Westerse vs Russische artillery tactieken
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Are the crews of the towed artillery that Ukraine has and is receiving terribly vulnerable to enemy fire?
==============================================================================One thing to understand is that Ukrainian forces are in no way like their Russian opponents, and many tactics that we take for granted in the West are just not used by Russia, but ARE used by Ukraine. The issue is not that towed artillery is vulnerable or tracked is better, but that all forms of artillery need special tactics to protect themselves, and towed artillery is much more deadly than you mighty think.
Russian artillery, despite a lot of treads underneath it, is not a force that employs shoot and scoot, the western standard, or at least they tried and failed miserably then returned to their traditional set piece hub to hub model.
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Modern Western artillery is based on the US artillery system developed between the world wars, and modified by association with French and British artillery systems. It is designed to always be able to fire on its targets, but to never be present when the enemy counter batteries. This is very complicated so let be break it down for you. And note the computer revolution has given this system a whole new dimension of deadliness, and the Ukrainians are very well trained to do this - having been trained by NATO for seven years.
In the US system, except where fighting guerrilla war (where fire base tactics are used), artillery plays a coordinated dance called shoot and scoot. In the modern understanding of this blue force artillery receives a set of orders from the command structure which defines the goals and elements for the next several days operation. This is the mission of the units the artillery is assigned to, and in keeping with the distributed communication advocated by NATO, puts a lot of pressure on relatively low ranked officer to get creative in the field. Thus the first element of NATO artillery strategy is that it is not for everyone, and requires immense professionalism, significant educational levels, a clear understanding of the system, and is a perishable model that if not taught and practiced is essentially useless. On the opposite side of the coin while it takes advantage of artillery designs that are easily deployable, it has been demonstrated using old model M114 artillery howitzers and back pack deployed targeting computers. The system depends on the trained soldier first, and communication second. The model and quality of the gun are important, but the system and the people are more important than what weapon you happen to have.
In essence a commander of a battery, in coordination with military police units, will plan a series of constant movements where the battery, even if not firing, is constantly displacing. Each unit carries a “unit of fire” of ammunition for several missions. Other units carry resupply ammunition and set up resupply bases or are prepared to deliver ammunition when it is needed while protecting it in the interim. When you watch a blue force tracker granulized to the battery level, it looks like a series of fireflies blinking in and out across the map.
The artillery commander and the unit commander will have created a series of fire concentrations which can be precisely placed where they think they will be needed, or they can be randomly generation by a computer associated with easily identifiable points of interest. Anyone trained to use the artillery system - not just specialist forward observers although they still exist, who sees a target worth shooting at, can log into the system or use voice and say, “Concentration Bravo, left 500 up 250, execute tango mission.” A fire control officer can do precise calls also, but the system is designed for a trained but not specialist person using digital pre-registration assets to rapidly trigger a sequence off events that will result in accurate artillery fire.
These calls from soldiers with target information enter the system and are assigned to the right unit who is milling around, hold up in a defensive position, or other wise unoccupied. The unit immediately stops, fires its mission, and then gets ready to “shoot OR scoot.” Now here is where it gets even more complicated. The unit may not have many rounds left to fire. It may be vulnerable to counter battery. It is now on a clock and will displace within a set amount of time. They wont stick around to find out if there is something deadly zooming in to get them.
But what if the battery needs to keep firing? This is the beauty of the very complex system. If it seems like there will need to be more ammo fired on this target, for example the observer says, “tanks, two hundred, in the open, and Putin is riding one of them,” then the whole system joins in the game. Firing batteries often overlap so as the first battery is scooting, the next battery is stopping to fire a second mission, and the batteries may be in different brigades or even Marine versus Infantry batteries. Army, Marine, and Air Force flying assets are now, since the 2010s, on the same network and they can receive missions as well. In the most dire situations it becomes a dance and units stop, fire, move; planes vector in through a traffic control system that eliminates collisions and avoids anti air assets, which may be assigned an artillery mission before they are vectored in. Master drones can be assigned, and they can vector in smaller drones and assets, limited only by the strict NATO policy of officer triggered weapons.
Edit - when I was demonstrated this system they showed me plane track. The system is so precise and sophisticated drones and planes have lanes to fly through artillery fire. The planes cannot intrude on zones where artillery is in the airspace, and cannons cannot fire through artillery.
What is the Russian system? They tried shoots and scoot and they got their collective asses handed them in Ukraine, so they are back to hub and spoke.
In hub and spoke, the artillery is tethered by an invisible wire of communication and supplies to a single command echelon who plans where they will be, when they will fire, and how they will act. There is no tolerance of small units commanders wandering around in the woods as they like based on strategic principals. Instead fire commands are generated by Generals who are in the front of their units and have the authority and communication spoke to speak to the artillery, which is often following closely with the commander’s battle element, one of the attack battalions. The Russians do not have secure communication, so there is a constant chatter from General to artillery, which is considered the key element of the General’s ability to fight one the battlefield.
At the start of the operational day the General of a group of battalions will arrange the battalion and brigade assets of artillery into planned artillery camps. The artillery will travel for protection with the main units. When they reach their firing positrons they will dig in and arrange their artillery in a classic line, which their firing tables use and are pre-printed. The artillery is then handed, sometime in person or by courier, the missions they must complete. They will fire these missions, then recieve ammunition for harassing fire or to be ready for reactive shooting. This whole orchestrated effort assure that the artillery is never far or out of communication form the person who can pull their trigger, and has resulted in a lot of dead generals since Ukraine knows this.