"Outgunned" - Artillery & The War in Ukraine - Developments, lessons, & logistics

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Opening words 0:00

0:00Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24th we talked a lot about anti-tank guided missiles, the Javelins and the NLAWs.

0:06The weapons that were so important in helping to halt the Russian armoured thrusts in the early stages of the war.

0:11We talked about drones, including the famous TB2 Bayraktars that had tremendous success in the early stages of the war, but do

0:18now find themselves a little more challenged by the cohesive Russian air defence.

0:22But above all, there is one combat arm that has dominated the later stages of the Ukrainian war, and that's the one

0:26that we're going to be talking about today.

0:29The artillery, the centrepiece of Russian military doctrine, and one of the most decisive weapons of the war to date in eastern

0:32Ukraine. Because sometimes new problems require old solutions.

0:40And where airborne assaults and rapid armour advances have failed, well there's not exactly much left in the Russian playbook other than

0:46the steady application of 60,000 rounds a day until the enemy ceases to exist.

0:51Now before we jump into all of that with that said, a word from our sponsor for today's video.

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2:10shot. So what am I going to be covering?

What Am I covering? 2:14

2:14First I'm going to look at the opposing arms as they were before the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian War.

2:21I'm going to look at the Russian artillery arm, the Ukrainian artillery arm, and put them side to side in terms of

2:24the equipment they had available to them.

2:27Then I'm going to give a little bit of a summary of how the artillery war to date has evolved.

2:32How artillery was useful during the opening stages, during the Russian assault on Kyiv.

2:36And how it's evolved as the fight has shifted towards a more static fight in the Donbas and the eastern parts of

2:39Ukraine. Then I'm going to look at ammunition and sustainment issues - it's me, it wouldn't be one of my videos if

2:45we didn't look at economics, procurement or sustainment in some way.

2:49So we're going to discuss ammunition supply, barrel life, and items like that.

2:53Then we're going to take this all together and we're going to look for potential early lessons that we can take away.

2:57Just as with our drones video, just as with our discussion of the future of the tank, we're going to see if

3:02using the information we have available there might be any early lessons here for NATO countries, or indeed for countries around the

3:05world. Before I jump in there is a reminder, as always, that I'm coming at this from a very specific perspective, I'm

3:13coming at this issue from a strategic, from a procurement, and from a logistics lens.

3:19There are plenty of combat veterans out there on YouTube and other sources that are happy to talk about the specific tactics

3:23that are being employed. Instead I'm going to be focusing on the overview, coupled with the lessons we can take in terms

3:29of the big picture. Long before the February invasion of Ukraine the Russian Army was known as an artillery heavy and centric

The competing forces 3:32

3:34force. Historically, the Soviet Union placed an immense emphasis in its doctrine and its tactics on the massed employment of both gun

Russia - An Artillery Army 3:38

3:43and rocket-based artillery systems. This sort of doctrinal inheritance has passed into the hands of the Russian Army.

3:51And while the vast numbers of weapons that defined the Soviet Union are no longer present, the Russian Army is still one

3:56of the most heavily armed forces in the world when it comes to gun and rocket artillery.

4:02They've employed it to great effect in all of their post-1991 conflicts, falling back on it whenever other more complicated tactics have

4:06failed. They fell back on it in Grozny, they fell back on it in Syria, and now after the initial attempts at

4:13a manoeuvre war in Ukraine, they've fallen back on it there too.

4:18And if you have any doubt as to how important the Russians consider artillery, you just have to look at the Military

4:22Balance 2021 figures that I've used here.

4:26The Russian ground forces had more than 4,500 artillery systems in service in 2021.

4:32That includes 1,900 self-propelled guns, which is where the artillery system is mounted in its own mobile mount, like the Msta-S guns

4:37that you see there. Only 150 old-style towed guns.

4:43They had more than 870 MLRS which means Multiple Launch Rocket Systems.

4:47Which is where you take a big pod of rockets, stick it on a motorised platform and go fire them all off

4:49at someone. This started for the Russians with the Katyusha of World War Two and has evolved into much more modern forms.

4:58And then finally there's the mortars.

4:58The lighter, shorter-ranged indirect-fire weapon that lob a shell in a high trajectory so it can come plunging down on the target.

5:08But in addition to that 4,500 pieces of active kit (which is actually less than what the United States was able to

5:12field in the same year), the Russians have this titanic reserve of old Cold War and even some World War Two era

5:20kit in reserve. Another 4,200 self-propelled guns, 12,000 old towed guns, 3,220 old MLRS systems, and an additional 2,590 mortars.

5:36That is a lot of boom when you consider when we talked about Germany the other day, that the Bundeswehr was considered

5:40dangerously under-gunned if it handed off more than 7 of its self-propelled guns at any given time.

5:48The old joke goes that the Russians and the Soviets never really throw anything away in a military sense.

5:53And certainly when you look at their artillery park, that seems to be the case.

5:56It is in fact such a ludicrously large number of things that go boom that if you stripped everyone, and I mean

6:00basically everyone, the administrators, the cooks, the truck drivers, everyone that you could find in Russia's pre-war ground forces, you might ...

6:10might be able to man all of these systems.

6:14But then you'd be playing the real world equivalent of "artillery only" in Hearts of Iron.

6:18You wouldn't have much of anything else left, you wouldn't have logistics, you wouldn't have infantry and you wouldn't have an armoured

6:22corps. You also wouldn't have administrators, so good luck getting anyone paid.

6:27And just like Russia's other combat arms the artillery includes ...

6:32let's just say a variety of products, ranging from the very modern and world-beating to the things that have been packed in

6:36Cosmoline for just a few decades too many.

Russian Artillery: Cutting edge stuff 6:40

6:40Because we need to remember that Russian industry can and has produced some pretty complex weapon systems.

6:47And given the importance that Russia places on the artillery, you shouldn't be surprised to know that they have some systems which

6:50are generally comparable or superior to many Western and NATO systems.

6:56They've got some very long range and guided rocket systems, they've got some very advanced self-propelled guns.

7:01The problem that the Russians have, as with many of their other advanced weapon systems, is the production runs of the very,

7:06very, very good stuff tends to be relatively limited.

7:11Their new generation multiple launch rocket systems: they've got a couple of hundred of them, and a limited production run of the

7:15guided and advanced munitions for them.

7:19The Msta-SM, which is the modernised version of the original gun, they've only got about 320 of them.

7:23It's a minority of the guns that they have in service that have been modernised to that standard, at least as of

7:27the 2021 figures. And finally, when you look at their newest most modern gun, the Koalitsiya-SV, 12 - maybe - prototype stage.

7:38Basically this thing is the artillery equivalent of the Su-57, a really advanced, very capable system that really seems stuck for the

7:44moment in the prototype stage. But this is Russia, so they also have a whole bunch of museum pieces dating back as

Russian Artillery: Most is good old soviet artillery 7:48

7:52far as the early Cold [War], or even the Second World War.

7:55People have joked on Reddit and in the news that they hope to see World War Two-era tanks coming out of storage.

8:01Sorry to say the Russians don't have any left for that purpose, there are no T-34s that are going to be appearing

8:03on the Ukrainian front. But you may still, if the war goes long enough, maybe get to see some World War Two

8:10relics in action. They've got M1938 mortars which were originally designed in 1938.

8:16D1 howitzers from 1943 onwards. And of course, if the figures are to be believed, still a small number (about 100) of

8:22the old BM-13 Katyusha itself, the classic.

8:27The weapon that was involved in pushing the Germans out of Ukraine during World War Two.

8:31Nominally, at least some of those old systems are still in service, although I don't know what model and calibre.

8:37Now when you think about this seriously, there are probably some pretty significant issues with bringing kit this old back into service.

8:44Do you still have ammo for it?

8:44Does anyone remember how to use it?

8:47And are World War Two performance standards really up to the challenge of today, where there are HIMARS systems out there throwing

8:51GMLRS rockets around the place. Who knows?

8:56It's been a strange war. But most of the Russian arsenal sits squarely in between those two extremes.

Russian Artillery: Most is good old soviet artillery 9:00

9:04Not super-modern guns like the Koalitsiya, not World War Two-era systems like the BM-13, but instead some of the products of the

9:09mid and late Cold War, huge stocks of Soviet artillery.

9:14That graph there is very approximate, but what it charts there in rough terms is the number of artillery systems that are

9:19in service. Blue weapons are in service, and orange are weapons that are in reserve.

9:25The left-hand column is guns and weapon systems that were designed after the fall of the Soviet Union and manufactured after the

9:28fall of the Soviet Union. As you can see, all of the ones they have are in service, but there aren't a

9:32huge number of them. The middle column is weapons that were designed during the Soviet era.

9:41This makes up the majority of the arsenal, and most of those weapons are the towed guns that are in reserve.

9:46And on the right hand side are weapons that were designed during World War Two, and may have been produced afterwards, but

9:50were designed during the World War Two era.

9:54Or indeed in some cases, even earlier.

9:57But most of the weapon systems, both in service and reserve, come from this Cold War era, at least in their design.

10:03The 2S3 Akatsiya is one of the more common self-propelled guns, 850 in service, 1,000 in reserve.

10:08And by the way, for an army that repeatedly stresses just how manly it is, it sure is good that the Russians

10:12name a lot of their artillery pieces after damn flowers.

10:17Anyway, so they've also got the 2S12 guns, 700 in service, 1,000 in reserve.

10:21The BM-21, the famous Grad, I've got a picture of one there.

10:24This is a multi-tube rocket launch system, it's really designed to hit area targets.

10:29And there are 550 of these things in service, about 2,000 of them in reserve.

10:33And finally the relatively modern Msta-S, there's 536 of those guns in service, 150 older versions in reserve.

10:41My point here is that Russia has a ground-shattering world-dominating artillery force that in terms of numbers, especially of weapons and reserves,

10:47dominates many of its opponents. But a lot of what is sitting in there in reserve is stuff that was produced in

10:55the Soviet Union, by the Soviet Union, to the standards of the Cold War era or the World War Two era.

