lots of conflicting info coming out about Orc progress or "lack of " in Sumy and Odessa oblast.. The general theme ties in with GS missives .. hopefully an update soon ?
There is probably going to be an udate on fronts tomorrow.... but he did say that the vaunted Russian offensive has stalled and they are being pushed back in places.
Today the move of floating apartment has been curtailed by extreme heat ... so GS did have time to send this rather nerdy missive. Interesting for those with a deep nerdy interest in things that go boom.
"People today say that the arrival of drones are the end of artillery. Besides that drones from my viewpoint is a form of artillery, people do not understand that the war against Ukraine is not an artillery war, which will soon become abundantly clear.
This leads people to draw all sorts of wrong conclusions. Drones came about due to lack of significant artillery, not due to being better or the logical next step as such. That being said, drones are better for hunting moving targets than artillery could ever be.
But, for stationary targets and pounding trenchlines, artillery is the far better option since artillery on average has a far higher brisant force, and will destroy more.
So, what do I mean with the war against Ukraine not being an artillery war? We need to look at the epitome of all artillery wars.
The Great War
Before Prinz Ferdinand was being a d*ck for the last time, Europe was a weird place. It was to all points and purposes a place that was in a permanent wartime economy. All countries had built factories large as entire fair-sized cities, with a single purpose.
And that was to produce artillery shells. Everyone had stockpiles so large that it had started to impact food production in Europe as fields got covered in shell dumps along the borders. And all countries had developped plans to rush troops and artillery to the frontlines to be able to use those huge stockpiles.
And they had also developped alliances, both with countries that would participate on their side, but also with countries that were neutral and would supply them with even more shells. It was like the Dutch Tulip Fever, but with shells.
The economies had grown entirely dependant on producing shells. And in the end, the only economically viable option was to use them, otherwise Europe would be smothered in piles of them. You think I’m joking? Sadly I’m not joking, the numbers are there.
As soon as The Great War all nations discovered that unless the war lasted more than two years, their stockpiles built up over 2 decades, would not last. So, they increased production tenfold from the already insane number of 43,75 million shells per year.
During The Great War all sides of the war used a grand total of 1.75 BILLION shells, or roughly 1.2 MILLION shells per day during the entirety of the war. For reference, in 38 days of the war they fired as many shells as in the entire war against Ukraine.
That is 44 shells per every soldier participating in The Great War. The number in Ukraine is 15 shells per soldier, but the real number is around 10 since Russia waste so much on civilian targets.
Now, let us instead think length of frontlines. The Great War had a combined length of frontlines of roughly 2 000km, but it is a bit hard to calculate since it shifted so much. But 2 000km is a good estimate of the maximum extension. In Ukraine it is roughly 1 200km.
That equates to 875 000 shells per Great War Frontline Kilometre, whereas in Ukraine the number is 37 500 shells per kilometre. And the timeframe is comparable.
I would like to also state that The Great War is the best analogy to compare with since we are dealing with trench warfare, and are in large portions fought the same.
Precission Difference
I have often pointed out that modern western artillery is much more precise than Russian artillery, but the average for dumb shells fired from both sides are not so great compared to the artillery of the Great War.
The reason for this is that the artillery in Ukraine is used over greater distances, deteriorating the precission, whereas the artillery during WWI was mainly fired over relatively short distances.
Drone Numbers
We should incorporate drone numbers here. But they are a miniscule percentage even in the war against Ukraine. About 15 percent on top of the shell number, or roughly 6 million drones have been used, or 5 WWI days worth of shells.
Aerial Bombs
Neither side have used aerial bombs to any great degree, even though people grunt about Russian gliding bombs, and cheer the ones dropped by Ukraine.
It is still a **** in the sea compared to what was used during WWII. And weirdly enough they are struggling to drop as much ordinance weight as was dropped during WWI from Sopwith Camels and the like.
Why?
I have dubbed it The Artillery Conundrum. People are not understanding that this war unlike The Great War was shaped by lack of the consumables needed to fight it, and still is shaped by it. Neither side had what it took to fight it, nor do any side have the production capacity to fight a high-capacity industrial war.
They lack the shells needed to pound through the frontlines and their trenches and fortifications. And the drones are to lightweight to make any great difference beyond keeping up mortality figures.
And due to the abundance of Air Defence Systems, neither side have been able to use their air forces for enough bombing campaigns to make any significant difference. It is not until now we
are seeing increases in air power and strike missions, caused by the significantly lower amount of Russian capable AD.
We can also state that rocket artillery is useful, but it does not survive for long due to the drones. Instead we see that high precission missile artillery is useful. But it is to expensive to ever be able to solve the problem of blowing ourselves a path through frontlines like these.
Armour
This leaves us with Armour to talk about, and everyone is drawing the wrong conclusions here too.
The tank for instance have gone the way of the dodo. Not due to drones necessarily, manpads are the real reason why it is dead as a concept.
Wait, what now, we see drones blowing up Russian tanks every day? Yes, entirely true. But that is due to flawed design and bad training. Notice that all the kill hits come on tanks where the crew is riding with open hatches.
This comes for two reasons, the first is that tankers love to ride with hatches open and the commander having half his chest outside since it is “manly”. A deadly affectation that started during WWII and still persists, even though it is the height of stupidity.
The reason that Russians do it even under direct fire is that their tanks are not designed with good sight cupolas. So to see the enemy, or even where they are going, they need to stick out there heads. And that negates any benefit of having armour to begin with.
