Today we will talk with you about modern methods of warfare and about what exactly can turn the tide in Ukraine.
It is very clear how the average person imagines the course of the war – as it is portrayed in movies.
Movies are made about infantry units on the front lines in the trenches,
about paratroopers who land directly under the crossroads of enemy machine guns,
about scouts in the deep rear, about pilots or tankers, at minimum.
They shoot such a war, where there is dynamics, action, intrigue, violence.
They shoot a war that will please the viewer and keep him at the screen.
We need an enemy that can be seen, we need understandable action and understandable danger.
No one will make films about heavy howitzer artillery.
Just imagine this movie: here there is a battery 15-20 kilometers from the front line,
now the task comes to it – to strike at a certain point where there is a concentration of enemy troops, an important object or command post.
Artillerymen calculate aiming angles, make several volleys – and nothing happens.
Somewhere out there, for kilometers and tens of kilometers, these shells burst,
the gunners will receive information about the successes after a while from their colleagues from the front line.
They fired back several times – curled up and changed their position so that they would not get hit in response.
That's the whole war.
The guys load howitzers and shoot beyond the horizon.
Of course, making a film about the war from the point of view of an artilleryman
is like shooting Titanic from the point of view of a shipping company accountant: no one would watch it.
Meanwhile, the more technological war becomes,
the higher the role of long-range artillery and multiple launch rocket systems in it.
Artillery, from its very appearance in the High Middle Ages, in the 12th-13th centuries,
forever changed not only the format of war, but also the format of the structure of society.
No matter how powerful the fortress walls were,
no matter how heavy and expensive the knight's armor was,
no matter how skilled the knight himself was – all this became insignificant.
It is clear that the destruction of any walls for cannons is only a matter of time;
it is clear that the projectile does not care who is in front of it:
an expensive and most experienced knight, for the maintenance of which several villages work,
or a simple peasant armed with a chopper.
The birth of artillery predetermined the decline of chivalry,
the decline of the feudal war and the feudal structure of society.
What is the point of maintaining an expensive estate of professional hereditary warriors
if any of them can die before they even see the enemy?
With the passage of centuries and the development of technology, the role of artillery only grew.
Medieval cannons are heavy, smooth-bore monsters,
from which at least some aiming, and even more so fast shooting, is almost impossible.
The Industrial Revolution changed everything: rifled barrels and unitary ammunition appeared.
Artillery became more and more accurate and more rapid-fire,
able to inflict more and more terrifying damage.
Artillery reached its peak by the beginning of the 20th century.
Both world wars are different from everything that we have seen before:
these are no longer wars of professional armies, not a matter of honor, valor and courage.
The war of rapid-fire long-range guns is a war of industrial extermination of people,
a matter of life and death in it is a matter of pure luck.
You don't see a howitzer standing ten kilometers behind enemy lines.
The projectile of this howitzer makes absolutely no difference who you are:
a professional warrior, seasoned in battles, or a rookie who hardly holds a rifle.
With one volley, having spent several dozen shells, almost without risking equipment and expensive trained artillerymen,
it is now possible to complete a task that would require hundreds or thousands of ordinary shooters to be put on the battlefield.
You can destroy concentrations of troops and equipment before they even enter the battle,
you can destroy enemy fortifications, the assault of which would take many lives,
you can make a breach in the defense and cause great damage to the enemy even before your soldiers see it with their own eyes.
This still does not detract from the role of the infantry.
Victory is still forged on the ground.
No shells and rockets, no bombs will take strongpoints for infantry,
they will not gain a foothold on a dominant height,
they will not get behind enemy lines, they will not knock him out of the city and this city will not be defended.
However, when modern technology came to the aid of artillery,
in the war that Russia is waging against Ukraine in 2022,
the role of artillery is such as it has never been before.
Yes, already in the Second World War, artillery was quite perfect.
And from a technical point of view, even the most modern howitzers are not very far removed from the samples of the 40s.
But something completely different has changed.
Howitzer artillery and multiple launch rocket systems are blind weapons.
It shoots at squares, at squares hundreds of meters on a side.
Of the tens and hundreds of shells fired by the battery, even with a very skilled artillery crew, only a few will hit the target.
Guidance aids are reconnaissance reports, spotter corrections, maps, tables and formulas.
Artillery in World War II works like a barrage of fire:
its task is to completely clear the square in the hope that important objects will also be hit.
It is very inefficient, very inaccurate and very expensive.
Most of your shells will simply fly away into an open field, and it’s good if they don’t hit your men.
The role of artillery has changed not because some new fancy guns have appeared.
The role of artillery has changed because now there are drones –
an all-seeing eye flying over the battlefield, for which the generals of the past would sell their souls and half their troops.
