...and so it goes with a barrage that something loud is repeated over and over again perhaps to the consternation of some of those receiving the charge.
The reason I post this is here is that while it is difficult to judge as an outside observer how the overall war in Ukraine is going for Ukraine, what can be said confidently is that until a few months ago Ukraine didn't have a steady domestic supply of 155mm artillery (Bohdana), ammunition and European support for various artillery systms in the 155mm NATO system to the degree it does now.
What can be said that is undeniable is that Ukraine managed to keep Russia at bay without significant (especially 155mm) artillery support and ammunition, which and this is the reason I make this post, is the foundational part of the western/US military armored manuever doctrine. Both for defense and offense. Now Ukraine increasingly has this capacity which according to basic logic means this is a major shift in balance of power in the war.
In Vietnam, artillery shifted beyond its traditional role of supporting maneuver operations to instead focus on harassment missions. However, in a potential future war with the Soviet Union, a clash that would rival WWII, artillery units could not survive in static firebases. Nor could thousands of rounds be fired unobserved to produce a psychological effect on the enemy. Instead, this future conflict required three unique mission sets for indirect fire: close support, counterfire, and interdiction.
The first mission set, close support, had always been indirect fire’s fundamental role, employed in concert with maneuver forces. Close support is how artillery units directly influence the tactical fight—providing smoke, illumination, and explosive rounds in conjunction with maneuver operations or to support troops in contact. In a high-tempo fight, however, artillery is not expected to defeat the enemy; instead, it facilitates maneuver forces engaged with the enemy by obscuring tanks with smoke or separating them from the infantry with HE rounds. Additionally, the untested Copperhead and ICM had the potential to directly impact the battle by destroying or neutralizing armored vehicles.
The second mission set, counterfire, is the deliberate positioning of artillery assets to find and destroy enemy artillery pieces. Like close support, counterfire had been an indirect fire staple, as artillery is one of the best weapons to kill artillery. Although this mission did not change, planners needed to understand how it could affect the battlefield. In 1981, the Field Artillery Tactics Department explained that artillerymen had to move beyond thinking “of counterfire as an artillery duel which had little impact on the frontline.” Suppressing enemy artillery pieces would reduce a potential threat to maneuver forces, allowing maximum application of direct fire systems in the close battle against the numerically superior Soviet Union. With the destructive capacity of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, even an individual vehicle could turn the tide of a battle.
[[note, this is why the 30 or so abrams main battle tanks given to Ukraine were such a weird "gift" not only were they lacking any modernization in terms of fire control/stabilization and more importantly survivability, the entire idea of an Abrams tank as it is designed with the intense amount of logistics needed to transport the tank and sustain it on the battlefield ASSUMES you are bringing along an absolute metric fuckton of mobile artillery to make sure when the enemy tries to attack your huge logistics chain that you can fire cannons back at them all day long and tempt them to charge your tanks head on and get obliterated... Let me emphasize something, it is FAR more difficult to get an Abrams tank ACTUALLY to the battlefield and support it than an artillery system so the first thing any general trained in western armored combined arms doctrine would ask is "Where is all the artillery!?? Are we just relying on air power?" if handed a couple of Abrams tanks and without artillery support. A single Abrams MBT with decisive artillery support can do an unbelievable amount of damage very very quickly but an Abrams MBT without artillery support is just an unbelievably heavy liability]]
The final mission set, interdiction, is how artillery units shape the battlefield by removing an enemy’s capabilities or disrupting its ability to deploy assets. The Field Artillery Tactics Department commented that “by reducing the enemy’s forward momentum and commitment flexibility, interdiction gives the friendly force commander the opportunity to maneuver.” This mission relies on upgraded indirect fire maximum ranges and artillery raids to influence enemy formations before the battle, reducing the number of vehicles an enemy can commit to an engagement. Although the MLRS extended the artillery’s most lethal round beyond thirty kilometers, continued improvements would be needed to fulfill the task of interdiction. If the maximum range did not improve, artillery units would be forced to cross into enemy territory and rely on dangerous raid operations.
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The final challenge for artillery was mobility. The rapid changes to the operational environment generated exploitable opportunities for friendly forces relative to the enemy. As a result, mobility would be key to the employment of indirect fire; self-propelled artillery would be essential to the division’s mission. In particular, the M109 self-propelled howitzer was a very capable weapon for the Gulf War, even though it had been around since the 1960s. Corn and Lacquement explain that the M109 “proved its effectiveness in every battle with the Iraqi Army.” However, the system received mixed reviews.
The Gulf War demonstrated how fast the tactical situation on the ground could change, and artillery, even self-propelled artillery, struggled to match the speed of the maneuver forces it was assigned to support. Historian Richard Stewart comments that the US self-propelled howitzers “proved too underpowered to keep pace with mechanized and armored assaults.” Historians Frank Schubert and Theresa Kraus similarly concluded that although “the M109 155-mm. field artillery piece won praise for fire effect on targets,” its mobility was lacking. Scales acknowledged the same fault, concluding that “self-propelled cannon artillery can accompany the general pace of the advance but lack the ‘dash’ speed to conform to the close-in maneuver of modern direct fire fighting vehicles.” The Army needed to modernize its self-propelled system.
To improve mechanization, the artillery branch would need to invest in self-propelled artillery that can keep up with the armor and mechanized units it supports. Simultaneously, improvements needed to focus on increasing artillery ranges so that artillery units could provide support without staying abreast with maneuver forces. While this mobility conversation focused on self-propelled systems, it added to the overall mobility debate and raised questions about the future of towed artillery. If the 3rd Armored Division DIVARTY had used towed-artillery battalions instead of self-propelled battalions, would these units have been able to stay forward and engaged? While a four-day conflict does not provide enough information to dismiss towed artillery as a capability, it did highlight that towed equipment may not be designed to support some mission sets.
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Desert Storm’s high operational tempo solidified the importance of mobility for the artillery: the speed of the general advance coupled with rapid changes in the tactical situation forced indirect-fire assets to quickly adapt and travel across a large battlefield. To deliver the required rapid crisis response, the Army would need to create lightweight and deployable equipment. According to field artillery historian Boyd Dastrup, military leaders believed “strategically deployable, survivable, and lethal field artillery systems would replace the heavy systems fielded during the Cold War.”
After the war, the artillery community focused on mobility improvement for all types of indirect-fire assets. For towed cannons, this meant development of lighter howitzers that could be moved via helicopter. Even the MLRS was assessed for strategic lift requirements, and the Army decided to create a wheeled rocket launcher variant—the High Mobility Army Rocket System (HIMARS)—to maintain the lethality of DPICM rockets with a platform that was easier to deploy in a crisis.
This book focuses on tactical improvements to the Army’s self-propelled artillery systems. Desert Storm provided the Army with a glimpse at what a future mechanized conflict could entail. While successful during the war, self-propelled systems needed to improve to perform more effectively in a high-tempo conflict. To accomplish this, the development followed two separate paths: modernization of an existing system and creation of a new one.