11:02Not necessarily for the modern battlefield, and we'll talk about the implications of that a little bit later on.

Guns of Ukraine 11:07

11:07Now Russia wasn't the only beneficiary of all the weapons left over from the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has a

11:11very large artillery park of its own.

11:15In fact if you'd compared it against just about any other European state before war broke out on February 24th, Ukraine would

11:21have dominated in terms of number of tubes and rocket launchers compared to just about anyone else on the continent - except

11:25Russia. They have a huge number of Soviet systems.

11:29More than 600 self-propelled guns, about 500 towed guns and 354 MLRS systems.

11:37At least estimated according to Military Balance 2021.

11:4081 of those rocket systems, by the way, are the very large, very powerful Smerch 300mm rocket projectors.

11:47Now like Russia they've also got a couple of ancient pieces from the Cold War that they have pulled out of storage.

11:53The 2S7 Pion, which we will see a little bit of later, they had 83 of them and we've seen a lot

11:55of evidence of them in service.

11:59So on paper this is a very, very serious artillery force.

12:03But I'm not going to dwell on it the way I did with the Russians for a couple of reasons.

12:07And the biggest reason is that Ukraine isn't really limited by its number of guns or missile launchers.

12:12It's limited by how much ammunition it has to fire from them.

12:15A 2S7 Pion by itself with 203mm shells is an incredibly dangerous weapon capable of reaching out to 37.5 kilometres effectively.

12:25Or 55 kilometres if it's got the right ammunition and fires at a full charge.

12:29But if you run out of ammunition, you're basically reduced to trying to run people over with an extremely slow moving, unwieldy,

12:33monster truck. You can have all the guns in the world, the best guns in the world, but if you've got no

12:41ammunition to fire from them, well you've got 46.5 tons of nothing.

NATO support 12:47

12:47And that's part of the reason why NATO's support for Ukraine has been so essential.

12:51Ukraine is basically trying to transition over to entirely new weapon systems mid-war which is always something that's pretty challenging to do.

12:58Now in the opening days of the war NATO did tap on the shoulders of all of its former Warsaw Pact members,

13:01and they were able to drum up a whole bunch of old Soviet systems.

13:06So Grads and various SPGs, like Akatsiyas, Those mostly came from the former Warsaw Pact countries, and a lot of people were

13:09able to find some supplies of 152mm shells, 122mm rockets.

13:18The kind of stuff that Ukraine needs to fire out of its old Soviet hand-me-downs.

13:22But now, as supplies of that start to run out (and we'll examine that issue more later), they are trying to standardise

13:26around new NATO systems, 155mm artillery guns and 227mm rocket systems.

13:34So they've received more than 140 towed guns, 155mm.

13:39Those are mostly M777s from America, Canada and Australia.

13:43They've also got a whole number of self-propelled guns from places like Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, etc.

13:50You can see a supply of them there, the Caesar guns from France.

13:52And 14 MLRS systems (these are multiple launch rocket systems) are pledged, of which only 4 are known to be in the

13:56country at this time. Which means you end up with a force that operates both this, the best that American engineering can

14:03provide, and this fine example of Ukrainian local ingenuity.

14:09It's quite the diverse artillery park.

14:12So that's where Ukraine finds itself.

14:12It's got a relatively large park of Soviet gear, including a lot of stuff they captured from the Russians during the early

14:17stages of this war, but precious little ammunition to feed them.

14:22And then by contrast it's got a relatively small number of NATO systems, and plenty of ammunition to feed them, which leads

14:26to all sorts of interesting challenges.

14:30Anyway, that's a run-through of what the forces looked like before the war started.

14:34Let's have a quick look at how the artillery war has evolved.

Artillery in Ukraine 14:37

14:37Because the fighting in Ukraine has evolved significantly over time.

14:41One of the only constants is that artillery has played a decisive role on either side through all stages of it.

The road to Kyiv 14:47

14:47So in the opening stage of the war we had the grand Russian thunder run towards Kyiv.

14:52Starting from their staging areas in Belarus, the Russians force a large number of light forces in the vanguard followed by armour.

14:59And these pressed forward from their Belarusian staging areas to try and take the Ukrainian capital and a number of cities on

15:02that northern flank of Ukraine. In this stage of the war the narrative focused very heavily on Javelin, Stugna, NLAW.

15:12These were the anti-tank guided missile systems that either Ukraine had or that the West pushed to Ukraine as fast as possible

15:15in order to halt the Russian tanks.

15:20And we've got a whole bunch of videos of tanks being ambushed with anti-tank guided missile teams, and being steadily eroded on

15:24these long roads towards Kyiv. And we've talked about this grand stage of the Russian YOLO manoeuvre towards Kyiv before.

15:33The Russians in ... the armoured vehicles, lacking enough dismounted infantry or fire support, found it extremely difficult to push through Ukrainian

15:39positions that were staffed with large numbers of infantry units that were carrying anti-tank guided missiles.

15:46... All the while having their logistics eroded by ambushing teams of Territorial Defence Forces and Ukrainian Special Forces that were being

15:53called up and manoeuvred in order to attack the Russian supply lines.

15:57But having a look at a lot of the drone footage and filming from this era as well as the comments of

16:01both Western ... commentators as well as pro-Russian sources, it seems pretty clear that while Javelin and Stugna and NLAW and these

16:05missile systems were important in stopping these armoured thrusts, it wasn't them that actually caused the majority of the casualties.

16:16The majority of the casualties were caused by the artillery.

16:20You see, in a lot of these cases what appears to have happened is the Russian artillery wasn't at the vanguard of

16:23the advance. That makes sense, you kind of don't want to stick your long-range guns at the absolute front of the advance

16:28force because they get picked off and ambushed, and they're pretty vulnerable at close range.

16:34But as a result what it meant was that the Russian artillery was often out of range and unable to reply to

16:39Ukrainian batteries that were firing on Russian tanks that were bunched up in the vanguard after being held up by various Ukrainian

16:43positions. That could be an anti-tank guided missile team, it could be an entrenched position, it could be a mechanised unit of

16:51the Ukrainian Army. Either way, the Russian Army would be halted and then the artillery would come in on the Ukrainian side

16:56to do a lot of the damage.

16:59And this makes sense, the Ukrainians were near Kyiv, they could call up Territorial Defence in very large numbers, supplies were easier

17:03to get to Kyiv than they were towards the Donbas.

17:08The Russians invaded during the mud season, which meant they were pretty much stuck on the road.

17:12And they ended up with that long logistical masterpiece that was the convoy to nowhere.

17:16It was perhaps the most mobile stage of the war to date, it was the moment for the Russian manoeuvre forces to

17:20shine. But it was also one of the first moments that seemed to confirm to us that it was very difficult for

17:26Russian manoeuvre elements to push through defended Ukrainian positions without extensive fire support.

17:33And in the early stages of the push on Kyiv, that fire support just wasn't available in large enough numbers.

Shift Towards Static Warfare 17:39

17:39And so most of these grand Russian manoeuvres in the early war failed.

17:43They did take ground in the south of Ukraine.

17:45But in the Donbas and in the north, Russia either made no ground at all, very little ground, or was eventually forced

17:50to retreat, like they were around Sumy and Chernihiv and Kyiv itself.

17:55The airborne operations, the armoured thrusts, the dashing war of manoeuvre didn't really work.

18:01And so what we've seen over time is that Russia falls back on its old tactics, and we see a movement towards

18:05a more static sort of warfare.

18:08Now front-line movements are slow. People talk about Russian advances, but when they do they're measuring advances in hundreds of metres, or

18:15individual towns after the end of a week, or individual population centres within an area.

18:23In Mariupol the reporting would focus on the fall of individual buildings or blocks.

18:28And the fighting over one particular industrial complex, Azovstal, stretched on for seemingly weeks.

18:33This is not blitzkrieg. This is not deep battle.

18:33This is not manoeuvre warfare. This is bringing up artillery to pulverise positions again and again, probe them to see whether they've

18:43been weakened enough for your infantry to take them.

18:46And repeating the process of bashing your forehead against a position until the time when all of the defenders are either killed,

18:50wounded, or finally out of ammunition.

18:56And in that context primacy passes away from the manoeuvre elements, and towards fires, it passes towards the artillery.

19:05So now in Ukraine what we see is slow, methodical, Russian advances that are supported by massive barrages of concentrated artillery forces

19:14(including multiple launch rocket systems like the Grad, as well as a large number of tubed artillery systems as well), that [systematically]

19:20reduce positions until they can finally be occupied.

19:25At the same time we see the Ukrainian guns focused on counter-battery operations, trying to hold back the Russian superiority in raw

19:29firepower. It's not the sort of war that we've seen much of in recent years.

19:36And it's worth asking how it's come to evolve to this point.

19:40Why is the war looking like the war we see?

How the artillery battlespace was born? 19:43

19:43And one of the key factors that goes into explaining why the artillery has become so important is the fact that aviation

19:46on both sides is relatively limited in terms of its ability to impact the battlefield.

19:52I'm not saying aviation is useless, the Russians are still flying several hundred sorties a day.

19:57But when you look at it, the air force really isn't proving to be a decisive weapon on either side.

20:02One of the reasons for this is that both sides have pretty good air defence systems, they've inherited a lot of old

20:06Soviet hardware, which often has a very long range and makes it possible to basically make air support into areas of the

20:10front pretty damn dangerous. I've got a map there in the top right, and the biggest circle there is the ...

20:17approximate range of the S-300 air defence system, which both Russia and Ukraine have.

20:26Russia even has some more modern systems with a longer range than that.

20:29So you can see with one of those systems, you can zone out air operations over a great area of the front.

20:34You compare that to the smaller circles you see within that.

20:37Those are the ... 24 kilometre ranges of an Akatsiya self-propelled gun firing a rocket-assisted projectile.

20:45So what you can see is you can put an air defence system pretty safely behind the lines, and still make it

20:49dangerous to fly at high altitude over the combat zone close enough to drop bombs or fire missiles, or anything like that.

20:57Now one way to evade that is to fly really, really low.