Now there are GPS and electronic maps.
Now there is an instant exchange of intelligence information
and an instant very accurate calculation of the guidance of howitzers, cannons, mortars and MLRS
through automatic programs that do not load gunners with school tasks, but immediately issue ready-made guidance angles.
Now gunners are not guided by the testimony of spotters.
Now they themselves can see where the shells are coming,
they can see the redeployment of enemy troops and adjust their actions.
For the first time, long-range artillery was not just a terrifying and almost invulnerable force,
for the first time it became truly accurate.
And we know how the characteristics of weapons are arranged in them:
if the power grows, then everything else will certainly fall, primarily the rate of fire and accuracy.
Throughout its life, artillery compensated for the lack of accuracy with the power and mass character of volleys.
Imagine what exactly has changed in this war:
the artillery has remained the same powerful, the same rapid-fire, capable of covering the enemy with dozens of shells at a time.
It shoots all the same heavy high-explosive shells, but now it does not shoot where God sends, but directly to the point.
Now you can’t escape from it, because a drone is hanging over your head, and a tablet is in the gunner’s hand.
An artilleryman sees your every step from tens of kilometers away and is redirected in real time.
This is a completely different war and a completely different artillery, even if technically almost the same as 80 years ago.
As a result, the current war is mostly artillery duels,
and the main items on the list of weapons that Ukraine demands from its Western allies are not even tanks,
but howitzers and multiple rocket launchers.
This begs the question: why did Russia, which has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the rearmament of the army over the past decade and a half,
not upgraded its artillery in the same way as Ukraine?
After all, the Russian artillery potential is incomparable not only with Ukraine, it is incomparable with anyone at all,
because Russia is the heir to the country that did not produce toilet paper,
but was ahead of the rest in terms of the fullness of weapons depots.
The answer here is quite simple: the purchase of weapons and clogged storage facilities is not the reform of the army.
If a 19th century army is given tanks and jets, it will not become a modern army,
it will simply not integrate them into its structure, it will remain a 19th century army that has tanks and aircraft.
The Russian army is thoroughly Soviet.
Even in Afghanistan, it became clear that this army was ready for a completely different war –
for the war that ended in 1945, where huge tank wedges converge in an open field,
where everything is decided by numbers: the number of people, the number of guns and equipment.
Today it is not even the war of past, it is the war before past.
The Russian army is not connected to any information network of instantaneous exchange and coordination,
Russian artillerymen work on paper maps,
they move the same fire shaft in front of the infantry as their great-grandfathers moved in 1943.
The use of modern means of war, drones and positioning systems, automatic programs for calculating and adjusting fire –
all this in the Russian army is minimized, and in some cases even to zero.
This war with Ukraine is even more similar to the Crimean War.
In 1854, the Russian army fought as in 1812, but the war was already different:
a war not of a sailing fleet and smooth-bore guns, but of steamships and rifled weapons.
The war already had a completely different tactic, so it could not but end in defeat.
In 2022, the Russian army is fighting as in 1945, that is, it is again late for a modern war.
And the outcome of this war will be decided when Western countries hand over modern artillery to Ukraine.
Recognizing the need to send heavy weapons in words, from the first week of the war,
the allied countries of Ukraine easily transferred everything to it, except for the actual heavy weapons.
As early as the 20th of February, thousands of bulletproof vests, machine guns, grenade launchers, and rifles began to arrive in Ukraine,
first from neighbouring Czech Republic, Poland, Croatia and the Baltic countries, and then from other countries.
In the meantime with artillery, the supply of which would significantly affect the course of the war,
everything was much more complicated.
Heavy weapons, which Ukraine needs, Western countries, in principle, were reluctant to send.
Their fears are understandable.
First, the leaders of Ukraine's allies were not sure that the Ukrainian defenses would stand long enough to use the received artillery.
No one was going to give Putin weapons, each unit of which could cost tens of millions of dollars.
But the Ukrainians managed to survive, and this fear disappeared.
But the second issue remains: after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the military experts of the allied states had doubts that Putin was sane.
They feared that if something more serious than first-aid kits and bulletproof vests were supplied to Ukraine,
the Russian command might regard such actions as direct participation in the conflict –
which would provoke a war between Russia and the North Atlantic Alliance.
Not wanting to escalate the conflict, some Western leaders even sabotaged the transfer of serious weapons.
So, when in early March Poland tried to transfer fighter jets to Ukraine, this attempt was thwarted by its NATO partners.
However, it gradually became clear that Putin had neither the desire nor the ability to attack any NATO countries.
