets requiring precision (“point targets,”) and take forever to reload, but that’s what the Self-Propelled-Guns (SPGs) are for.

And then there’s the ammunition. First and foremost, the amount. Russia prepared for this war years ago; using small drones to drop thermite grenades on major Ukrainian ammunition dumps. These attacks destroyed many thousands of stockpiled Soviet-era ammunition, which Ukraine couldn’t replace. Incredibly, Russia even sent agents into NATO countries like Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria to destroy ammunition dumps there – literal acts of war on NATO soil – to eliminate stockpiles of Warsaw pact ammunition in Ukraine-friendly countries. That’s in addition to the shells expended during eight years of war in Donbas – they fired off more shells worth of old Soviet stocks than NATO has stockpiled total. They eventually started a new ammunition factory, but it can only produce 14,000 rounds a year. Even at triple capacity, it’d take years of production to build ammo stocks back up. That’s not unusual; that’s how every army on earth stockpiles ammo – not just artillery and missiles, but even rifle bullets. War consumes ammunition at a terrifying rate.

Then there’s the sophistication. Modern technology’s produced guided MLRS rockets, which turn the inaccurate area weapon into a very long-range precision weapon (the American G31 rocket is called “the 70km sniper rifle.”) In fact it turns them into a miniature SRBM launcher (see also the American ATACMS, an actual Short Range Ballistic Missile that can be fired out of an MLRS launcher.) Russia supposedly had plenty of these, while Ukraine had... about a hundred, at best.

But the most lethal artillery munition is much older and simpler – DPICM, “Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions.” When the fabled “VT” radio proximity fuze entered WWII, it didn’t just revolutionize anti-aircraft fire, but also ground artillery – it could reliably set artillery shells off in the air, spreading shrapnel much further and more uniformly and killing soldiers that should’ve been safe inside their foxholes. Patton called it the “funny fuze that won the Battle of the Bulge.” Improved Conventional Munitions further refined the concept; filling artillery shells with many small bomblets; raining a pattern of little grenades over a wide area. These reached their ultimate incarnation in the “Dual Purpose” kind: tiny shaped charges that could easily punch through the thin roof armor of tanks, and also had a fragmentation jacket and an incendiary ring around the explosive charge. In artillery shells these are devastating; they kill everything and set the remains on fire. In MLRS rockets, which are bigger and can carry more, they are known as “steel rain” and are responsible for the M270 MLRS’s reputation as the “grid square removal service” (as in the one square kilometer grid squares on standard military maps.) This is how MLRS can wipe out an entire company of spread-out tanks in wide-open fields without trouble.

These are one of the most powerful weapons ever fielded on Earth – and I’ve yet to see a single instance of Ukraine firing them, whilst Russia is raining them down every day.

By every single conceivable metric, the Russians should be dominating Ukrainian forces under a crushing hurricane of steel.

But instead, they seem to be getting their asses kicked square.

Curious Russian munition usage

As I noted on D+6, an awful lot of images of Russian MLRS “cargo” rocket containers have been seen throughout the war in bombarded cities; embedded in streets, buildings, and even embedded in unlucky civilian vehicles. These casings hold hundreds of small bomblets; usually DPICM, sometimes dedicated incendiaries, or even air-delivered anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. Russian airdropped “butterfly mines” were quickly photographed a week ago, but I’ve seen nothing about mines in Kiev or Kharkiv. There’s the occasional sighting of incendiary weapons, but amid the many scenes of devastation from Kiev and Kharkiv as they suffer nonstop bombardment I haven’t seen the kind of widespread fires incendiaries would inflict (and those are most effective against residential suburbs filled with wooden houses, anyways; Eastern Bloc construction emphasizes massive concrete apartment blocks that aren’t very susceptible to incendiaries.)

Since MLRS cargo rockets leave evidence that HE frag artillery doesn’t, I’d put this down to a selection bias – but for the fact that at least 30% of the videos uploaded of this war are just shaky smartphone cam of artillery bombardments lighting up city skylines at night, and in the vast majority I’ve seen you can see the telltale “popcorn” rippling explosions of submunitions going off. That video is especially interesting as you can see the size of the buildings the munitions are landing around – they’re sizeable. Now sub-munitions can (and clearly have) level suburbs with small residential homes; the explosives punch holes in roofs and make the buildings uninhabitable and secondary incendiary effects then gut the structures. (The rubble still provides cover to infantry, just not as good as the building.) This video from today in Kharkiv is emblematic of the damage I’m seeing in most of these heavily bombarded cities; while the buildings have been rendered uninhabitable for civilians, they’re still substantially intact. There’s few if any shell craters to be seen; and almost never an actually leveled building. This is what you’d expect from heavy use of MLRS submunition warheads over unitary rockets or HE-frag shells.