21:00And we've got a lot of evidence of both Russian and Ukrainian aircraft flying very, very low to the ground to avoid

21:04this sort of air defence system.

21:08The problem is down low you've got shoulder-fired missiles, MANPADS.

21:12And Ukraine's been supplied with very large numbers of them.

21:16This is a problem for low-flying aircraft.

21:18It's also a particular problem for helicopters that would often go in and hunt down tanks, armoured vehicles, were it not for

21:22these sort of air defence systems.

21:27So what you have is the Russians launching lots of sorties, but they're mostly only picking around the edges.

21:32They're attacking areas with limited air defences, they're bombing right at the front at the extreme end of the Ukrainian's range, or

21:36they're flying very, very low. In fact in some cases we've seen a lot of videos on both sides of helicopters doing

21:43this weird manoeuvre where well behind the lines they'll fly really low, they'll pitch up, and they'll fire a volley of unguided

21:48rockets in a ballistic arc. This is not accurate.

21:53This is not efficient. They do this because it's too dangerous to actually get in direct line of sight of your targets

21:59and fire accurately. This is what they're doing in order to avoid being shot down by MANPADS.

22:05So when you have helicopters basically acting as airborne artillery, despite being incredibly expensive and that being a huge waste of the

22:09system. And you have most air sorties either being stand-off cruise missile launches in the case of Russia's strategic bombers, or picking

22:17around the edges of Ukrainian defences, well, you need an alternative for fires.

22:25And you need that fire support, because one of the other features is when you're dealing with heavily entrenched positions we're discovering

22:28that a relatively well motivated, dug-in defending infantry force that has access to modern anti-tank missiles and MANPADS is pretty resistant to

22:38being pushed through by a force of tanks.

22:42Particularly if that force of tanks doesn't have a great amount of quality dismounted infantry with it.

22:47And I've previously done a video on why Russia is pretty short on quality capable infantry to support its armoured pushes.

22:54Russia doesn't have the strong manoeuvre elements to push through very heavily dug in Ukrainian defences, so it needs something to even

22:57the odds. So the air force can't do the job.

23:02And with the air force out of operations, or at least limited in its operations, it's safer for big vulnerable artillery guns

23:06to be brought up. It's hard to hide artillery, they're big, they're dumb, they give off big distinctive muzzle flashes, they require

23:15piles of shells. ... When you're talking about towed guns in particular, they are usually, you would think, easy meat for aviation.

23:25But if aviation's been taken out of the fight, suddenly it's safe for the artillery to come out to play.

23:30And if the tanks and the infantry desperately need very large volumes of fire to be put on defended positions to weaken

23:35them so they can finally move forward, well, there's really only one option: you bring up the guns.

23:39You bring up a lot of the guns.

Russian Artillery usage 23:45

23:45And that's exactly what the Russians have done on a pretty massive scale, particularly in the Donbas.

23:50Estimates for Russian shells and rockets fired in the Donbas run a pretty wide range.

23:55We've seen minimum estimates based on reported Russian fire missions of around 7,000 rounds a day, all the way up to 60,000

23:59rounds per day. Ukraine claims to be firing around 3,000 to 6,000 with a general 10:1 disadvantage against Russian systems in the

24:06Donbas. So we can go for a 30,000 to 60,000 figure here.

24:14And much of this firing appears to have been aimed at destroying heavily defended areas, trench systems, fortifications, towns, cities and zones.

24:25Mariupol was blasted to oblivion, Severodonetsk was basically levelled.

24:29And if you look at what Lysychansk looks like now, it also suffered very heavily.

24:33And if you see drone footage of the battlefields outside these areas, the trench systems, it's fields that are absolutely pockmarked with

24:38artillery rounds. But it's important not to portray the Russians just as dumb brutes who are shelling everything that they can see.

24:48Russia is certainly doing area fire missions onto these defended areas, but they're also doing point attacks against specific targets using guided

24:52munitions. This is why a number of Russian commentators complain about the lack of drones, for example.

25:02Because Russia has a guided artillery shell, Krasnopol, but it relies on laser designation.

25:08Which you need a drone in order to do, in order to make the round effective.

25:11So there's sort of a mixed usage of Russian artillery here.

25:15Very large numbers of relatively inaccurate area shooting, and some attempts to be more precise and take out very specific Ukrainian targets.

Weight of fire 25:23

25:23And in some ways the sheer weight of fire unleashed by the Russian Army seems to have worked in some cases, to

25:27have done what doctrine suggested it could do.

25:31Ukrainian and pro-Russian sources in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republic basically agree that Russian artillery has been critical in pushing

25:37the Ukrainians back from their positions in the Donbas, particularly around Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.

25:46The images from Mariupol, Severodonetsk certainly support that as I've said, images of mass destruction by artillery.

25:53If you look at some of the sources on the pro-Russian side, so we've talked about Girkin aka Strelkov before, he's described

25:55the Russian gunners as absolutely vital in determining the outcome of the battles in Donetsk so far.

26:05He's got nothing but harsh words for the infantry forces, and nothing but respect in many cases for the power of the

26:08defending Ukrainian infantry. But he said it's been the gunners that have saved the day time and time again.

26:16At the same time whenever we see Ukrainian units suffering combat fatigue, or complaining about being under equipped, the point of stress,

26:21the point of concern, the thing that they complain about and ask for more of is more guns.

26:28Because the thing that is getting to them is the constant day-in day-out mass shelling by Russian MLRS and Russian gun systems.

26:36Now there is some evidence that this has put some strain on the Russian systems available in the area.

26:41They concentrated an awful lot of battalion tactical groups in the Donbas for the assault on Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.

26:49And as a result we've seen older guns appear in larger and larger numbers, particularly being supplied to DNR and LPR.

26:56In any case, it's safe to say that of all the weapons that the Russians have brought to bear in order to

27:01try and defeat the Ukrainians on the field, the artillery has been by far the most successful.

27:07They struggled to make much headway in the early days with airborne operations, tank thrusts, mechanised infantry attacks.

27:14They've had a lot more success albeit very, very, very, very slow success, through the use of methodical artillery tactics that would

27:22not have been out of place in the First World War.

Ukrainian artillery usage 27:25

27:25In some ways there's evidence that the Ukrainians have been using their artillery a little bit differently.

27:30They still are doing a bunch of conventional suppressive fires, we've seen some evidence of those where they fire in support of

27:34their own units. But there has been a comparatively huge focus on counter-battery fire, and servicing precision targets as small as individual

27:44enemy batteries or individual enemy vehicles.

27:47And we can see that this is so central to Ukrainian strategy in a couple of ways.

27:51It's not just about the video evidence, it's about what they've been supplied with and what they ask for.

27:55Every time the Western allies have announced a supply of additional guns or ammunition to Ukraine, they've also announced a supply of

28:00weapon locating radars, counter-battery radars. Systems that are designed to detect incoming artillery rounds, do some maths based on the trajectory the

28:09round is following, and tell you where the gun that fired that round probably is so that you can put your gun

28:15on that target and service it right back.

28:19Using your artillery to kill their artillery because with neither air force able to go in and clean up that's basically what

28:24they're reduced to doing in a lot of cases.

28:27The Ukrainians have also been making maximum use of things like drones, superior communications equipment, superiority across the whole intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance

28:33sector. They're better at finding targets, and they're trying to hit targets precisely with a main focus on neutering the power of

28:42the Russian artillery, because the Russian artillery is the primary threat to the Ukrainian defensive infantry.

28:50But it's important not to think that precision shooting is all that the Ukrainians are doing.

28:54They wouldn't be spending 6,000 rounds a day if that was all they were doing.

28:57These guys are using M777 howitzers and very large calibre, precise long range guns, but they're also using rocket launchers strapped to

29:06the back of Toyotas that are firing at general area targets.

29:09The Ukrainian artillery force, like the Russian force, is a mixed bag.

29:13It's just the emphasis of their mission that is tilted more heavily towards targets in the operational depth and things that enable

29:17the Russian artillery to do its job.

29:22Unfortunately for Russia, Ukraine has a little bit more in terms of missile launchers than just rockets strapped to the back of

29:26a Toyota Hilux. Because Toyotas are cool, but you know, Uncle Sam has some other things up his sleeve.

The Himars Effect 29:29

29:34One weapon system that Ukraine has begged for longer and harder than just about any other is long-range precision rocket artillery.

29:41In late June they finally got their wish when the first high mobility artillery rocket systems from the United States arrived in

29:44country. As far as we can tell, there are only four of these systems active.

29:51It's basically a wheeled chassis, a truck if you like, with a six pack of rockets on the back.

29:55But it's the rockets themselves that are special, after all, everyone's got rocket artillery.

29:59Russia has ungodly amounts of rocket artillery, so does Ukraine.

30:03What makes the HIMARS that have been sent there different is that every single rocket, we believe, that's been provided is a

30:06GMLRS rocket. These are precision weapons with GPS guidance, that are capable of reaching out 80+ kilometres into the rear areas behind

30:14enemy lines. And as soon as they arrived Ukraine started going ham with the damn things.

30:23And the first target of course has been Russian ammunition depots holding all of the rounds for those thousands of guns that

30:30the Russians have been relying on in order to make their offence possible.

30:33I don't like the term "game-changing weapon", I included it in my myth-busting video for a reason.

30:38And I don't think 4 HIMARS systems do qualify as a game changer.

30:42But they've certainly unlocked some new options for the Ukrainians and had an immediate impact on the Russians, who have started seeing

30:45their ammunition depots go off like everyone suddenly had a chronic smoking habit.

30:52And it's kind of hard to debate the fact that these things have had an immediate impact.

30:57Zelensky's gone out and said, "Thank you, more please," in a way that he hasn't for just about any other weapon system.

31:02We've got video evidence and photos, I'll show you some in a moment, of these Russian depots exploding in spectacular fashion.

31:08We've got pro-Russian sources like Strelkov going out there and specifically calling out the fact that the enemy has now adopted a

31:11new strategy, "the destruction by rocket artillery of important rear facilities of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation." So what the

31:21Ukrainians are doing is they're driving these things around at night, exploiting the fact that they're mobile.

