Russia Has More Artillery Than Ukraine. But Russian Gunners Have A Bad Habit Of Shelling … Nothing.

Despite a deluge of Western support for Ukraine over the 10 months of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, the Russian army still has more artillery and rocket-launchers than the Ukrainian army has.

But Russian gunners have a bad habit of shelling … nothing. Or worse, shelling friendly troops.

On paper, the Russian army possesses one of the world’s best artillery fire-control systems. In practice, poorly trained and undisciplined Russian gunners following rigid, outdated doctrine are wasting Russia’s artillery advantage. Firing a lot of shells and rockets without necessarily hitting anything.

One panicky December phone call from a Russian draftee, fighting somewhere in eastern Ukraine, tells the story of Russia’s failing fire-support system.

After describing Russian battalions shipping home daily “packages” of 17 dead draftees, the unhappy soldier blames Russian gunners for Russian casualties. “Ours have fucked us up,” he says in his intercepted call. “Entered incorrect adjustment data. Fucked up everything we have, our own guys.”

Even after a crash artillery expansion program, the Ukrainian army began 2022 with just half as many big guns and launchers as the Russian army had.

To add guns and launchers, the Ukrainian army starting in 2014 opened up old warehouses packed with ex-Soviet hardware. The army formed new artillery brigades and regiments, added artillery and rocket battalions to the infantry, tank and air-assault brigades and helped the navy form artillery battalions for its marine brigades.

After eight years of expansion, the Ukrainian artillery corps had 2,900 big guns and launchers. But the Russian artillery corps at the same time had expanded to include around 6,000 artillery and rocket systems. Donations since February have added a few hundred big guns and launchers to Ukraine’s total.

“I would say that the numbers clearly favor the Russians,” U.S. Army general Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in June. “In terms of artillery, they do outnumber, they out-gun and out-range.”

But the numbers don’t tell the whole story, Milley stressed. “The Russians have run into a lot of problems. They’ve got command-and-control issues, logistics issues. They’ve got morale issues, leadership issues and a wide variety of other issues.”

Failures of command result in a lot of wasted shells and rockets and all-too-frequent friendly-fire incidents. Even when artillery is hitting nothing or, worse, hitting allied positions, the gunners just keep blasting away.

There’s a “near-absence of reversionary courses of action” in the Russian fire-control system, analysts Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, Jack Watling, Oleksandr Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds explained in a study for the Royal United Services Institute in London.

What that means is, in Russian doctrine, brigades, battalions and batteries tend to freeze up in the absence of detailed instructions from higher command. While awaiting fresh orders, lower units just keep doing what they already were doing. Even when it doesn’t make sense. Even when the current course of action is killing friendly troops.

“This approach has probably had the greatest impact in creating a gap between potential and actual capability as regards Russian fires,” Zabrodskyi, Watling, Danylyuk and Reynolds wrote.

Russian gunners simply don’t think for themselves. “All reported contacts are treated as true. All fire missions appear to be given equal priority and are prosecuted in the order in which they are received unless an order to prioritize a specific mission comes from higher authority.”

“It seems that those directing fire missions either do not have access to contextual information or are indifferent to it,” the analysts added.

There’s an alternative approach to battlefield command—one that’s central to the Western way of war and also increasingly is in favor in the Ukrainian military establishment. It’s called “mission command.”

In mission command, lower units are free to make their own decisions—as long as those decisions are consistent with the overall goals of the campaign. It’s all about autonomy and flexibility.

Ukrainian forces have been learning mission command from their allies in the United States and NATO. “Ukraine has been trained by the United States since 2014,” Milley said in April. “They have given me feedback personally, saying that training has been quite effective in terms of the concept of mission command, distributed junior-level leadership. That is not present in the Russian army. That is present right now in the Ukrainian army.”

So Ukrainian gunners shoot, correct their aim, shoot again—and entirely change up their schemes of fire when those schemes aren’t working. Russian gunners, on the other hand, tend to blast away at the wrong coordinates while awaiting new orders from division. Orders that might never come.

For the poor Russian draftee on the ground in eastern Ukraine, that means catching shells from both sides. “You think it’s fucking fun here?” the draftee says in his intercepted call. “It’s not fucking fun. It’s war.”