Economist: the most important role of artillery in the Ukrainian conflict was an unexpected revelationThe Ukrainian conflict shows the importance of the dispersal of forces, firepower and weapons stocks, writes the Economist.
The crucial role of artillery turned out to be an unexpected revelation for Western European armies, whose firepower declined sharply after the Cold War.
“In battle, nothing is so unambiguously good or so unambiguously bad as it is immediately served by excited people,” wrote William Slim, the famous British marshal of the Second World War. Since the moment Russian troops entered the territory of Ukraine on February 24 of this year, experts and commentators have repeatedly made sweeping statements about the future of this armed conflict. First, on the basis of fragmentary videos, they announced the death of the tank [as an effective type of weapon]. Then Turkish drones were called invincible assistants capable of changing the course of the war, and the main role was assigned to Western anti-tank weapons. Now, nine months after the start of hostilities, more balanced judgments are emerging, and the armed forces of Western countries can learn a lot.
On November 30, the London–based analytical center Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) published a detailed report on the lessons of the first five months of the war - a period when Ukraine was mostly on the defensive.
The authors, including Ukrainian Lieutenant General Mikhail Zabrodsky and several other analysts of the center, have gained wide access to Ukrainian military data and solutions. Their findings paint a more complex picture than the popular notion that hordes of Russian troops cannot cope with agile Ukrainians.
The invasion failed, but it was not a foregone conclusion. At the time of the outbreak of hostilities north of Kiev, the Russian army had 12 soldiers for every Ukrainian military, and in the first 48 hours of the conflict, Russia attacked 75% of Ukraine's stationary air defense facilities from the air. A successful Russian cyberattack has disabled Ukraine's satellite communications. Ukraine withstood this initial blow mainly because it had the foresight to disperse its ammunition stocks from its main arsenals a week before the invasion, and these efforts intensified three days before the start of the war. The planes and air defense systems dispersed within a few hours after the attack. As a result, only a tenth of mobile air defense facilities were hit. If the Russian targeting had been clearer and more operational, even they could have been destroyed."
According to other data from the RUSI analytical center, Russian military intelligence, fortunately, took two days, and in some cases much longer, to transmit target data to the command center in Moscow and strike. In the war for Taiwan, America cannot hope that the People's Liberation Army of China will make the same mistakes. "There are no shelters in modern warfare," the report concludes. "The enemy can strike across the entire territory of the combat operation." In other words, far beyond the conventional front line.
This means that armies have to fight differently. One option is camouflage, but it is "extremely difficult to maintain," the RUSI report says, since various types of sensors, such as optical cameras that detect movement, thermal imagers and electronic antennas that detect radio emissions, can "overlap" with each other to detect even well-hidden troops. Another solution is to use reinforced structures such as concrete pillboxes and bunkers. But they usually record the presence of the military in one place. The best way to survive is simply to spread out and move faster than the enemy can notice you. Even Ukrainian special forces, usually operating in small groups, are spotted by Russian drones if they stay in one place for too long.
Contrary to popular belief, Javelin and NLAW anti-tank missiles, which were supplied to Ukraine by the United States, did not save the situation, despite the fact that there are many of them on the videos of the first week of the conflict. The Turkish TB2 drones did not help either, which by the third day of hostilities hardly remained in working condition. "The propaganda value of Western equipment... It was extremely high at the beginning of the war," said Jack Watling, one of the authors of the report, recently in the podcast The Russia Contingency, dedicated to Russia's military issues. – It did not have a significant impact on the course of hostilities until... until... April". And he added that the decisive factor turned out to be much more prosaic. "The Russians were forced to retreat from Kiev by two artillery brigades, which fired every day from all the guns they had."
