Ukrainian servicemen fire a M777 howitzer at Russian positions near Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on March 17, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images
A Russian general fired for raising concerns revealed clues about the state of the artillery duels in Ukraine.
He said Russia is struggling to knock out Ukrainian artillery while Russian forces suffer “mass deaths.”
The counter-battery fight is critical in the counteroffensive, and it looks like Ukraine has an edge.
Before he was sacked, a Russian general raised concerns about the dire situation his men are facing in a key sector of the front. After he was fired, he revealed publicly that Ukraine is bloodying his forces in an important fight, the artillery battle.
In an audio message shared online, Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov said he brought concerns about “the lack of counter-battery combat, the absence of artillery reconnaissance stations and the mass deaths and injuries of our brothers in enemy artillery fire” up to “the highest level” of the Russian military.
Artillery is one of the Ukrainian military’s most important weapons as its soldiers run a deadly gauntlet of minefields and dug-in enemy positions executing a counteroffensive push. Artillery is essential for eliminating Russian guns able to waylay assault columns and for targeting Russian defensive lines to kill and disorient troops stationed there.
Popov is the former commanding officer of the 58th Combined Arms Army, which is battling an ongoing Ukrainian offensive in the Zaporizhzhia region, a front-line sector where Ukrainian forces have been pressing the Russian lines hard, and his concerns add to growing evidence that Ukraine seems to have an edge in the artillery duel in the south.
Rather than addressing his concerns, military leaders relieved Popov of his command. The general said in response to his dismissal that while his army fought the Ukrainians, “our senior commander hit us from the rear, treacherously and vilely decapitating the army at the most difficult and tense moment.”
Ukrainian military fire a M777 howitzer on the Bakhmut direction on May 17, 2023 in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
Photo by Serhii Mykhalchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
A key element of the counteroffensive in its early stages is the counter-battery fight, which involves trying to eliminate an enemy’s indirect fire assets, such as mortars and artillery, that can shatter assaults on Russian positions. In this fight, Ukraine relies heavily on rocket artillery systems like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, or howitzers like the 155mm M777s.
As Jack Watling, a Royal United Services Institute land warfare expert, assessed early on in the Ukrainian counteroffensive, “there is an intense counterbattery duel being fought, with both sides trying to strike each other’s logistics, command and control, reconnaissance, and artillery systems.”
These types of operations can be a challenge for an army if it advances beyond the reach of its available systems, still a possibility for Ukraine, or if it finds itself outgunned, a problem Kyiv’s forces have faced alongside ammunition concerns.
Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the top officer in Ukraine’s armed forces, said in a recent interview with The Washington Post that his forces are at times being outshot tenfold in the artillery battle.
Ukrainian servicemen fire an M777 howitzer, Kharkiv Region, northeastern Ukraine.
Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images
Where the Ukrainians do have an advantage, as Can Kasapoğlu, a non-resident senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, notes, is in its modern artillery “kill chain.”
This system is “supported by counter-battery radars and spotter drones,” tools suited to finding Russian assets, “as well as better fire-support systems,” essentially better weapons, “that came from NATO nations’ generous military assistance packages,” he wrote in commentary this week.
The US has provided Ukraine with AN/TPQ-36 radar systems designed to detect incoming mortar, rocket, and artillery fire and identify where it was fired from, facilitating follow-on counter-battery fire operations.
The Ukrainian armed forces are also equipped with HIMARS firing Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) and M777 artillery systems that have proved particularly effective since their deliveries last year.
And, although Ukraine has had to conserve ammo due to dwindling stockpiles of 155mm artillery shells both at home and among Western partners, including the US, which has provided millions of shells, the country is now receiving cluster munitions.
Dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, or DPICMS, do more damage across a larger area than standard unitary artillery shells by releasing bomblets, or submunitions.
“Artillery is at the core of this conflict,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said last Friday, adding that “Ukraine is firing thousands of rounds a day.” With cluster munitions, it can do more damage while expending less ammunition, taking some of the pressure off Ukraine while making Russia’s problems worse.
Ukrainian soldiers fire at Russian positions from a U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer in Kherson region, Ukraine, Jan. 9, 2023.
AP Photo/Libkos
As a recent Forbes analysis citing open-source intelligence reporting found, since the Ukrainian counteroffensive began, Russia has lost four artillery pieces for every one that Ukraine has lost, significantly eroding what was once an advantage in total available indirect firepower.
Those kinds of losses do not work out well for Russia in the long run, especially when artillery can have a substantial impact on the outcomes of battles.
Counteroffensive operations, of course, are more than the counter-battery fight alone, and Ukraine’s artillery, specifically massed fires as opposed to precision strike, will have other roles to play, as Patrick Hinton, a serving officer in the British Army’s Royal Artillery, explained in commentary for RUSI.
A major challenge to the Ukrainian counteroffensive are the layers of extensive defensive fortifications Russia constructed prior to its start and consisting of tank traps and barriers and minefields backed by entrenched infantry, air power, and Russian indirect fire support.
Hinton, Chief of the General Staff’s Visiting Fellow in the Military Sciences Research Group at RUSI, wrote “it should not be understated how difficult it is to overcome a well thought-out and resourced defensive operation.”
In addition to countering enemy artillery, Ukraine will need to use its artillery to suppress defenses and support infantry maneuvers, such as assault and trench-clearing operations, by forcing the Russians to take cover during a barrage and hindering their ability to fire at the advancing force.
Beyond the physical destruction, artillery also has a tremendous psychological effect in battle. For advancing offensive forces, it can be a “crucial confidence boost,” Hinton wrote, and for troops on defense, it is simply “terrifying.”
“The noise, smell and shaking ground of a volley of shells exploding in close proximity provides a very effective distraction while friendly troops advance,” he wrote, explaining that “immense fear is a sure-fire way to reduce the combat effectiveness of enemy soldiers.”
Russian artillery can have the same effect on Ukraine though if left unanswered, which is a reason why the counter-battery fight matters.
Counteroffensive operations are a challenge to execute even with sufficient air power and long-range strike capabilities, which Ukraine does not have. The last thing they need is enemy artillery raining down on advancing forces.
But if Ukraine can support its maneuver forces “with its artillery guns and exploit the nuances within the art of fires,” Hinton said, “it will provide a significant advantage as its forces undertake one of the more difficult military endeavours.”