Bluntly, this choice of munitions is stupid from every conceivable angle. Even if committing murder of civilians for the sake of murder (to hold the populace hostage as a bargaining chip in negotiations) submuntions only hit people walking around on the street; and most civilians in these bombarded cities will be in bomb shelters whenever possible (see the many taking refuge in the subway tunnels of Kiev as we speak.) This is also true for military troops; the first shells/rockets of artillery are the most effective as they catch men by surprise, standing up out in the open and thus most exposed to shrapnel.

There is one good use for sub-munitions in a city: “blocking fire.” By dropping steel rain on the streets you force enemy infantry to take cover, thus stopping them from moving through streets to react to your own movement. But I’m seeing MLRS cargo shells on social media still, and even accounting for reporting lag (Tiktok upload to OSINT twitter picking it up and circulating it) Kharkiv and Kiev proper haven’t been under direct ground assault for many days now. Kharkiv especially; the fighting is clearly moving away from the city and I’ve seen absolutely zero mention of Russian troops attempting advances into the city proper for many days. Thus there’s no maneuvering forces in the city to be blocked. As harassing fire it’s certainly lethal; preventing military defenders and civilians alike from conducting “business as usual” without being hampered by keeping close to shelter at all times, but single HE-frag shells are highly effective for that as well and much more efficient than MLRS rocket ammo, which is very bulky and harder to deliver to the front. Most importantly, MLRS sub-munition rockets are the best weapon for fighting maneuver combat; and their vast spread also makes them more effective when attacking targets who’s position isn’t precisely known (as we’ve seen, Russia is obviously struggling to conduct longer-range reconnaissance.) Blind-firing with artillery does work if done smartly. Japanese resistance forces during the Battle of Okinawa in WWII were producing an artillery gun from hidden caves to fire harassing rounds at American positions. The Americans performed a “map recon,” marked every place in the rough terrain that was flat and wide enough to house an artillery gun, handed out firing assignments and went about their day. The next time they took harassing fire, the gun crews started pounding their assigned targets, and sure enough, one of those flat spaces happened to have the Japanese gun and crew in it, fully exposed.

Cluster munitions aren’t even good for mass-murdering civilians in major cities. Russia’s continued use of them against those targets suggests to me that they might not have enough more suitable munitions to use. Soviet era stockpiles were build for actual maneuver war in open areas; just like America’s massive stockpiles, the bulk of them were DPICM. They may simply be using the most plentiful ammo available to them – which happens to be poorly suited to reducing the inner city strongholds they need to assault, especially Kiev.

The other possibility is that they can’t hit a flock of barns if they were standing inside the middle barn and are compensating with cluster warheads. Russian official propaganda has been bafflingly scarce. We know they’re inflicting casualties on the Ukrainians. They know that Ukraine is dominating the information war (and thus the perceptions war with NATO which is what’s greatly aiding the influx of volunteers, supplies, money and weapons from NATO) because Russian losses are posted to social media but not Ukrainian ones. And yet we’ve seen very little of their operations and strikes, and even then the footage is heavily cut. This drone video of Russian artillery strikes from yesterday is representative. Note the odd cut and how few artillery shells actually landing we’re allowed to see. Note how one shell has clearly landed on the railroad tracks of the rail yard, well short of the truck park that is clearly being targeted. An initial spotting round going wide isn’t unheard of, of course. And with a sample size of one we can’t conclude that the Russians are lousy shots. But it does invite the question of why the Russians are keen to deny us a wider sample size – if they had video of Russian artillery plastering Ukrainian forces, wouldn’t they put that out there?

Even odder, I’ve seen more drone videos of Russians employing their laser-guided 152mm shells than I’ve seen of normal quick-fuze engagements. (Note again how short and clipped this video is.) Ukrainians have multiple videos of their artillery achieving incredible precision, engaging point-targets like tanks, but Russia can only show similar results when artillery-fired PGMs are employed. And if their very infrequent use of other PGMs is any guide, they probably don’t have many of these, either.