31:24Firing them from the limits of their range and using them to eliminate critical Russian targets behind the lines.

The Depot Blitz 31:32

31:32And frankly the Russian depots have been exploding so frequently and so often that I'm not convinced the Ukrainian crews actually sleep.

31:40In one day five warehouses of artillery ammunition of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, and DNR/LPR were destroyed, presumably by

31:46HIMARS strikes according to Strelkov. We have video evidence of more than half a dozen ammunition depots specifically, and we suspect as

31:57many as 20 sites having been destroyed so far.

32:00Small and large concentrations of ammunition.

32:03One of the targets that was hit in Donetsk was apparently exploding for 20 odd minutes.

32:07Another one exploded so intensely that it evaporated a large section of the town around it.

32:13We've been able to confirm a lot of these too using the FIRMS system.

32:16So NASA has a satellite system that's usually used for tracking wildfires.

32:21And as an Australian I can only applaud this, bushfires are basically our national enemy.

32:26And the development of satellite-based systems in order to counter them, that just seems like the kind of natural overkill that as

32:29an Aussie I can get behind.

32:33But when an ammunition depot goes up or a large artillery barrage takes place, the satellite kind of can't tell the difference

32:37between a wildfire and a massive artillery barrage, or a burning artillery depot.

32:44So people have been using this open-source satellite system to confirm that, "Yeah, there's a bloody big fire right where we thought

32:48that ammunition depot was." Now of course the Russians have claimed to have already destroyed half of these systems.

32:57But I'll show you the video that they use as proof later on, which to me looks like it pretty clearly shows

33:00them destroying a bush and maybe some sort of truck.

33:03Anyway, we'll look at that later.

33:07And the Ukrainians continue to post images of these weapons being fired.

33:12And of course air bases and ammo dumps continue to explode.

33:15It's kind of hard to sustain an artillery-led offensive if your ammunition dumps keep exploding.

33:21And again Ukraine's currently got 4 of these systems.

33:24Poland's talking about buying 500. Now as well as the HIMARS pattern of coordinated arson across Russian rear areas, there's another feature

Drone spotting 33:28

33:33I wanted to call out before we sum up the war to date.

33:36And that's the omnipresence of drone spotting on both sides.

33:39But particularly in use by the Ukrainians.

33:42In an era where it seems people can get pretty accurate with artillery systems using either guided ammunition or very good target

33:46reference points, well-trained gunners and proper correction, being able to see your opponent is critical.

33:54And we've seen drones used for this role (that was traditionally done by forward artillery observers), on a massive scale.

34:00Drone footage of artillery strikes replaced footage of anti-tank missile ambushes as the war's going on as basically like the dominant visual

34:08evidence of the war that's going on day-to-day.

34:11What you've seen, which is quite interesting from a procurement and force design perspective, is that increasingly we're seeing evidence that Ukrainians

34:16in particular, but to a degree also the Russians, are devolving the duty of spotting down to the battery or even the

34:21individual gun level. With artillery units using their own drones to augment or replace spotters to find their own targets, coordinate their

34:31own fires, and then correct their own fires.

34:36The Russian sources as well, the number that I was able to read on Telegram, talk very heavily about the importance (this

34:43is true of Russian journalists, of DPR and LPR sources, and a number of others), of the importance of getting as many

34:47artillery spotting drones as possible. And identifying drones that can laser designate for Krasnopol rounds, or coordinate and spot for artillery fires

34:55as absolutely critical for how the war is going to go on.

35:01The Ukrainians do have an advantage in many ways with this sort of drone-spotted shooting.

35:07For one, that they can rely on known target reference points.

35:11They're the defenders, which means that Ukraine has had many, many years since 2014 to measure distances, identify potential gun positions, identify

35:19geographical features and pre-decide target reference points.

35:23So if they see a bend in the road, they've already done the calculation on how to hit that bend in the

35:26road or how to adjust from it.

35:29They know how to use their visual cues better because they're the defender.

35:33They also have a reasonable supply of very accurate artillery systems.

35:36The M777 is more accurate than many of the Soviet systems.

35:40It also has a larger bursting charge, so it's more tolerant of misses than many of the Soviet systems.

35:45And of course now they have HIMARS and precision guided rockets as well.

35:49So Ukraine has an advantage in this sort of precision shooting.

35:53Not just reducing entire areas but firing at individual concentrations of vehicles, or in many cases, individual vehicles.

36:00But the Russians also have tools available to them and are calling for more.

36:04So with all that said, what's the actual balance of the artillery duel at the moment?

36:09Is it a completely one-way fight in which the Russians are basically pasting the Ukrainians?

36:14Have the Ukrainians suddenly taken the lead thanks to the introduction of 4 advanced rocket launcher systems from Uncle Sam?

36:20Well, let's have a look at each front individually because they each tell a slightly different story.

From the Front: The Donbass 36:24

36:24In the Donbas itself, everyone on both sides agrees that Russia continues to enjoy a crushing artillery advantage.

36:32The figure of 10:1 to one is often thrown out by Ukrainian sources.

36:35And the Russians in the Donbas are equally complementary of their artillery and the advantages that they enjoy.

36:41When we look at the FIRMS data, so you've got a map there to the right, those dots are basically what the

36:44NASA fire detection satellites are identifying as fires.

36:50But in almost every case in Ukraine at the moment those aren't people like messing up on their smoko break, those are

36:53concentrations of artillery fire that you're seeing.

36:58So what you're seeing is a lot more shells landing in the Ukrainian-controlled zones, and relatively few strikes in the Russian-controlled zones.

37:05The Russians are attempting to fire on defensive positions, trench lines, the ridges defending some of these cities.

37:12While the Ukrainians are focused on targeting areas in the Russian rear.

37:16So those might be artillery batteries, those might be supply areas, targets that might be used to slow down the Russian offensive

37:22rather than targeting Russian units right at the absolute extreme of the line.

37:26So it's not that there is no Ukrainian fire, we can see those dots on the Russian side there.

37:31There's evidence of Ukrainian counter-battery efforts being made in this area.

37:35But the Russians enjoy pretty clear crushing artillery superiority in this area, which they're probably going to rely on if they want

37:40to move on to try and take Seversk.

From the Front: Kherson 37:44

37:44Now if you look at the satellite data and also the reporting that's coming out of the Kherson region by comparison, it's

37:47actually a little bit more balanced.

37:51There's still a preponderance of Russian fires into Ukrainian front line areas, you can see those concentrations.

37:57This is I think 6th June, but this is fairly representative of the days that have gone over the last week or

38:00so. But at the same time Ukraine is also firing into Russian forward areas.

38:06And we've seen shallow attempts at Ukrainian offensives here that haven't really gone anywhere recently.

38:12But certainly in terms of the artillery exchange, the data we have available suggests that it might be a little bit more

38:17evenly matched here. Ukrainians also on the Kherson front have had a number of deep strikes where they fire at targets well

38:24into the operational depth, air fields, ammo dumps.

38:28You can see some of those long distance strikes in the bottom corner of the map there.

From the Front: Izium 38:33

38:33The Izium front is interesting because it really depends on who you ask.

38:37Some of the ostensibly pro-Russian but a little bit more negative sources, so the Strelkovs of the world, actually argue that in

38:42some parts of the Izium front the Russian artillery is in some ways outmatched by its Ukrainian equivalent.

38:49And you can see evidence in the FIRMS data here of a lot of Ukrainian strikes that are landing well behind the

38:53lines attacking positions near Izium, which is one of the key Russian logistical bases supporting the offensive further south.

39:02At the same time the number of Russian bombardments of the actual Ukrainian areas is much lighter in the Izium area historically,

39:06at least over the last week or so, than it is in other areas like Kherson and like the Donbas.

39:14And I need to stress here, we're using very limited information to try and make these observations.

39:20We've got a combination of a satellite system that was designed to detect wildfires that we're re-purposing to detect artillery, with what

39:24people are posting on Telegram on both sides and what video evidence we're able to get out.

39:32So we have images of things blowing up around Izium, we have people on the pro-Russian side complaining about the situation around

39:34Izium but saying that they're basically still able to hold the Ukrainians in place.

39:43I mean the alternative is that maybe there are just a whole bunch of Russians walking around the forests and ammunition depots

39:46carrying canisters of gasoline and smoking.

39:51I don't know, maybe they have really lax safety standards.

39:54But I'm going to go with the assumption, until proven otherwise, that it's probably the Ukrainians shelling them.

Ammunition and sustainment 39:59

39:59So that's what the war looks like so far.

40:01Crushing Russian advantages in the Donbas, which they have used to level towns and defensive positions in order to try and reclaim

40:05some momentum. And it's been successful in Severodonetsk, Popasna and in Lysychansk.

40:13At the same time there are other areas of the front where the Ukrainians enjoy a little bit more of a parity

40:16when it comes to artillery systems.

40:19Very heavily reliant on their new M777 and other 155mm self-propelled guns and systems.

40:26And at the same time there are 4 very, very motivated artillery rocket system crews, I presume drinking a lot of energy

40:32drinks, blowing up every strategic target they can find.

40:37Who see every pile of 152mm shells as something just begging for their personal attention.

40:43How long can this be sustained?

40:46Because ... if that's the war as it stands, my question then, my contribution essentially becomes how does this come together in

40:51terms of procurement, in terms of maintenance, logistics and sustainment?

40:57And what lessons can we take away from it so far?

Barrels and lifespan 41:00

41:00The first point I want to make here is that guns themselves are essentially consumables.

41:04Or specifically, the barrels of guns are consumables.

41:07If you think about what an artillery system does.

41:10You're detonating an explosive mixture of extremely hot propellant gases in order to throw a hunk of metal out of the end

41:15of a metal tube at very, very, very high speed.

41:21At the same time in order to make sure that round is accurate, the inside of your gun has very fine rifling

41:25to make sure that the round is spinning and stabilised, and goes roughly where you want it to go.