Especially when your enemy can slide a drone into your open hatch as you comes riding along. With the hatches closed the crew would mostly be safe from the drones. A modern Leopard II, or a modern Abrams does not have this problem, and the crews are trained to go hatch-down as soon as it starts to smell fishy…
No, the real problem is the manpads, even in Ukraine, Ukrainians are bopping more tanks with manpads than they do with drones. Second largest killer of Russian tanks is artillery.
So, a huge lumbering tank unable to keep manpad carrying infantry down with strafing fire is basically an expensive target that is easy to send to the scrap heap.
Weirdly tracked light armous is faring far better, mainly due to higher speed, and weaponry able to produce significant strafing fire. They also carry soldiers that can jump out at a jiffy to create cover fire and fight of infantry.
Next are wheeled armoured vehicles. They work even better due to even higher speed, it is hard to aim a manpad at them at a distance, and they also have strafing capability.
Some tracked IFVs and many wheeled iFVs are though susceptible to drones, but far from all, the heavier ones will just shake those hits off.
Real Lessons from Ukraine
The first lesson is that we need an extensive capacity to take out enemy arms and munitions production over large distances. Ukrainian drones and missiles going for factories have done more to shorten the war than anything else.
If anything new has come out of this war, it is this lesson. We need ballistic missiles and cruise missiles with great range able to obliterate factories. And this must be stockpiled in suitable numbers.
Second lesson is something that both sides have failed miserably at. And that is to take out all logistics infrastructure at depth from the active frontline. I have harped about this to Ukraine ad absurdum, and even gave them a limited example, on how effective it is. But no…
This is Ukraines largest mistake in the war. If they had concentrated more on this the war would have been over by now. I so firmly believe in this lesson that it is now the core of the EU doctrine.
Third lesson is the need for artillery production capacity. And this includes aerial bombs of all types, shells, missile artillery and drones. Included in this is the need for extensive stockpiles large enough to convince any enemy that nibbling on EU is a very bad idea.
Fourth lesson is that it is important to have the ability to rapidly and forcefully take out the enemy air defence systems so that you can use your air power effectively. The first one to achieve this will gain air superiority. And this ability must be stockpiled and available on day one of a war.
Fifth lesson is that we need strategic bombers and dedicated tactical bomber aircraft. These should be both stealthy and use AI over pilots. We need to be able to deliver huge numbers of aerial bombs with low risk to ourselves.
Sixth lesson, tanks are a thing of the past. They are not fast enough, and they no longer have a dedicated mission on the modern battlefield that merits the high cost and heavy maintenance burden that comes with them.
Fast tracked IFVs can fill the role of the tanks, and add more versatility to the battlefield, speed on the battlefield and high average army mobility speed is my seventh lesson.
The eigth lesson is the final one, and the most surprising. Drones will be a shortlived fad. Que? You’ve lost your damn mind!
The Sumy Experiment
It is no secret that I love the CV90 IFV. So, it is natural that I want a heck of a lot of those for the EDF. And the happy people at BAE Systems Hägglunds have been studying things in Ukraine, and cobbled together definitive electronic warfare systems as well as kinetic defensive systems for the Block IV CV90s.
Four of those were sent as trial examples to Ukraine for our ongoing testing of them. Me being me, ordered those to be used in a livefire experiment. What the crews though about it can best be described as “Aw hell no”, but they still ended up doing it.
We did though let Ukrainian drone operators train on the vehicles first, and that experiment gave the IFV crews the somewhat reluctant drive to do the full experiment against live armed drones.
At a stretch in Sumy Russia has their best drone unit, so we rushed the 4 IFVs there, and then parked them for a full 24 hours. And sure enough, Russia started to use drones on them, and for 24 hours not a single drone got through.
And no, I’m not a murderous sadist, even if one would have gotten through they would have survived in the CV90, albeit been a bit hard of hearing. At that point the experiment would have been called of since it would have been a failure.
How many drones? 73 was downed. And similar tests have been done with smaller systems with a simple radar and a machine gun that is steared by actuators with almost as good results.
The only way to get around kinetic systems like these are to make the drones as fast as artillery shells. And that will just make them more expensive than the shells was to begin with.
To return to the CV90s. And here comes where drones will remain and continue to shine. Each of them are equiped with a surveillance drone hangar/charger, and have a seat for dedicated pilots and surveilance experts.
It is our current estimate that systems like these when massproduced will remove 90 percent of the current usage of drones. And we even have hope that these might even impact artillery shells, bombs and slow moving missiles.
I think this will be the future legacy of the drone problem, that our distributable AD will become much better and cheaper.
Russian Air Defence
Russia is running out of air defence systems. Last week they brought in a brand new S400 system to cover the Sumy frontline. It survived for 4 hours.
This means that Ukraine can now hit almost any target inside Russia with even simple means, and that includes even arms factories.
But the biggest difference is happening in Crimea, that for periods now is entirely out of air defence. This means that Russia had to move a warship in to provide air defence services, it was though sunk.
It has also made it possible for Ukraine to bring out their Bayraktar TB2s for usage against targets in Kherson and Northern Crimea. And that is what they are good at, strafing of targets on the ground from the air.
At the same time Russia has weirdly started an offensive with the aim of retaking Northern Kherson. It is obviously not going that well against drones and other arms, up to and including attack aircraft, bombing them.
There’s just no way for them to cross the water, and even if they get a toehold on nearby islands, those are soon cleared by Ukraine using distal means.
It is as such a huge waste of lives. And that is working in the benefit of Ukraine, who clearly have increased their attention in this region. "
militarnyi.com
bsky.app
