The war in Ukraine is pushing Russia away from its WWII-style artillery strategy, and experts say it's 'a concerning trend' (2024)

On one hand, that's a reassuring sign that Russia can't produce enough rounds to continue launching mass artillery barrages. However, it also means that Ukrainian troops will have to face more accurate — and more effective — Russian fire.

Russian forces are still using an array of howitzers, mortars, and rockets, and Moscow is looking for more ammo to keep them firing, but "the trend appears to be towards maximizing accuracy and reducing the number of rounds necessary to achieve the desired outcome rather than resorting to saturation fire," according to a new report by Britain's Royal United Services Institute think tank.

"This is a concerning trend, as over time it will likely significantly improve Russian artillery," write the report's authors, Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds.

Using artillery as a rapier rather than a sledgehammer is a change for an army that has traditionally relied on massive numbers of cannon to compensate for deficiencies in training and tactics — as Stalin is said to have quipped, "quantity has a quality all its own."

For example, the June 1944 Soviet offensive that destroyed an entire German army group, Operation Bagration, was preceded by a two-hour barrage by 7,000 howitzers, mortars, and rocket launchers that pulverized German defenses. The Battle of the Seelowe Heights, which opened the Red Army's path to Berlin, began with Soviet artillery firing 500,000 shells in 30 minutes.

Russian artillery doctrine is still largely based on extensive analysis of World War II data to determine how many shells were needed to achieve a specific effect. "For example, 720 rounds were assessed to be necessary to achieve the suppression of a platoon fighting position," the report noted. "This is the basis on which Russian fires operated in the opening phases of their invasion of Ukraine."

But even with a large defense industrial base to churn out munitions, Russian gunners in Ukraine can't maintain a rate of fire that has reached 30,000 shells a day. Such intensity wears out the guns, requires extensive support, and is less viable as Russia loses the radars it needs to find and suppress Ukrainian artillery.

"First, Russian forces lack the ammunition to sustain this volume of fire," the RUSI report said. "Second, the logistics enabling such a volume of fire is too vulnerable to detection and long-range precision strike. Third, the loss of counterbattery radar and barrel wear have meant that this mass approach to fire suppression is of diminishing effectiveness."

Instead, Russia is switching to the "reconnaissance fires complex," a concept that uses real-time sensor information — mostly from drones — to quickly call in precision artillery fire on designated targets. It's a system long used by Western armies and increasingly by Ukraine as it receives Western artillery and smart shells such as the Excalibur, a US-made GPS-guided 155-mm round.

Russia is now prioritizing production of Krasnopol 152-mm laser-guided munitions, "with newly manufactured shells being widely available across the front," the RUSI report said. Small drones — many of them commercial models from companies such as China's DJI — fly constantly to locate Ukrainian positions and troop movements.

Ukrainian forces have suffered from numerous attacks by "kamikaze" drones, including military-grade Lancet loitering munitions, Iranian-made Shahed-136s, and hobby quadcopters carrying explosives. Russia is also constantly upgrading its drones, such as making the Shahed-136 less noisy, and improving their resistance to jamming.

"The growth in the complexity, diversity and density of Russian UAVs is concerning," the RUSI report noted, using the acronym for unmanned aerial vehicles.

This doesn't mean that Russia is giving up on saturation bombardment. Much of its Cold War-era artillery is designed for area fire rather than for targeting a single target with a single shell.

According to the RUSI report, Russia continues "to rely heavily" on multiple-launch rockets, 120-mm mortars, and "other imprecise systems," and "corner-cutting in the production of its munitions is becoming apparent."

As German survivors of Katyusha salvoes can attest, saturation fire can be quite devastating, but its effectiveness varies. At the Seelowe Heights in 1945, the Germans withdrew from forward trenches just before the Soviet bombardment, rendering much of that preplanned barrage ineffective. It's a wasteful way of war that Russia can no longer afford.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds a master's in political science. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.