41:31Now modern guns are not in fact made of adamantium, which means that over time you fire enough rounds and that rifling

41:35starts to wear down. As a result as you start to lose that rifling and as your barrel starts to wear out,

41:42you start to lose accuracy. And even worse than that, if you fire enough charges eventually you can also get things like

41:48metal fatigue and induced failures that cause a gun not so much to be inaccurate as to just do things like blow

41:51up in your face. Which is generally considered a sub-optimal outcome for an artillery crew.

41:59Now a lot of artillery systems are loaded in two parts.

42:02You put the shell in, which is the thing you want to throw at the enemy that lands and goes boom or

42:05explodes in the air. And then behind it you load the propellant, which is the thing that detonates in the barrel.

42:11You don't want the shell to detonate in the barrel, that's a bad day, you want the propellant to detonate, generate hot

42:14gases, and throw your round out the barrel.

42:18If you're going a relatively short distance you can load less propellant.

42:21If you're firing the thing to the absolute limits of its range, you're packing that thing to the gills with propellant and

42:26firing at the maximum pressure level it can.

42:29This is why the lifetime of a gun barrel is usually measured in "effective full charges".

42:33It means you can shoot more rounds out of it before it wears out if you're only firing short distances.

42:38Artillery/cannon safe numbers range from maybe 1,000 to 2,000 effective full charge rounds.

42:43This is why there's a lot of reporting that Canada is sending replacement artillery barrels to Ukraine.

42:49This is why there's reporting that a lot of Ukraine's M777 guns, they haven't been destroyed, but they are in for repairs

42:52because they've fired so many rounds that their barrel life has been exceeded.

42:58You see, if you look at the supplies that America declared that it was sending of guns, and same for Canada and

43:01Australia, the number of rounds that were sent was more than can be fired from the guns that were sent before their

43:07barrels ran out. They sent more ammunition than they did guns, relatively speaking.

43:13Those guns now need to be re-barrelled or they lose their accuracy, which is their biggest advantage, their range and their accuracy.

43:19And since they are firing at the maximum extent of their range most the time you imagine, they're probably going to wear

43:24their barrels faster than if they were engaging at a closer distance.

43:28All of this is why I get really surprised at the way pro-Russian commentators on things like Twitter and YouTube respond when

43:36estimates come up of how many rounds of ammunition Russia is firing per day.

43:40In a number of cases I've seen videos from Western media saying Russia is firing say 20,000 rounds of artillery ammunition per

43:45day. And the pro-Russian commentators are racing to say, "No, no, no, they're firing 60,000 rounds a day, Westoid." That's a bad

43:54thing. You see, what you want to do, and maybe this is just the economics and logistics hack coming through a little

43:59too much, is you want to achieve as much as possible while firing as few rounds as possible.

44:08Because every round you fire is one, a round that you don't get back, it's a round you have to replace.

44:13And secondly, it's a little bit of lifetime of your barrel that's been worn away, you'll never get back.

44:17We know how much ground the Russians have taken, we've seen them take Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, we've seen the slow gains in

44:20the Donbas. We also have Ukrainian declarations around casualty rates, so we know that too.

44:29Actually, what the Russians should be wanting to say is they're firing relatively few rounds, that they're being accurate, they're achieving this

44:34with less. 60,000 rounds is actually kind of problematic.

44:40I mean, let's assume for a moment that half of those rounds are coming from howitzers.

44:44And let's give the Russian guns the benefit of the doubt and give them a 2,000 round barrel life.

44:48And assume that all of those barrels were factory fresh, clean as a baby's bum, before they went into service in the

44:53Ukraine War. Which is odd considering a lot of these guns are from the Soviet era, or are late '90s and early

44:592000s manufacture in nature. But let's give them all of those assumptions.

45:05That still means that the Russians are burning out 15 guns a day.

45:09Which is pretty significant because, yes, they have all of those ...

45:09those towed guns in reserve, what they don't have is an infinite supply of modern artillery systems.

45:19The Msta-S and the other more precise, more capable systems.

45:23You can't just replace everything with towed artillery, or you can, but you lose an awful lot of capability.

45:28And if you're burning out these barrels, one of two things is going to happen.

45:32Either you have to re-barrel the gun (and you need to have a spare barrel ready for it), or you're losing accuracy

45:37on the system or you're replacing it with a less accurate system in general.

45:43And as we'll talk about in a moment, accuracy really, really matters.

45:47As for how much capacity the Russians have to re-bore guns, repair them, replace barrels, that's pretty unknown.

45:53What we do know is that at the bare minimum, this is a logistics strain.

45:57It's almost as effective as the Ukrainians destroying 15 guns a day, albeit without destroying the crews in the process.

46:04Or it leads to a significant degradation in the accuracy and capability of the Russian artillery force over time.

46:10The same way it's reduced the capability of Ukrainian artillery force by forcing them to send a number of their M777s back

46:13to have new barrel replacements fitted.

Accuracy matters 46:19

46:19And when I say accuracy matters, that's not just some sort of technological fetishism where I want to buy the most expensive

46:24guided munitions possible. A lot of people who support the ostensible Russian doctrine (it's more of a stereotype than anything, the idea

46:31they'll just level entire towns and fire massive artillery barrages), basically say that, "Well, the accuracy doesn't really matter, what you need

46:40is lots of guns, just fire more rounds." The problem is when you're talking about accuracy and CEPs and kill probabilities, the

46:47maths gets really, really ugly really quickly if you're trying to attack specific targets, or infantry and units in fortified positions like

46:52trench lines. Remember on the first day of the Somme the British fired something like 1.5 million shells, and then they went

47:01over the top and they all got slaughtered.

47:04And that's because if those 1.5 million shells are not accurate and are not capable of killing people that are deep in

47:09their fortifications, they are wasted. It's because missing is really bad.

47:15You don't get points for how many trees and how many clumps of grass you kill.

47:19Really degrading your enemy's military capability is kind of what the artillery is aiming to do.

47:24I mean there's some utility in terms of suppressing fire, scaring people with rounds going off around them.

47:29But ideally you want to hit, and you want to cause some damage.

47:32To give an illustration of the maths for a moment.

47:35If you're talking about something like a 122mm rocket, so something that might come out of a Grad, something that roughly speaking

47:40might have a 21 metre kill radius and land anywhere in a 400 by 400 metre box.

47:47It doesn't sound like something you want to do, but if you stand somewhere in that 400 by 400 box, and that

47:51Grad fires a full salvo of 40 rockets.

47:56Statistically speaking, there's a good chance that you end up fine.

47:59And while people often want to point out that artillery can have very, very large wounding radii.

48:04Like an artillery round landing within 50 metres of you can kill you, out to 150 metres there might be a very

48:08serious shrapnel effect. Those are just illustrative numbers that are in the broad area of correct.

48:15The problem is - that's if you're an infantryman standing in the open.

48:19If you're in a fortification, or a building, or if you're a hard target, then that starts cutting down dramatically.

48:25So, for example, what if you've mastered that old human technique of digging.

48:31The Ukrainians have had years since 2014 to dig relatively intricate trench systems.

48:37They dig themselves into the basements of buildings, they prepare detailed defensive positions, or maybe they're just inside armoured vehicles.

48:44Suddenly hitting within 25, within 50, within 100 metres isn't really good enough any more.

48:50If someone's deep in a dugout, we saw this in the First World War, a heavy artillery piece needs to hit relatively

48:53close to a trench to kill someone who's buried deep in a dugout.

49:00So suddenly accuracy becomes really important if we're doing things like engaging individual tanks or individual strong points.

49:07One way to measure accuracy here is to use a measure called Circular Error Probable, CEP.

49:13More often used for missiles, but it's appropriate for certain artillery weapons as well.

49:17Basically a CEP is the radius within which half of your rounds are going to land.

49:21So if you have a 5 metre CEP, half of your rounds are going to land within 5 metres of your aiming

49:25point, and half of them are going to land outside that.

49:30If your round has a 5 metre circular error probable and it will kill anything within 5 metres once you account for

49:35how hard the target is, that means you're probably going to have to fire two rounds in order to reliably hit the

49:39target and kill it. Start talking about CEPs in the hundreds of metres, and you start talking about 4 digit figures of

49:46shells or missiles landing in order to actually secure a kill on the target that you're aiming for.

49:54It's kind of hard to kill something if you can't hit it, which is why accuracy matters, and burning out your barrel

49:59is a really bad idea if you're going to be engaging anything smaller than a town or a city.

50:05Now there's obviously more to it than this, like there's a lot more that goes into accuracy for artillery than just the

50:09barrel and the specifications of the system.

50:14A lot matters in terms of how accurate the original call for fire is.

50:18Have they given you the correct coordinates?

50:18Where is the aiming point, is the aiming point correct?

50:22And if the aiming point is correct, how accurate is the lay?

50:25Have the crew accurately pointed the gun at the laying point in order to fire their rounds and basically turn it over

50:30to the accuracy of the gun.

50:32But the fundamental point here is that accuracy really does matter, and wearing out your barrels is one way to destroy your

50:35accuracy. The other reason accuracy really matters is because it means you're more likely to get a round on early.

50:44And most of the casualties in artillery bombardments historically (this is true for Korea, for the Second World War, to an extent

50:51from what we can tell from the first World War), is that most casualties of artillery barrages occur in the opening stage

50:53of the artillery barrage. This is because human beings are generally not stupid.

51:02If artillery rounds start splashing around them, human beings do things like duck.

51:07Go to ground, hide behind something, jump into an armoured vehicle, jump in a ditch.

51:12And all of this massively lowers the kill radius of the rounds falling around them, and decreases the reality of the volley.

51:18If you give people a couple of seconds to run for cover, and all of a sudden they're safe.

51:23This is why something like the Panzerhaubitzen from Germany have a firing mode where you can fire multiple rounds in the air

51:30on different trajectories so that they all land at the same time.

51:33You're maximising the number of rounds that are landing during that window of vulnerability in the opening stages of your course of

51:37fire. So yes, you can compensate for a lack of accuracy by using more guns.

