As Mud Season Restricts Movement, Ukraine's Smart Artillery Gives Advantage

The early arrival of mud season this year, which makes off-road movement almost impossible, may mean that Ukraine will wait a month until the ground freezes before resuming large scale offensives. 

In the interim, Ukrainian forces are using 'smart' artillery to further degrade Russian defenses. JL 

Daily Kos reports:

Mud season arrived weeks early to Ukraine this year. Normally, it’s not expected until November. The weather has made movement difficult, so why not wait a month for the ground to freeze while systematically degrading Russian defenses? Aside from mud and roads, the impressive accuracy of Ukrainian artillery guns (is due to) Excalibur precision-guided artillery rounds, homing in on laser targets provided by loitering drones. Excalibur rounds taking out a high-value surface to air missile system allow the Ukrainian Air Force to fly more aggressive ground-support missions.
Artillery has been pounding positions on both sides as rasputitsa, aka mud season, arrived weeks early to Ukraine this year. Normally, it’s not expected until November.By restricting movement to main roads, the rain and mud have made advancement by either side difficult. Any attempt to go off road in these conditions will mean reduced range and maneuverability at best, and bogged down immobilized vehicles at worst. Y’all remember Russia’s difficulties back in March, don’t you? While we’re not quite at that level yet, things are definitely getting dicey. Armored vehicles have to mostly stick to roads. It’s hard to hide movement on roads, and easy to plot coordinates on a map. Advance is difficult.

Aside from the issues of mud and roads, you may be marveling at the impressive accuracy of those Ukrainian artillery guns. For sure, those guys know what they’re doing, but there is inherent margin of error on “dumb” artillery shells. These are Excalibur precision-guided artillery rounds, homing in on laser targets provided by loitering drones. In contrast, GMLRS rockets fired by HIMARS and M270 MLRS are GPS guided.  They both have their purposes—GMLRS hits weapons depots, military bases, and fixed defensive positions, while Excalibur picks off individual armored vehicles one by one, even while moving. 

Excalibur rounds taking out a high-value surface to air missile system allow the Ukrainian Air Force to fly more aggressive ground-support missions at the front.

The rounds cost around $68,000 each, about half the price of a GMLRS rocket, though significantly more expensive than a $800 dumb artillery shell. Still, one shell does the job of 50 dumb shells, which sure, still isn’t as expensive, but the one-and-out shot means the artillery gun can break down and move far quicker, enhancing survivability of precious howitzers and their crews. The U.S. has sent 2,000 Excalibur rounds in the last month alone. 

September 15: 1,000 
October 7: 500 
October 14: 500

That will make for a lot of wrecked armor, the perfect tool to “shape the battlefield” as HIMARS focuses more on taking out bridges and barges resupplying Russia’s forces around Kherson. 

Interestingly, every video above has been in the Kherson front, I haven’t seen Excalibur strikes anywhere else. For all the talk of potential misdirection, that maybe Ukraine is preparing an offensive in the southeast corner of the country, around Zaporizhzhia and southern Donetsk oblast, it remains clear that Ukraine is deploying its best munitions around Kherson. 

Russian artillery may not be as precise, but it’s no fun being on the receiving end of it.On other thing to look out for—Ukrainian advances have pushed so far forward near Kherson, that those forces might soon be in range of Russia artillery positions on the other (supplied) side of the Dnipro river.

That shouldn’t be an issue until Ukrainian forces take Mylove and push further south. But unless Ukraine can finish the job on the Kerch bridge, Russian forces on the south side of the Dnipro won’t have any trouble pounding advancing Ukrainian forces … and the city of Kherson if it’s liberated. 

Full operational silence means we don’t know what’s going on around Kherson, but I’m less and less inclined to believe we’re seeing major advances. Rather, the weather has made movement difficult, so why not wait a month for the ground to freeze while systematically degrading Russian defenses? As the weather turns cold, we might even see more Russian surrenders, defections, and desertions.

Once the ground is frozen, Ukraine can advance with even larger force. Britain alone is training 2,500 Ukrainians every six weeks, with Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, and the Baltic countries recently joining the effort. More armored vehicles and artillery guns are arriving in Ukraine daily. Russia, on the other hand, is relegated to sending untrained, under-equipped, unmotivated mobilized conscripts to serve as speed bumps in miserably cold and wet trenches. While Belarus empties its armored vehicle stores for Russia, Excalibur and GMLRS rocket artillery systematically whittles away Russia’s capabilities. 

Over summer, Ukraine was under pressure to prove it could recapture territory, lest Western allies lose Western faith throughout a cold winter. Those days are past. Ukraine’s capabilities have been well-proven. Now, it makes sense to wait for the more tactically advantageous conditions to press the attack. 

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I haven’t talked much about the Kyiv Blitz—Russia’s Nazi-like effort to break Ukraine’s spirits be using Iranian suicide drones to strike both energy infrastructure and civilian targets. I suspect those civilian targets are accidental, given the shitty quality of Russian (and Iranian) gear. Russia couldn’t have possibly wanted to waste an $18 million cruise missile on a playground swing set. Those Iranian drones don’t even have cameras.

Thing is, despite the attention those Iranian drones are generating, they’re militarily irrelevant. Hitler was able to reduce much of London to rubble using his V2 rockets, these Iranian drones are causing limited damage. A large percentage have also been shot down, with more air defenses arriving soon. 

If anything, those cheap drones (reported cost, around $20,000 each), deployed by the hundreds, might overwhelm Ukrainian defenses, causing shortages in expensive surface-to-air missiles. But in Russia’s best case scenario, what could they ultimately accomplish? Each civilian target, whether intentional or not, merely intensifies Ukrainian resolve and builds more pressure in the West for long-range rockets like ATACMS for HIMARS launchers, as well as NATO tanks and aircraft. Maybe Russia manages to take down significant portions of Ukraine’s power grid, making the Russian milbloggers like Rybar happy? Yeah, that would suck. It would mean lots of cold people this winter, but Ukrainians aren’t soft people. They'll adapt and survive, just like they did last February and March in places like Mariupol, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv. 

I’m betting Ukraine will figure out how to effectively combat those drones within the next 4-6 weeks, with both additional Western help (like anti-drone jammers) and domestic ingenuity. Meanwhile, the on-the-ground tactical and strategic situation will remain completely unchanged because even now, Russia still refuses to use its rockets, missiles, and drones to strike military targets.