Ukraine Is Inflicting An "Artillery Apocalypse" On Careless Russian Forces

Russian forces have been suffering from a shortage of artillery for almost a year now as Ukrainian drones, Himars and more effectiveness counter-battery fire take out towed and self-propelled howitzers, rockets and other big guns. This is happening at the same time the Russians are facing a shortage of desperately needed but hard to engineer new big gun barrels. 

The result is that as Russia attempts to launch yet another summer offensive - to follow its disappointing fall, winter and spring offensives - it has less of the necessary artillery support its desperate troops need. JL

David Axe reports in Trench Art:

The first sign of the artillery apocalypse was on April 16, when a Ukrainian drone operator located 44 Russian towed artillery on a 12-mile-across sector near Pokrovsk. In trying to conceal their howitzers, including 122-millimeter D-30s, the Russians chopped down trees for camouflage. But they cut down trees directly in front of their guns’ positions, marking each with easy-to-spot raw stumps. Ukrainian drones noted the spots, and their artillery got to work. The degradation of Russian artillery is occurring in parallel with the decimation of it’s mechanized forces. Motor-rifle regiments' supporting artillery units are running out of big guns at the same pace they’re running low on tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.

A single Ukrainian drone team, relentlessly surveilling along the front line in eastern Ukraine, has called in artillery and destroyed eight Russian towed howitzers in 12 days.

That’s a lot of howitzers for a stretch of the front, presumably near the fortress city of Pokrovsk, that might be just 12 miles long. And it helps to explain why the Kremlin is running low on towed artillery.

 

The first sign of the coming artillery apocalypse was on April 16, when Ukrainian marine corps drone operator Kriegsforscher said his unit located 44 Russian towed artillery pieces on a 12-mile-across sector. “So tell me, is it a lot?” Kriegsforscher quipped. “Seems like it’s gonna be interesting and definitely not boring soon.”

Ukrainian drones are everywhere all the time along the 700-mile front line of Russia’s 39-month wider war on Ukraine, so the intensity of the surveillance is no surprise. But the Russian gunners inadvertently aided the Ukrainian drone operators through sheer sloppiness.

In trying to conceal their howitzers, including 122-millimeter D-30s, the Russians chopped down trees to use as camouflage. But they cut down trees that were directly in front of their guns’ positions—clearly marking each gun with easy-to-spot raw stumps. “Imagine being that dumb to cut off the trees in front of you to cover your D-30,” Kriegsforscher mused.

The Ukrainian drones marked the spots, and friendly artillery got to work, lobbing shells at each Russian position. On Friday, Kriegsforscher reported the eighth howitzer kill.

Russian D-30 positions surrounded by stumps. Kreigsforscher capture

Dwindling guns

The degradation of Russian artillery is occurring in parallel with the degradation of Russia’s mechanized forces. The motor-rifle regiments and their supporting artillery units are running out of big guns at the same pace they’re running low on tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.

Russia went to war in Ukraine in February 2022 with 4,400 of the 3.5-ton, 10-mile-range D-30s, some dating from the 1960s. But the Russians have lost hundreds of the guns in action—and have cannibalized many others for their barrels, which regiments use to repair self-propelled howitzers. Russian industry is short of the precision milling machines it needs to produce large numbers of new barrels.

As far back as May of last year, analyst Jompy—who scrutinizes satellite imagery to tally reserves of Russian equipment—predicted the extra D-30s were running out. “Not many months left until they exhaust their D-30 replacement stockpiles.”

By now, it’s possible practically every recoverable D-30 in the Russian reserve inventory has been fetched, fixed up and assigned to a front-line regiment. What that means is that every D-30 the Russians lose moving forward is a D-30 they can’t replace.

The mechanized units are compensating for their worsening mobility problems by replacing lost armored vehicles with civilian cars, vans and even electric scooters. But an artillery battery doesn’t have that luxury. There are no civilian howitzers.