51:46But depending on what you're shooting at it can be a lot more guns and a lot more ammo.

51:51And the more guns and ammo you bring up, the faster you burn barrels, the faster you burn ammo, and the worse

51:55you degrade your ability to do precision fires in the future.

52:00So if I was a Russian propagandist looking at the way the battlefield's going, I'd be saying I was firing 3,000 rounds

52:05a day. That's it. I'm firing as many as the Ukrainians are, and I'm still achieving my tactical objectives.

52:1360,000 rounds per day from a logistical perspective is kind of worrying.

Russian Ammo 52:17

52:17Then there's the ammunition question, and here Russia is undoubtedly in a better space than the considerations around barrel life where we

52:22have questions over their ability to re-bore and replace these things quickly.

52:28We know Russia is sitting on very, very, very, very large stockpiles of Soviet-era ammunition.

52:35Which is what most of their weapons fire, other than the really advanced precision guided or very, very modern extended range stuff.

52:42Open source information on just how much ammo?

52:42Nah, not really there. But it's measured in millions upon millions of tons of stuff piled up in depots all the way

52:50from Western Russia out to Siberia.

52:54Russia also retains the ability to produce 152mm shells.

52:58And I can't think of any reason they wouldn't be able to scale up production of dumb 152mm ammunition despite being cut

53:02off from technology imports from abroad.

53:07It's not that complex to build a dumb shell.

53:10The Russian Empire during World War One was able to mass produce the things.

53:14And while yes, modern artillery ammunition when you look at the fusing and the structure is a little more complicated, Russian industry

53:20is also more complicated and advanced than it was during the days of the Tsar.

53:25There are some points where you might be concerned if you were the Russians though that are worth noting, although these are

53:29mostly speculative in nature. The first is we have seen evidence that Russia is pulling ammunition out of Belarusian warehouses and shipping

53:36it to Belgorod to support the Donbas front.

53:41Now this might just be a logistical workaround.

53:44Or it might also be because Russia feels the need to draw on Belarus's stocks because Belarus also has millions of tons

53:49of old 152mm ammunition lying around as well.

53:55At the same time, there's also a question mark over Russia's ability to mass produce its more advanced ammo.

54:01These huge Soviet stockpiles are probably not the super long-range rocket-assisted projectiles that give these artillery systems their maximum range.

54:10Everyone always talks about the maximum range of these systems.

54:13Maximum range is what you get when you're using an artillery round with a rocket in the base of it to give

54:16it extra distance, something with a little bit more oomph.

54:20And something that's really going to degrade the barrel life.

54:23They also may not be able to mass produce things like Krasnopol, or their modern GLONASS and other forms of guided rockets

54:27for their rocket artillery. We don't know what their productive capacity is, we just know that when we have seen other Russian

54:36high-tech products like drones, they've often been full of Western components.

54:41So there's a big question mark over what Russia can produce in sort of the more high technology category.

54:48The final caveat I'll add is a lot of this ammunition, we've got evidence, is stored like shit.

54:53I'll show you some photos later of some Russian depots for 125mm tank ammunition, it's kind of horrific.

54:59It will give conniptions to most people who have ever worked in an armoury or a logistics context.

55:04But all of that I think we can leave aside and say this.

55:07It's a relatively safe assumption that Russia has, to put it in scientific terms, a shit-ton of ammo to fire from its

55:10artillery guns. And it's unlikely that the Ukrainians can win this thing by simply tanking it until they run out of rounds.

55:20Unless that is, they start using their HIMARS systems to detonate all the ammunition that happens to be at the front.

55:26Because all the ammunition in the world doesn't help you if the ammo dump is in Siberia and the guns are in

55:29the Donbas. Ukraine's ammunition supply for its old Soviet-era guns by contrast is pretty dire.

Ukraine’s (old) ammo 55:33

55:39There's a reason I didn't focus too much on counting tubes for Ukraine.

55:42As I said, it's because ammunition constrains their ability to be useful far more than the number of guns themselves.

55:48There's a secondary focus on barrel life, because there's an open question over how quickly Ukraine really could re-barrel all of its

55:52guns once it starts to wear them out.

55:57But ammunition seems to be the more immediate problem.

56:00The problem is the biggest stores of 152mm ammo and 122mm ammo, the stuff that they really need, they've already bought up

56:07a lot of the easily available supplies that were in Eastern Europe.

56:10Ukraine started the war with about 300,000 rounds, I've seen the estimates, in terms of their artillery ammunition.

56:14And they've received, perhaps, a few hundred thousand more from the former Warsaw Pact nations.

56:21So Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechia, Slovakia, etc.

56:25A lot of those countries used to use guns of that calibre, some still have guns of that calibre.

56:29And aid has flowed in terms of the ammunition.

56:32NATO has also turned to the Warsaw Pact states to try and manufacture replacements or supply replacements.

56:39Bulgaria for example, has factories capable of producing 152mm ammo.

56:44The Romanians are talking about reactivating some of their old production capacity as well.

56:48Stuff that's been largely dormant for decades.

56:51Finland has a large stock of stuff that's in some of the relevant Soviet calibres, and a relatively large artillery park.

56:58But there's no possibility that the production rates in Eastern Europe, the former Warsaw Pact states, is going to be anything like

57:02sufficient to run Ukraine's guns at the Russian rate of firing any time soon.

57:11We're talking about production rates that might, over the course of a month, give Ukraine the amount of ammunition that it was

57:14originally firing off in the course of a day.

57:18At least before things ramp up a little bit.

57:21Although if you do want to go see the shopping page for some Bulgarian 152mm ammo, well there you are, a lovely

57:26page in English, just in case you're buying.

57:30Now there are very large supplies of ammunition for these guns elsewhere in the world.

57:35The problem is the largest stockpile of ammunition and production (other than Russia), that I am aware of is China.

57:42And I doubt China is going to be in the mood to shift very large amounts of artillery ammunition to Ukraine to

57:45fire at Russia. Instead when it comes to Ukraine's legacy arsenal, it's basically going to become a game of how much can

57:52Eastern Europe and the former Warsaw Pact states and Finland and countries like that, supply in order to keep Ukraine's old guns

58:00firing long enough for it to receive sufficient supplies of replacement NATO hardware to keep it sustainable in the longer term.

58:10Efforts that are notably hampered by the fact that long before this war broke out back in 2021, and in some cases

58:15earlier, there were often cases of suspected sabotage in ammunition depots in Eastern Europe that held large stocks of 152 and other

58:24sorts of Soviet ammo. Suspicious that.

Ukraine’s (new) ammo 58:29

58:30For now the situation's kind of reversed when it comes to Ukraine's NATO guns.

58:34At least according to Ukrainian government sources, and also just logic, looking at what's been supplied.

58:40Ukraine is saying it has more than enough 155mm ammo, it needs more guns.

58:45So it has too many Soviet guns and too little Soviet ammo.

58:48It has a lot of NATO ammunition and not enough NATO guns.

58:51So that's obviously going to have to ramp up over time in order to keep the Ukrainians in the artillery fight.

58:56Arm supply packages so far, as I've said, have usually included more rounds with guns than the barrels of those guns can

58:59handle. There's also been a mixture of basic 155mm rounds, extended range 155mm projectiles, so things that can really reach out and

59:11touch someone. And a few of the special ones, the guided shells, so Excalibur for the 155mm guns.

59:19America hasn't said how many of these it's provided.

59:22Canada was actually the first power to come out and say outright that it had provided these.

59:26Now I'm not sure whether they felt the need to apologise to the Russian embassy after doing so, but I'm sure the

59:30Ukrainians don't particularly mind either way, as long as the shells come through.

59:35This is basically a 155mm shell with a guidance kit.

59:39It can be very, very accurate, down to a couple of metres, and it can fire out to something like 40 kilometres.

59:45At the same time, when we're talking about the 227mm rocket systems like HIMARS, and then eventually from Germany you'll have the

59:50MARS system and the M270 from the UK.

59:55MARS and the M270 are basically the same.

59:57This has been entirely guided ammo so far, GMLRS rockets.

1:00:01Which are not the best and longest range rockets that the Americans could have provided, but certainly they are doing the job

1:00:07out to a distance of 80-85 kilometres.

1:00:11I've certainly seen questions asked as to whether or not NATO can sustain ammunition supplies to Ukraine when it comes particularly to

1:00:15155mm rounds and to rockets. The answer initially much as when you dismiss the Russian situation saying, "They have way too many

1:00:26152mm rounds and we shouldn't worry about it." For now NATO has more than enough 155mm rounds to go around.

1:00:34There are pre-positioned stocks around the world for the United States in case of a contingency.

1:00:39Plus an awful lot of NATO nations use it and have ammunition available.

1:00:43The question really is around production rates if this thing stretches to the point that it does start to strain stockpiles.

1:00:49The Americans were purchasing, it varies year to year but if you look at purchasing records, about 100,000 rounds of 155mm ammo

1:00:53is not out of place for the last couple of years.

1:00:59Some years it's lower, some years it's higher.

1:00:59That's a mixture of dumb shells and guided shells.

1:01:04Obviously if the Ukrainians want to fire 6,000, 7,000, 8,000, 9,000, 10,000 rounds per day then that's not enough, and there's going

1:01:11to have to be some sort of ammunition ramp up.

1:01:15Particularly if the Americans don't want to run down their stocks.

1:01:18If you're firing 10,000 rounds per day, which is a sixth of the upper end of the claimed Russian amount, you're going

1:01:23to need to more than treble the average American production.

1:01:27Or at least the ballpark American production figure you've got there.

1:01:30But for the moment in terms of feeding the guns that Ukraine has, ammunition is not really a problem for NATO.

1:01:36It's the logistics of shipping it and also on-lining new guns, and getting the Ukrainians more systems that can use this stuff.

Early lessons 1:01:42

1:01:42So that's the forces and the overview of the war to date, and some of the challenges they're facing in logistical terms.

1:01:48I'm now going to zoom out, I'm going to look at this from more of an external perspective.

