The Artillery War In Ukraine

The canon artillery (i.e. howitzers) of the Russian forces in the Ukraine war have been its characteristic tactic. 

Though the gains have been modest, they are emblematic of both the Ukrainian and Russian strategy as the war drags into its third month: a slow moving grind that focuses on one village at a time and relies primarily on drones and concentrated fire with artillery.

These weapons, capable of lobbing munitions from outside the direct line of sight of opposing forces, are now the central component of the war following the Russian defeat around Kyiv, where long columns of troops and tanks were visible targets vulnerable to ambush. Without them, Ukrainian and Russian units cannot advance nor can they really defend.

The back and forth maneuvering is playing out across Ukraine’s east — both as Russian forces advance in the Donbas region, and as Ukrainian forces try to force Russian artillery units out of range of Kharkiv, a sprawling city 25 miles from the Russian border.

“This is a war of position, a war of artillery,” said Kostyantyn, the [interviewed Ukrainian army] major[.]

This dynamic has played out for days in Ruska Lozova. The town, just north of Kharkiv, was declared liberated by the Ukrainian military late last month, though the fleeing enemy soldiers have been replaced by incoming artillery shells, and terrified residents continue to evacuate.

Russian drones, namely the small Orlan 10, which sounds like a lawn mower, have proven to be a lethal, loitering presence. The drone’s ability to identify Ukrainian positions for Russian artillery batteries has meant that every foot of gained ground around Kharkiv is met with heavy shelling. . . .

Ruska Lozova was declared liberated on the 28th. The Russian retreat, by all accounts, was relatively orderly. During that time frame, Kostyantyn said, there was a “rifle battle” around the town between Ukrainian and Russian troops, an uncommon occurrence during this stage in the war, which had mostly featured artillery, rocket and mortar fire. . . .

in this chapter of the artillery war . . . the frontline isn’t so much defined by trenches, but the range of the guns on either side.

From the New York Times.

Slug throwing artillery can inflict damage from beyond the range of man portable anti-tank weapons like the U.S. supplied Javelin missiles (and the main guns of tanks), but unlike guided missiles, canon artillery is indiscriminate because it is so much less accurate. 

Howitzers are well suited to scourging enemy cities to punish them and make people flee them. But canon artillery is poorly suited to hitting specific targets without causing undue collateral damage.

From the perspective of a defending force, dealing with enemy artillery units, which are sometimes sometimes mounted on truck or tank-like vehicles, and are sometimes towed behind a military vehicle, is a priority, but difficult. 

Ukrainian forces in the current war don't have a consistently effective solution, but keeping future wars where this tactic could recur in mind, it is worth considering all of the possibilities more closely.

Degrading Intelligence

One approach when faced with enemy artillery is to degrade their ability to target your forces, for example, with camouflaged positions, by patrolling to kill enemy spies, and by finding ways to take out enemy reconnaissance drones, which since they need only carry a camera and a radio, can be quite small.  

Destroying Enemy Artillery

There are basically five possible approaches to taking out enemy artillery.

First, the U.S., in its modern military engagements, has secured air superiority, and then taken out tanks and artillery units with attack helicopters and fighter aircraft. But, where the air space is contested and the opponents have anti-aircraft missiles, this approach is less viable.

Second, another approach is to use aerial armed drones to attack them. Loitering munitions, sometimes called "suicide drones" are one example of this approach. For example, the AeroVironment Switchblade 600 (a smaller Model 300 version of which is shown in the image below with a commercial grade compressed air tank used to launch it) can stay in the air for 40 minutes and has a target range of 40 km, and the Ukraine variant created by the U.S. Air Force called the "Phoenix Ghost" drone can hover for almost six hours and can destroy a medium to small armored ground target. It uses essentially the same warhead used in the Javelin Antitank Guided Missile with a cost of about $6,000 per missile, and doesn't need a large separate missile launching system. An anti-personnel version has been used in real world engagements since 2013, and the anti-armor version just started to be fielded in 2021.

A third approach is to counterattack with your own canon artillery, but because howitzers can be moved quickly and because howitzers aren't very accurate, this grinding war of attrition approach causes lots of collateral damage and takes many attempts to be successful.

A fourth approach would be to use missiles with longer range and greater precision than howitzers, aided by drone, satellite, or airborne targeting intelligence, to target and eliminate enemy howitzers. In the U.S. arsenal, there are multi-rocket launcher systems (MLRS), that come in a lighter, unarmored HIMARS system, and a heavier armored version derived from the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle chassis, to serve that role.