Doctrinal Failures

This raises the question of how competent Russian artillery actually is. One thing you’d expect from any army, especially a Warsaw Pact army and explicitly from Russian BTGs is an obsessive focus on artillery fires – both in delivering and avoiding them. For a tank BTG, which nominally only has a single company of mechanized infantry, one good MLRS attack could erase the force’s entire infantry complement. A BTG can better withstand losses from counter-battery fire than unopposed attacks on their maneuver elements; dispersing the latter properly is just as important as aggressively accepting artillery duels with the former.

By that metric, the Russians don’t seem to know what the hell they’re doing. This video (again from the spotting drone) released today shows what appears to e a Russian command post being attacked by (characteristically accurate) Ukrainian artillery. Note how there’s no obvious attempt at camouflage, and the units aren’t dispersed (spread out so one artillery shell can’t damage or destroy multiple units.) Going back to this video of a Ukrainian counterbattery strike I noticed the foliage near the Russian positions is already on fire. Also, you can see Russian personnel ambling around in no great hurry. Either they had already taken fire, or their own artillery had set the foliage on fire by accident, giving away their position (MLRS backblast, perhaps.) In both cases it would be time to leave, in a goddamned hurry – again, shoot and scoot. Even towed guns can be limbered up and moved promptly if the enemy gives you a few minutes to do so. And yet the personnel present clearly show no such urgency.

Another odd thing – I’ve seen more examples of Russian towed artillery that have not dug into field positions than ones that have – in fact I’ve only seen the first example yesterday. Note the dirt berms and the ready ammo dump protected by earth-filled tires. Even rudimentary fortification such as this vastly increases the survivability of gun crews; especially in the wide-open flat terrain of southern Ukraine. The dirt berms that guarded the guns themselves were probably produced by a bulldozer; a single bulldozer can work up protection for an entire gun battery very quickly, depending on terrain. Gun batteries don’t always have time to dig in, if the need for artillery support is dire – and if they don’t have a bulldozer handy, they may never have time to dig in, as building berms high as the one you see there with just entrenching tools and your gun-crew manpower is very difficult. Again, we’re only getting the barest glimpse of Russian operations, but it’s becoming easier to see why Ukrainian commandos feel that dropping wee 60mm mortar shells on Russian gun batteries is effective – if they lack the training – or perhaps just the equipment – to dig into their firing positions, one little man-portable mortar can indeed put a whole gun battery – and it’s ammunition dump – out of action in a hurry.

Finally, there’s the impact of communications on artillery. Drones are so powerful in this conflict because the biggest challenge to artillery has always been information – finding the target, then communicating it back to your gun crews. This is why forward observation is an art form unto itself. Russian units are frequently operating the Orlan-10; a small man-portable fixed-wing drone. You can tell the Orlan is the main drone spotting for Russian artillery by how jerky the camera feed is; as a fixed-wing drone its a far less stable camera platform than small consumer quadcopter drones who’s primary use is as an airborne camera.

The other difference between these drones is, fixed-wing platforms have much longer range. The Orlan-10 is equivalent to a militarized hobbyist remote-control airplane; powered by a gasoline engine. And like the miniature airplane it is, it has great transit speed (90-150km/h) flight duration (16 hours) and range (it can be commanded up to 140km from its ground station.) Compare to consumer quadcopter drones powered by batteries. Since they’re meant for convenience and taking neat pictures from above, their range is pathetic and flight duration on batteries limited; fifteen minutes to an hour, typically.

The point I’m making is that most Russian drone-spotted artillery strikes we’ve seen are being controlled by the gun battery operating its own drone directly, whereas most Ukrainian ones are taken by small quad-copter “backpack” drones operated by a squad in proximity, who must them communicate their spotted information as a traditional fire mission to their artillery support. The recent Wall Street Journal article on the fighting in Vosnesenk (more on that later) included this very revealing detail of how Ukrainians are improvising field communications. Territorial Defense militiamen aren’t equipped with secure radios that regular forces have; but they were still able to use social media messaging apps to pass spotting data to a forward observer – observing fucking social media PM’s, before communicating the fire missions to Ukrainian artillery units with a fucking cell phone. It’s a given that a force (Russians) relying on unsecured civilan walkie talkies will also be utilizing cell phones when possible. They’re harder to intercept and can’t be jammed by any Ukrainian civilian playing loud music over their kid’s baby monitor, but using them requires leaving cell phone towers intact, and thus the same communication option open to their enemy.