1:01:52And just as we did for the tank video, for the reservist video, and for the drone video, we're going to look

1:01:57at some of the lessons that the rest of the world might be tentatively able to take looking at the Ukrainian experience

1:01:59so far. And how that might impact decisions for our own armed forces.

1:02:07Bear in mind again, the information is highly imperfect, the fog of war is real.

1:02:12And there's also no guarantee that the next war will be like the Ukrainian-Russian War.

1:02:16You need to be very careful to not pivot your entire defence policy in order to prepare for a conflict that may

1:02:20not repeat. But let's get into it.

Ammunition consumption 1:02:24

1:02:24And the first lesson, and the one that doesn't surprise anyone in the room hopefully, is ammunition consumption.

1:02:29Because this seems to have surprised us in Ukraine.

1:02:34I don't know why this always surprises us.

1:02:36Militaries always seem to be shocked and alarmed by just how quickly they go through their critical ammunition stocks when a major

1:02:41war breaks out. There was a UK war game that went on some years ago (I'll find the reference for that one),

1:02:50where I believe they ran out of critical ammunition supplies after about 8 days into what was planned to be a 10

1:02:54day exercise. We just often seem to forget that when a war is on people tend to shoot at each other pretty

1:02:59damn often. I mean heck, if you're one of Kadyrov's Chechens you don't even need to shoot at anyone.

1:03:06You can just shoot at unoccupied buildings, trees, fields, you know, anything for the 'gram.

1:03:10The war in Ukraine has absorbed a tremendous amount of ammunition.

1:03:15Four months of conflict was enough to eat away Ukraine's entire ready stockpile of 152mm ammo, and also make a very deep

1:03:20gash into what most of Europe had left over.

1:03:25At the same time the Russian tactics are only sustainable because the Soviet Union was a thing and left its trash lying

1:03:29around. The Soviet Union was obsessed with producing huge quantities of artillery, artillery ammunition, tanks, everything, getting ready for that final throwdown

1:03:38with NATO. Perhaps because the Soviet Union understood that if there was going to be a major conventional conflict in Europe it

1:03:47would absorb rounds by the millions relatively quickly.

1:03:53So one of the lessons we probably need to take from this is if we expect there to be a conventional fight

1:03:57between relatively well-matched nations, then there need to be realistic projections about ammunition consumption that support that.

1:04:05Preferably militaries should be able to fight for more than a couple of months before they run out of everything, including the

1:04:09critical supply being artillery ammo. And to this should be added an understanding that you can't just turn industry on in an

1:04:14emergency. You can't just buy 100,000 shells or 50,000 shells every year for 20 years, and then suddenly go to your armament

1:04:25industry and say, "I would like 3 million rounds this year please." It takes time to onboard people, to prepare machinery, to

1:04:31invest the capital, to train everyone and get the production cycle running, bring in your subcontractors and get production ramped up.

1:04:42Yes, artillery ammunition is often less complicated than things like precision guided Javelins for example.

1:04:48But it's still pretty complex to manufacture, especially when you're talking about the best ammunition literally being guided munitions.

1:04:55It highlights the importance of stockpiling.

1:04:55Not just building up large numbers of platforms, it's not enough to have large numbers of guns, large numbers of MLRS systems.

1:05:05You need to have the ammunition to fire out of them, otherwise as I said before, you're down to monster trucks and

1:05:08trying to run people over. It also I think highlights the importance of standardisation and interoperability, which is one of NATO's great

1:05:14strengths. Ukraine is having great difficulty because it started the war with non-NATO equipment.

1:05:23Now NATO powers are able to very freely share their artillery stockpiles.

1:05:27If one nation gets into trouble, they can potentially draw on (or purchase from) Uncle Sam's stockpiles, or the UK stockpiles, or

1:05:32France, or Germany's stockpiles, in order to make ends meet until production can ramp up.

1:05:40Supplying Ukraine has been very, very hard because they don't use the same kit as everyone else in Europe.

1:05:45And trying to convert them over to NATO kit mid-conflict has been a real challenge.

1:05:50So really I think this is a vindication for standardisation of calibres and equipment as much as possible across allies.

1:05:57So that it means you have a larger base of stored resources to draw on in the event of a crisis before

1:06:00you start to run low. The second thing I want to call out is the absolute importance of intelligence, of surveillance, of

Sensor fusion & transparent battlespace 1:06:04

1:06:07reconnaissance, particularly the use of drones in order to enable some very, very effective usage of artillery.

1:06:16In particular we've seen, like I said before, massive use of artillery spotter drones used to spot for fires, correct for fires.

1:06:20It's just easier. Compare a drone to a forward observer on the ground.

1:06:27A forward observer on the ground is on the ground, they may not even be six foot tall, which limits how far

1:06:32out to the horizon they can see.

1:06:35And they're also not very disposable.

1:06:35They tend to have people protecting them because if they're shot, well, you're not just down a spotter, you're down the person

1:06:42that the spotter was. Drones are disposable, have much better views.

1:06:47They have features that are not included in your average human being, like you know zoom vision, or potentially thermal, or laser

1:06:51designators. And they can potentially be tasked down to the battery or even individual gun level.

1:06:59At the same time this environment has huge numbers of counter-battery radars and precision guided munitions that basically mean this is the

1:07:05new maxim (at least to an extent) in some of the battles in Ukraine: "If you can find it through the use

1:07:10of drones or whatever, if you have the right weapon system there you can probably kill it." ...

1:07:17The Ukrainians and the Russians are both showing you can occasionally get pretty accurate with even conventional gun artillery, if it's properly

1:07:24specced, and uses the right ammo, and a really good crew.

1:07:27And if you use precision guided munitions, well you end up being those guys with the HIMARS systems running rings around everyone

1:07:34and doing collective arson throughout the strategic depths of the Russian line.

1:07:38This also kind of becomes a test for the traditional towed guns.

1:07:42Because while there was a lot of fanfare around the M777, with the advent of accurate fire ...

1:07:46in counter-battery form the emphasis is on being able to move a gun very quickly, so to scoot and shoot.

1:07:55To fire your rounds and then move, and also to survive near misses, means that an armoured self-propelled vehicle with inbuilt computers

1:08:01which lets it lay the gun quickly, which is accurate, which can maybe do multiple rounds simultaneous impact, and then book it

1:08:08rather than connecting the gun to a prime mover and running.

1:08:11And also has armour, so it might survive more of a near-miss than the squishy gunners of an M777 or a Russian

1:08:15towed gun might. So I think there is a vindication of the self-propelled gun concept.

1:08:23But again we're going to need a lot of battlefield assessment and casualty studies in order to determine the extent to which

1:08:26that's true. But I do note that Ukraine is receiving a lot of self-propelled guns from the West, not just towed howitzers,

1:08:34but also M109 self-propelled guns, Panzerhaubitzen, etc.

1:08:40Of course towed guns do have some advantages.

1:08:43I think most helicopters would really struggle to lift for example a Panzerhaubitze 2000, whereas an M777 is obviously very mobile.

1:08:52Right now we've got a lot of cases of NATO training Ukrainians on NATO systems.

1:08:58But I strongly suspect that when this war is over there'll be a lot of pressure to have Ukrainians train NATO operatives

1:09:01on the tactics and techniques that they have developed for employing artillery in this sort of fighting.

1:09:09Because it's been a very, very, very long time since NATO employed artillery against a peer adversary on any scale.

1:09:16And certainly the last time they did that all these modern tools, precision guided munitions and ...

1:09:19drones were not available. The next point I'd count more as a hot take as opposed to a determined lesson learned, it's

Is NATO outgunned 1:09:24

1:09:27what I personally raised an eyebrow at.

1:09:32When the Ukrainians asked for heavy weapon resupply, they said they needed 1,000 howitzers and 500 new MLRS systems.

1:09:39At which point everyone looked around NATO and was like, "Crap, only the Americans really have that number." And this led to

1:09:45the question of well, "Has NATO neglected the artillery, is NATO massively under-gunned?" The one thing I'll say here is that NATO

1:09:51militaries are not configured like the Russian military.

1:09:56They are not primarily artillery forces.

1:10:00And the war in Ukraine has really denied the role of one of the key traditional parts of most NATO countries' war

1:10:04fighting doctrine - the air force.

1:10:09America and allied nations invest really large resources in very large air forces that are designed to crack open enemy air defences,

1:10:15range out over enemy targets, establish air dominance, and then start pounding everything into submission.

1:10:24We saw it in Desert Storm in '91, we saw it in 2003, and the plan would certainly be to do it

1:10:27again in most sorts of conflicts.

1:10:31While I'm sure there are some angry Marines in the audience who wish the Corps still did bayonet charges on a regular

1:10:34basis, American war-fighting doctrine in general abhors the idea of fighting fair.

1:10:41If it can be bombed from the air or destroyed at long distance using precision guided cruise missiles or long-range strike capabilities,

1:10:45then that's what they're going to do.

1:10:49There are some reasons to really prefer aircraft as a system for supporting ground troops and destroying targets.

1:10:56For one thing, it's really, really hard to make a gun shoot as far as an aircraft can fly at the full

1:11:00extent of its combat radius. There are reasons that you want to have aircraft doing a lot of your fire support and

1:11:06destruction of enemy targets. The question is, is that enough to compensate for the relatively low number of artillery systems that you

1:11:13see in some Western militaries? So the question becomes what sort of wars are you likely to fight?

1:11:20Are you going to fight wars where the massive preponderance of Western air power is going to be useful, deployable?

1:11:26Is it more useful than having more artillery systems?

1:11:26That's an open question. What's clear is there probably needs to be some consideration of what it would look like to fight

A plan for contested airspace 1:11:30

1:11:34a war in a contested air situation.

1:11:37Where you couldn't just pulverise the enemy into dust using your ground-attack air assets and your stand-off precision munitions.

1:11:44And also what is the impact of a growing number of long-range ground-based precision strike options?

1:11:50And these sort of strikes have caused real problems for arms that normally wouldn't face this sort of problem.

1:11:55The Russian helicopter arm, the rotary aviation, has repeatedly suffered from the fact that these relatively short-ranged helicopters are based at air

1:12:00bases relatively close to the front lines.