The last two approaches have apparently been predominant in Ukraine so far. According to the New York Times article linked above:

[There] was a duel between weapons like multiple launch rocket systems, some with ranges of roughly 20 miles; howitzers, with a range of around 13 miles and heavier mortars, capable of lobbing shells around five miles.

A fifth approach is to get soldiers "behind enemy lines" (to the extent that this is a concept that really makes sense in modern warfare) with some sort of anti-tank weapon and directly strike the artillery unit.

Defending Against Artillery Shells

There are basically two approaches to defending against artillery.

Passive Defenses Against Artillery Shells

One defense approach is passive defense. Put people and critical equipment in bunkers, or in trenches, or armored vehicles that are capable of withstanding a hit from a 155mm howitzer shell. 

Only the heaviest armor, however, metal armor on the order of 30 cm thick or thicker concrete or earthen walls, is strong enough. And, any bunker or armored vehicle capable of withstanding an artillery shell is either immobile or slow moving, and can still be defeated by an only modestly larger missile or bomb.

Heavy armor or a bunker can also be enhanced with steel "cages" around an armored vehicle that are intended to break up an incoming shell before it hits the main armor to diffuse the impact.

Heavy armor can also be enhanced by "reactive armor" that is triggered and produces a counter-explosion that pushes back on the incoming shell to reduce the amount of kinetic and explosive energy from the incoming shell that the solid passive armor has to sustain. Obviously, however, this loses effectiveness and has to be replenished after each incoming impact the armored surface sustains, but that beats having the armor compromised and defeated by the incoming shell.

Passive defenses can't defend large vehicles or buildings outside the bunker, however, and only work if people get reach the protected area before the howitzer shell hits, which is possible in a sustained attack, but not in the case of the first few rounds of a surprise attack, which leave less than a minute of warning even if you have excellent early warning systems in place.

Active Defenses Against Artillery Shells

The other defense approach is active point defense. Systems that can target and destroy incoming artillery shells are just starting to become technologically viable. And, artillery shells are fairly slow moving (compared to directly fired bullets, tank rounds, or missiles), travel in very predictable unguided paths, and are much larger targets than bullets. 

In the case of artillery shells, electronic defenses designed to thwart missile guidance systems don't work. But there are basically several other active defense approaches. 

One is to use high energy lasers to target incoming shells and cause them to explode prematurely before hitting the defended area. These systems are just starting to cross over from being experimental to being fielded in the last couple of years, and aren't widely available nor are they proven in actual warfare yeet.

A second which is based on the Navy's Phalanx Close In Weapons System, is to shoot a barrage of bullets or grenades in the general direction of the income artillery shell in the hope of hitting it and causing it to explode prematurely before hitting the defended area. This has been used for larger naval ships for a long time, but while it is proven technology, is a much more recent development as a point defense tool for ground forces engaging in point defense.

A third is to have what amounts to a glorified AI targeted sniper rifle or grenade launcher track and shoot an incoming artillery shell with a single round. This is mostly in the near future technology zone, rather than something that is available in a production model.

A fourth is to have a surface to air missile that can take on an artillery shell rather than a missile or aircraft. This is at least as hard or harder than missile defense, however, and is a very expensive (tens of thousands of dollars per missile) way to respond to artillery shells that cost $500 to $1,500 each for your opponent to buy.

Finally, one could, in a variation of reactive armor, have explosive shrapnel set off by a simple motion detector when a fast moving incoming object gets very close, in the immediate vicinity of the incoming object. This is similar to the close in weapons system approach, but like steel cages, is likely to only blunt the impact of the incoming shell and diffuse it somewhat, rather than reducing the threat to bullet sized shrapnel from prematurely exploded shells in random directions.

All of the active point defense system are likely to leave the place defended facing incoming shrapnel from the prematurely exploded artillery shell. But this can be dealt with using lighter armor or defenses, sufficient merely to be "bullet proof" rather than the kind of protection needed to protect against the concentrated strike of a single intact artillery round. In practice, this means that flak jackets and helmets, armored car class armor, ordinary concrete, stone or metal walls, and kevlar tarps, for example, might suffice. And this kind of cover is something that a person might be able to reach with only ten or twenty seconds of early warning.