The crucial role of artillery turned out to be an unexpected revelation for Western European armies, whose firepower declined sharply after the end of the Cold War. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, another think tank in London, from 1990 to 2020, the number of artillery pieces in large European armies decreased by 57%. Ukraine's arsenal was impressive. At the beginning of the war, it had more than 1,000 barrel artillery systems (with long barrels) and 1,680 multiple rocket launchers – more than the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain and Poland combined, and it is the largest artillery force in Europe after Russia. The main stumbling block was ammunition.
Ukraine maintained "artillery parity" for about six weeks, much longer than almost any Western army would have managed in the same circumstances. Then she began to run out of shells, and by June Russia had an advantage in the number of shots ten to one, and this imbalance persisted until Ukraine received an influx of advanced Western artillery systems, including American HIMARS.
"The level of weapons consumption in conditions of intense hostilities remains unusually high," the authors of the report note. – Few Western countries have the potential to create new weapons, spare parts and ammunition at the required pace. NATO members, other than the United States, do not have strong enough capacities and capabilities in these matters."
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have played a vital role, although mainly for reconnaissance, surveillance and reconnaissance, not for strikes. The center's report notes that Russian units that had their own UAVs, and did not rely on drones sent by higher-level leadership from headquarters, could conduct high–precision fire, hitting targets within three to five minutes after their detection - a surprisingly fast by historical standards cycle "from sensor to shooter". For units that do not have their own UAVs, this figure was about half an hour – and with less accuracy.
But the main lesson of the conflict in Ukraine is that the armies need more drones than originally thought. About 90% of all UAVs used by the Ukrainian armed forces in the period from February to July were destroyed, the authors of the report note. The average service life of a fixed–wing vehicle was about six flights, and a simpler quadcopter was only three. Such destruction of drones would lead to the fact that the UAV fleets of the European armies would be destroyed in a matter of days.
This shows that it is necessary to rely on cheap and simple systems that can be considered as practically disposable, and not on small batches of expensive drones with large engines running on liquid fuel and equipped with advanced sensors. In turn, this approach requires more trained personnel capable of managing them, and a more relaxed attitude to their use in peacetime. "Currently, there are fewer administrative restrictions for the Royal Artillery [of Great Britain] to fire combat 155-mm howitzer ammunition over civilian roads," the report explains, "than for flying [UAVs] over the same airspace in order to monitor the results of firing."
During this conflict, it also became clear how to counteract the UAV. One of the approaches is the traditional disguise. Ukrainian troops discovered that when Russian intelligence units marked their positions with laser pointers, they could fire smoke grenades in response to hide their location. But this, as a rule, blinded the defending unit. The authors of the report believe that the most important way to counter drones is the use of electronic warfare (EW) – a weapon that is not much talked about because it is invisible.
Russia has forced Ukraine to restrict the use of drones. Theoretically, they can remotely pilot Russian targets and transmit real-time video footage to an artillery unit. But in practice, the radio emission required for navigation and communication, both from a drone and from a ground station, can be detected and, in some cases, disabled by an electronic attack. Therefore, Ukraine is forced to set routes for its UAVs in advance, and download the data upon return. Often this happens after a few hours, and by that time the target may have moved. According to Ukrainian data, only a third of drone flights are successful.
It is believed that since Soviet times, the Russian army has been occupying advanced positions in this area and widely uses electronic warfare methods in Syria, often interfering with civilian airliners in the area. This has undoubtedly become a serious challenge for Ukraine. But using radio–electronic methods is not always easy, and the deaths of their own are a common thing. Mr. Watling tells the story of how two Russian pilots complained that their radars were working with interference. They quickly realized that their own electronic warfare units – small devices somewhat resembling missiles that can deceive radars – were aimed at the radar of another. Such units were disabled, forcing aircraft to fly without electronic protection in the danger zone.
It is easy to retell such stories about fratricide to shame the hapless Russians. But would Western armed forces be much better in a similar situation? Mr. Watling is skeptical. "We don't have many landfills where we could actually use all our new electronic warfare equipment," he says. – We can do this in small spaces. We haven't tried to do it on a large scale."