1:12:05And then they get hit by Ukrainian very long-range artillery strikes, causing massive damage.

1:12:10At the same time artillery and systems like GMLRS from the HIMARS cause real problems for traditional air defence situations, we saw

1:12:14this on Snake Island. While it might be economically efficient to use an advanced anti-aircraft missile system to shoot down an incoming

1:12:24jet, or an incoming helicopter, or even to shoot down an incoming drone.

1:12:29It's not really economically efficient to shoot down $500 artillery shells, or even $1,500, $2,000, $10,000 artillery shells.

1:12:37When you're talking about something like a GMLRS rocket, it's easy to see why the procurement guys would look at this and

1:12:41go, "This is a fantastic weapon." Now you're looking at a weapon system that when it was first being purchased cost about

1:12:47$40,000. It's considerably more now. But that's still much cheaper than a lot of the alternative options, when you think about how

1:12:54much it costs to put a jet in the air for an hour, or how much a cruise missile costs.

1:12:58It's very hard to cost-effectively defend against an incoming volley of 6 GMLRS rockets fired from a HIMARS system.

1:13:05Are you going to fire up 6 Buk or S-300 missiles in response?

1:13:11Or are you going to let at least one of them hit and watch your ammo dump go boom?

1:13:14On Snake Island we saw this happen in real time, only with conventional artillery rather than guided rockets.

1:13:20Snake Island after being taken by the Russians, they at great cost managed to get a number of air defence systems onto

1:13:25the island, Buks and Pantsirs mostly.

1:13:29And then the Ukrainians got one long-range artillery gun in range.

1:13:33And using base bleed rounds, extended range ammunition, they used this self-propelled gun to basically just start shelling the island.

1:13:39There's no cover on Snake Island, and they destroyed these advanced air defence systems because they were helpless against incoming dumb ammunition.

1:13:47We're already seeing programs in NATO countries that sort of fit this bill.

1:13:51The Precision Strike Missile has a much longer range than GMLRS and ATACMS before it, and will give systems like HIMARS and

1:13:57M270 the ability to reach out to targets 500 odd kilometres behind the lines.

1:14:04That means that there's a lot of targets which would normally have to be serviced by aircraft or cruise missiles that might

1:14:08now instead be attacked by cheaper, more affordable, land-based missile systems.

1:14:14And as for artillery, the West already has systems like Excalibur and a range of extended range and guided 155mm shells.

1:14:21Maybe there's going to be a focus on those sort of systems going forward to make sure that in counter-battery scenarios, or

1:14:24in operational scenarios where you want to shell targets behind the lines, you have that option available to you.

1:14:32And you don't end up getting out-ranged by an opponent who might have hardware that is maybe older, maybe a little less

1:14:35accurate, but has the reach advantage over you and leaves you in a difficult position.

Range, Range, Range 1:14:42

1:14:42The next thing that I think is worth calling out is the huge premium that both sides have started placing on range.

1:14:48It's not just about how much metal you can throw, it's about how far you can throw it.

1:14:51And in an environment where you've got counter-battery fire with artillery trying to hunt artillery, the best counter measure that both sides

1:14:57have been able to find is just being out of range of the other guy's guns.

1:15:01In an environment where it's really hard to hide, where you've got drones doing reconnaissance, where you've got satellite imagery, where you've

1:15:07got counter-battery radars, where you have informers with mobile phones on the ground, and it's really hard to hide your guns for

1:15:11any length of time. All of this technology has kind of forced armies to regress and put a focus on just being

1:15:18out of range of the other guy's artillery.

1:15:20And to that end we've seen both the Ukrainians and the Russians roll out ostensibly older systems, but systems that have longer

1:15:26ranges over and above more modern systems with higher rates of fire, but perhaps not as much reach.

1:15:32It also stresses the importance of strikes into operational depths.

1:15:32What do I mean by that?

1:15:37It's not just that the Ukrainians and the Russians are shelling the forward positions.

1:15:40They're not just shelling the trenches and the towns where the enemy is dug in.

1:15:44They're trying to reach out and touch ammunition depots, command points, air defence installations, things that are decently behind the lines but

1:15:51which have great value if they're destroyed.

1:15:54And again, that puts a real premium on how much range your systems have.

Conclusions 1:15:59

1:15:59So what can I say in conclusion?

1:15:59I think the first thing to say is that artillery has been one of the definitive and decisive weapons at every stage

1:16:04of the war in Ukraine to date.

1:16:08Where Russia has been defeated it's often been as a result of the work of the Ukrainian artillery crews.

1:16:14And where Ukraine has been pushed back, it's often been as a result of the work of the Russian artillery crews.

1:16:19In the early stage of the war it was clear that the assault elements, the airborne forces, the light units that Russia

1:16:22sent forward to try and take critical targets weren't universally successful.

1:16:29... They lacked the capability in some places to push through prepared Ukrainian defences with determined infantry and good shoulder fired anti-tank

1:16:33guided missile weapon systems. And the result of that has been a steady trend towards a more static form of warfare where

1:16:43artillery really gets to play to its strengths.

1:16:46Russia still very clearly has the overall advantage in the artillery war.

1:16:50It has far deeper stocks of ammunition, a far greater stock of guns, and is continually out-shooting Ukraine in the primary areas

1:16:54of contest. But that doesn't mean that Ukraine hasn't been able to fight back.

1:17:02And we've seen some very interesting asymmetric usage of artillery against things like targets behind the lines and in counter-battery roles that

1:17:10really are interesting, and should serve as a point of interest and learning for foreign observers going forward.

1:17:16There are a lot of questions now over how both sides' artillery forces will evolve.

1:17:21Ukraine faces very strict limitations on its supply of ammo for the bulk of its old Soviet systems.

1:17:26And there is a very heavy reliance on the West for a continued resupply of both new NATO systems and the ammunition

1:17:31to fire them. There's a lot of new developments, things like the introduction of the HIMARS system are very new as of

1:17:37the time of recording. It'll be interesting to see what impact they have once both the Russians adapt and once the Ukrainians

1:17:44gain access to more of those systems.

1:17:47So a lot of the questions about what happens next hinge on matters of supply.

1:17:51Ukrainian resupply with additional Western systems, and Russia's ability to supply additional spotting drones, additional precision guided munitions.

1:17:59And to re-barrel guns that have been burned out during the massive bombardments that have been necessary to push the front forward

1:18:03in the Donbas. Whatever happens next in the war there are already points that seem to suggest there are areas for potential

1:18:10lessons for foreign observing countries, be they NATO or otherwise, around the use of drone spotting, precision fires, and the interaction with

1:18:18a contested airspace battlefield. But I feel I've covered those sufficiently and won't recap them here.

1:18:25One thing I will note is we are dealing with massively imperfect information as always.

1:18:29One example of this might be for example, I talk a lot about videos of precision shooting being done throughout the course

1:18:33of this video. Well just think for a moment, do you really think people are likely to publish videos of their misses?

1:18:40We won't really get a good idea of what regular accuracy is until the war is over and we have access to

1:18:44better data. Speaking of people not publishing misses however, I do have a screenshot from that Russian video I mentioned earlier where

1:18:53they claim they destroyed a bunch of HIMARS systems.

1:18:55You can judge for yourself, you can search that video up if you need to.

1:18:59But having looked at it as closely as I possibly can, it honestly looks like they're aiming at some bushes and maybe

1:19:03some trucks. And then when the strike comes in (I know you can't see it from the photo), they miss.

1:19:07So there you go. OK, a channel update to close out.

Channel update 1:19:13

1:19:13First thing to apologise for is the fact that I am currently travelling, so if you heard the sound quality jump around

1:19:16over the course of this episode it's because I'm recording from multiple different locations.

1:19:23I'm sorry about that, I'm doing the best with the kit I'm travelling with, but you may hear different levels of echoes

1:19:28from slide to slide depending on where I recorded something.

1:19:31The second thing to say is that I was really excited to do this one.

1:19:35It feels good to do another video in this series.

1:19:35This is in the same series as our video on lessons of usage for drones, ATGMs, end of the tank, etc.

1:19:43And it was good to finally look at artillery systems, which is an area where we've got an asymmetric conflict between Russia,

1:19:46which is a very, very strong artillery power, and Ukraine, which is trying to fight sort of an asymmetric artillery duel while

1:19:54also being resupplied by the West.

1:19:57Looking into my previous videos, I want to thank all the kind Germans who reached out after I attacked procurement in the

1:20:00Bundeswehr. That video was very technical, a little dry, very long, and also not particularly positive in the outlook it took towards

1:20:10the Bundeswehr's purchasing function. I have to say so many Germans reached out to say they appreciated the video.

1:20:17I also heard from some people who have served in official roles there, and they were very positive as well.

1:20:22They debated a few points in a few cases, but generally very positive, and I genuinely appreciate that.

1:20:28I am working on a couple more videos in parallel at the same time.

1:20:31I've currently got a collaboration video I'm working on which is aimed at illustrating concepts of how you can make procurements go

1:20:34wrong, i.e. why governments buy stupid stuff.

1:20:40And the way I'm doing that is we're going to do a video where we choose the worst possible aircraft of World

1:20:43War Two, or rather an Australian colleague on YouTube chooses what he thinks the worst aircraft of World War Two are, and

1:20:51then I have to try and ...

1:20:51give reasons that I can convince government to purchase the things.

1:20:56So that one we're working on at the moment, it should be very exciting and I hope to do more collabs in

1:20:59the future. I also want to just give a thanks to everyone for their support as always.

1:21:05Engagement in my comments sections is a genuine point of pride for me.

1:21:09It's always so polite, well reasoned, well debated, and incredibly active.

1:21:09I very much appreciate it. And of course thank you to the sponsor, including today's sponsor, Private Internet Access, for helping to

1:21:19make these longer, more in-depth productions that do take quite a lot of time to put together, keeping these things viable for

1:21:23me to keep doing. So thank you to all, take care, and I'll see you all again soon.