In short, due to a failure of planning and procurement, the Russians are being matched in terms of communication integrity by militiamen texting each other on fucking Facebook. How do you think they’re stacking up against Ukrainian regulars with proper radios? How many Russian maneuver units can actually call for artillery support and promptly receive it? Or do they have to use “Mode B” through a Chechen fucking code talker and wait thirty minutes for the artillery unit to send its own drone?

Truly incredible.

Assembling a picture

All this evidence is circumstantial, of course, but it’s also spaced across enough time – two weeks now – that we can at least see some patterns. Additionally, we have a larger context to put it in as well. We’ve seen captured Russian guns that were in terribly maintained condition. We’ve seen evidence that some equipment stocks were recently re-activated from mothball status; and given lacking Russian maintenance of their forward-deployed vehicles (witness yet another sighting of a vehicle who’s wheel hub seals clearly dry rotted due to neglect) whether or not mothballed equipment was properly checked over and serviced before return to duty is doubtful. We’ve seen examples of flat-out ignoring sane doctrine; un-escorted supply convoys, poor spacing and movement discipline in hostile cities, poor use of combined arms, poor adherence to basic military principles such as use of camouflage, dispersion, and entrenching and if the continuing trend of entire mud-bogged tank companies is any indication, even a failure to conduct proper route recon. Even if these failures could be explained away as the myopia of the OSINT window the fact remains Russian forces are embarrassingly slow to adapt to the prevalent conditions. It took them far too long to start escorting convoys and using air patrol along the MSR and their failure to disperse, dig in and camouflage indicates a failure to adapt to the ubiquity of small squad-level recon drones on both sides – while the Russians have tactical EW the Ukrainians don’t in this regard it’s clearly not enough to establish spectrum dominance and certainly won’t help against strike UAVs like the TB-2, which their SHORAD has proven ineffective against as well. Nothing I see indicates they’re acting like people who understand that eyes are overhead at all times, and the people peering through them are not hajis with a handful of antiquated 81mm mortars to pop off with, but a modern military with heavy long-range artillery and the skill to use it well.

In sum, Russian artillery forces seem mis-provisioned for the siege warfare they’re now faced with, lacking in skill, and deficient in both basic military doctrine and their ability to adapt it to the situation. For two weeks the Learned Experts™ have insisted that this was just the OSINT window myopia at work; that the trickle of information was biased and that prudence dictated the assumption of competence. They were right – then. But now we’ve enough evidence in hand of systematic failures at every level of military organization that this assumption must be challenged. Perhaps the Ukrainians could slip into the woods and film a propaganda film by firing a 60mm mortar at nothing – but I do wonder where the devastating secondary explosions heard in that video came from. That their formations are very equipment heavy but infantry light is already well-known; but if they’re unable to perform foot patrols to keep squads of infantry from dunking on them with fucking 60mm mortars, why not with airpower? Or drones? Or mounted scouts; even unmanned ground vehicles?

In short, we’re seeing a failure not just to adhere to their known doctrine, but a failure of the doctrine itself – it doesn’t seem they ever bothered to answer these questions, to find solutions to the known problems, before starting a full-scale symmetric war with a near-peer adversary. I contend this extends to the artillery domain. The Russians are, most likely, not only incompetent and ill-prepared to use their most pivotal source of firepower, but facing a Warsaw-pact legacy military that is very, very skilled at employing their own.

They’re fucked.

Postscript

I Am Not An Artilleryman. If you are and I said something stupid, feel free to let me know. I’m no genius, just a – may Allah forgive me for uttering this word – journalist, and all I’m doing is using a broad familiarity with military matters to collate as much data as I can. Input from people who know what the fuck they’re talking about is a major source of data.

I’ve been writing all day since I woke up from my ick-haze. I’m going to try and crank out an update on the maneuver situation tonight, as well as another “general” update covering strategic matters. Stay tuned.

#ukraine #russo ukrainian crisis #russo ukrainian war

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