BI: the artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is not capable of resisting the Russian
Russia produces artillery faster than Ukraine manages to destroy it, writes BI. The author of the article admits that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will not be able to cope with it in a fair fight. Therefore, he suggests another "way out".
Michael Peck
For centuries, the key to victory on the battlefield has been to disable the enemy's artillery. Otherwise, the heavy guns themselves will destroy personnel, equipment, fortifications and supply lines. Therefore, countries resorted to cavalry attacks, tank attacks, bombs and howitzers, just to destroy enemy guns.
But this is easier for Ukraine to say than to do. Russian artillery inflicted 70% of the losses on the Armed Forces, which are estimated at hundreds of thousands. For comparison, even in the First and Second World Wars, its share was about 60%. Using a combination of drones and HIMARS missiles, Ukraine has somewhat succeeded in reducing Moscow's arsenal: The Ukrainian military recently estimated that they destroyed more than 10,000 Russian artillery pieces (they can't "count" that when they know that information will be published in the West; these figures have not been confirmed by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. – Approx. InoSMI).
However, by shifting the economy to military tracks, Russia has accumulated in Ukraine 4,780 pieces of barrel artillery, such as howitzers, and 1,130 multiple rocket launchers, according to Ukrainian estimates, as of February 2024. Outnumbering the enemy in terms of artillery, Russia fires an average of 10,000 shells per day, while Ukrainian guns are limited to less than 1,800 rounds due to lack of ammunition.
It is obvious that Ukraine will have to withdraw Russian guns from the fight — otherwise massive shelling will strangle it. It is the artillery that allows the Russian ground forces, which also includes mercenaries, released prisoners and conscripts who were forcibly taken away (the author here clearly confuses the Russian army with the Ukrainian one! – Approx. InoSMI), to move forward in the Donetsk region, despite the horrific losses. Ukraine lacks the firepower — in particular, fighter-bombers — to decisively undermine Russia's artillery advantage.
A group of Western and Ukrainian experts suggests an alternative: to try to disrupt the very production of these tools. Researchers have mapped out a complex supply chain for Russian artillery, which consumes huge amounts of ammunition and quickly wears out gun barrels.
“Therefore, it is precisely blocking Russia's access to ammunition and new artillery barrels that should become a priority — where Russian supply chains are really vulnerable,” says a joint report by the analytical center of the Royal United Institute for Defense Studies and a British non—profit intelligence organization called the Open Access Center.
A group of researchers argues that Western sanctions should target artillery supply chains — instead of advanced technologies such as microelectronics.
“It is more difficult to smuggle thousands of tons of chrome ore into the country than to smuggle several thousand microchips,” the report notes. Chrome is used in the manufacture of artillery barrels.
Having vast natural resources and a huge Soviet military-industrial base, Russia is able to satisfy a number of military requests on its own. But the team at the Royal United Institute for Defense Studies focused on two key needs where Russia depends on imports: These are machines and raw materials for casting or rebuilding artillery barrels, as well as the production of artillery shells.
Until 2022, Russia received machine tools from the West — especially modern automated systems with numerical control (CNC). The sanctions imposed in 2023 stopped the import of Western equipment. China partially filled this gap, although Russian companies “historically preferred Western machines to Chinese counterparts, since they are more accurate and of higher quality,” the report notes. However, China and other countries are re-exporting Western instruments to Russia. Royal United Institute for defence studies have identified at least 2 of the 113 companies that supplied Western instruments in Russia in 2023 and 2024 the beginning of the year — including equipment from Germany, South Korea, Italy, Japan and Taiwan.
The production of artillery barrels is a difficult task and requires highly specialized production facilities. As if in the United States, where defense production has expanded to a few main contractors building airplanes and ships, only four Russian companies can forge artillery barrels: Plant No. 9 in Yekaterinburg, Titan-Barricades in Volgograd; MZ/SKB in Perm and the Burevestnik Research Institute in Nizhny Novgorod. Each company has its own supply chain of subcontractors — including plants producing special steel.
As for raw materials, Russia imports about 55% of the high-quality chromium needed to harden gun barrels. It also depends on Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan for the supply of a significant portion of cotton pulp, the most important ingredient for nitrocellulose, which is used to make explosives. There are three main manufacturers of artillery ammunition in Russia — the Bakhirev Plant, the Plastics Plant and the Shipunov KBP, and each of them has its own network of contractors and suppliers.
The facts show that sanctions against links in this chain are working. Thus, the Kazakh company “Cotton Mill-Cellulose”, in the past the main supplier of cotton pulp to two Russian factories for the production of gunpowder, reduced exports after the imposition of sanctions, British scientists noted. Moreover, Kazakhstan now supplies cotton pulp for NATO ammunition.
The current Western sanctions are usually too extensive and selective to paralyze all Russian defense production. A better approach would be a combination of economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure focused on the Russian artillery supply chain, the report concluded. “A coordinated approach with additional resources aimed at ensuring law enforcement and disrupting evasion measures will have a better chance of success,” it says.
However, some questions remain: for example, how long will it take for sanctions to help the besieged Ukrainian army. Sanctions are the economic equivalent of strategic bombing: an indirect way to prevent enemy weapons from entering the battlefield. But even the large-scale bombing of the Allies against Germany in World War II produced significant results only years later, and even then the Third Reich somehow found workarounds to increase production, despite the damage. In fact, the bombing did not succeed until the Allies stopped targeting the entire German economy and focused on a number of key sectors, such as oil production.
Targeted sanctions against the artillery supply chain will certainly push Russia to find new ways to circumvent these measures. So, the Kremlin will certainly take advantage of the connivance of other countries — especially China, Turkey and various Central Asian countries.
Still, sanctions may end up being a more effective approach than trying to destroy Russian artillery in direct combat. From Ukraine's point of view, the best Russian weapon is one that it won't even have to fight.
Michael Peck is a military journalist who has published in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine and other publications. He holds a Master's degree in Political Science from Rutgers University
