Ukraine’s Artillery Might Be Winning The War With Russia

As Russia widened its war in Ukraine in late February, many observers assumed Russian artillery would dominate the fighting.

After all, the Russian army deploys one of the biggest artillery arsenals in the world: 4,700 towed and self-propelled guns and rocket launchers.

And Russian doctrine subordinates other forces—tanks, infantry—to the big guns. Mechanized forces punch holes in enemy defenses, pinning down enemy troops so the artillery can finish them off.

But when the Russian army, 125 battalion tactical groups strong, rolled into Ukraine from three directions on the morning of Feb. 24, it met fierce opposition. None fiercer than from Ukraine’s own artillery.

“Anti-tank missiles slowed the Russians down, but what killed them was our artillery,” a senior adviser to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, told Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds from the Royal Services Institute in London.

Russia in theory has developed a sophisticated fire-control system that combines electronic eavesdroppers, radars and unmanned aerial vehicles pinpointing targets for artillery. That system worked to devastating effect during the initial phase of the war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region starting in 2014.

But in the current phase of the war, it’s Ukraine’s own fire-control system that’s proved most effective. Radars, off-the-shelf drones, special operations forces and even civilians calling in enemy positions on their cell phones have helped the Ukrainian army’s artillery relentlessly to pound Russian formations. Moscow is believed to have lost more than 1,700 vehicles in just over 60 days of fighting.

And it probably is going to get worse for the Russians. Foreign donors are in the process of sending to Ukraine no fewer than 200 artillery pieces, including some of the latest European self-propelled howitzers.

The donated guns should more than make good Ukraine’s battlefield losses, totaling around 60 artillery pieces that outside analysts can confirm. As the wider war grinds into its third bloody month, Ukraine is set to deploy more—and better—artillery than it had at the start.

If there’s a catch, it’s that Kyiv is getting fresh artillery from far and wide. The eclectic mix of guns and launchers could pose a logistical challenge.

Ukraine began the war with 1,800 artillery pieces assigned to 25 active line brigades, five separate artillery brigades and reserve and territorial formations. Almost all the guns and launchers were ex-Soviet models, including 300 each 122-millimeter 2S1 and 152-millimeter 2S3 self-propelled howitzers, a dozen or more 203-millimeter 2S7 self-propelled howitzers plus 500 towed guns, 400 wheeled rocket launchers and 300 heavy mortars.

Early in the war, Ukraine concentrated its guns and launchers around Kyiv. They were in position as Russian battalions rolling south from Russia and Belarus tried to capture the capital city.

“As the Russians moved through towns, local residents began to report on their movements, while Ukrainian special forces and UAVs marked targets for artillery,” Watling and Reynolds wrote.

“Although the Russians had heavier artillery, they lacked a good picture of where the dispersed Ukrainian positions were,” the analysts continued. “The congestion on the roads, meanwhile, meant that Russian guns were often out of range of Ukrainian batteries, even while the Ukrainians were in range of the forward Russian positions.”

Russia’s under-supplied, poorly-led army never managed fully to deploy its artillery fire-control system. In one very telling incident on the Desna River near Chernihiv in early April, Ukrainian commandos riding in speedboats intercepted a Russian convoy and captured one of the Russians’ latest SNAR-10M1 radar vehicles.

Ukraine’s own fire-control system by contrast grew more sophisticated as the war wore on. A volunteer organization operating custom octocopter drones equipped with laser spotters began sparkling targets for locally made Kvitnyk laser-guided shells, allowing Kyiv’s gunner precisely to destroy armored vehicles in backyards and alleys.

The Russian army has a chance to do better. After pulling battered battalions from the Kyiv suburbs in late March, the Kremlin reinforced its combined arms armies in Donbas and Ukraine’s south. Russia’s original war aim—regime change—is beyond reach. But Moscow still might succeed in expanding the territory it controls in Donbas as well as securing a land bridge between Donbas and occupied Crimea.

The Russians must do so with a lot fewer guns. The Russian army has lost no fewer than 200 artillery pieces in Ukraine plus dozens of supporting vehicles. And it can’t easily make good all its losses owing to tightening foreign sanctions.

As Watling and Reynolds pointed out, the Russian army’s 9M949 guided rocket includes an American-made fiber-optic gyroscope for inertial navigation. That’s one artillery munition the Russians can’t make more of.

The Ukrainians on the other hand are better-armed by the day as significant foreign military aid begins flowing. The United States is supplying 90 towed 155-millimeter howitzers that are compatible with Excalibur laser-guided shells. Poland and the Czech Republic together are sending at least 20 2S1s.

Perhaps most impressively, the Netherlands is donating up to eight PzH 2000 tracked 155-millimeter howitzers—and France is providing a dozen Cesar wheeled howitzers of the same caliber. Those are some of the most modern guns in the world.

The mix of artillery is unwieldy, as each different type needs different spares and specialized support. But most of the new foreign guns use the same NATO-standard 155-millimeter ammunition, which any of a number of countries can provide in large quantities.

More importantly, Ukraine’s fire-control system is robust, while Russia’s is fragile. As the war in Ukraine proves every day, it doesn’t matter how many guns you have if you don’t know where to point them.