In general, Western countries are gradually recognizing the need to send heavy weapons to Ukraine,
although they are taking some caution with the supply of the most powerful long-range guns.
If at the beginning of the war small batches of Soviet D-30 howitzers were sent with a creak,
now Ukraine is being supplied or is going to be supplied with modern heavy weapons such as British M777 howitzers
and French Caesar self-propelled artillery mounts in large volumes.
The supply of small arms and ammunition, bulletproof vests, helmets, night vision devices, medicines, tanks and armored personnel carriers,
aircraft parts, even the most ordinary trucks, and especially missile systems to fight tanks to Ukraine, is all very important.
This is what is needed for waging war every day, what must arrive faster than it is spent at the front.
The Ukrainian army uses these supplies very effectively.
In just three months, Russian tanks were sent for processing, about half of what is in service with the United States.
All this is good for waging a war, but it is absolutely not enough for a turning point in it.
A turning point in the war requires artillery suppression of enemy troops and, in turn, enemy artillery.
This requires howitzers, this requires multiple launch rocket systems – MLRS,
and they are needed not in single body count, not in separate batches – mass deliveries are needed.
There may be a false impression that providing Ukraine with various artillery systems
from different countries will create a supply and logistics hell.
In reality, this is not entirely true.
One of the tasks of the military-political blocs: the now living NATO and the once existed Warsaw Pact Organization was the unification of calibers and ammunition.
At the moment, Ukraine is dealing with only two standards: Soviet and NATO.
For example, in the case of howitzer artillery, this is the standard Soviet caliber of 152 millimeters
and the standard NATO caliber of 155 millimeters.
In addition, in three months, the system for sending weapons to Ukraine managed to get better.
If at the beginning of the war Western politicians often made promises to deliver something,
and then delayed deliveries due to internal contradictions or logistical problems, now this will happen less often.
Over the past few weeks, a software system similar to electronic classified sites like Avito or OLX
has been created at a military base in the German city of Stuttgart.
On it, the Armed Forces of Ukraine publish requests for the supply of weapons,
and Western countries that have such weapons undertake to satisfy the requests.
As soon as the donor country is determined, the staff of the coordination center finds out
how to most effectively deliver these weapons to Ukraine.
This allows you to get rid of the bureaucracy that previously delayed the delivery of weapons for weeks and months,
and also ensures that the sent weapons are really required for the Ukrainian army.
As the Armed Forces of Ukraine lose Soviet equipment in battle and receive samples from the West in return,
there is an accelerated transition of the Ukrainian army to NATO standards.
This transition was planned before the war.
However, in peacetime it would take maybe years, maybe decades.
Or maybe it would never end at all.
But Putin, with his idea of demilitarizing Ukraine, is right now re-equipping the Armed Forces of Ukraine according to NATO standards.
In addition to political and economic consequences, this war will have purely military consequences.
This is a side effect of big wars – a radical change in the very approach to warfare.
This war will go down in history as the first frontal war – not a local conflict, but a clash of two huge armies –
where high technologies began to be used to their full potential, and technologies largely borrowed from civilian circulation.
It turns out that if a $5 million howitzer is paired with a drone that costs about the same as one shell for that howitzer,
if gunners and spotters are equipped with conventional consumer tablets that costs several hundred dollars,
then this radically changes the role of artillery on the battlefield, turning it from a blind force into high-precisionweapons, from which there is no escape.
It turns out that the combination of Bayraktar for reconnaissance and an inexpensive anti-ship missile
is capable of sending a nearly billion-dollar cruiser to the bottom.
Information in any war is important.
Whoever possessed the information won the battles in early civilizations.
But now the exchange of information in war has reached the same heights as the exchange of information in civilian life.
Just as we no longer go to the post office to send telegrams to a neighboring city,
but just casually communicate with the whole world in a messenger,
so the army no longer needs to rely only on intelligence reports.
The soldier on the battlefield and the general in the Kiev headquarters can observe the movements of the enemy in real time
and adjust their decisions and actions accordingly.
Nothing fits so well into this war, which has an all-seeing eye, like artillery, heavy howitzers and MLRS.
The supply of modern howitzers and rocket systems, combined with complete transparency of the battlefield and unprecedented accuracy,
will give Ukraine the opportunity not only to defend effectively, but to turn the tide of the war and win it.
The two best options for such a fracture are the German PZ-2000 self-propelled howitzers and the American MLRS.
Their firepower and accuracy, built on the instantaneous exchange of information, will leave Vladimir Putin very little chance.
But while there are problems with both.
Germany is very much slowing down the supply of heavy weapons.
The American MLRS, with the appropriate interchangeable module and ammunition,
with a slight movement of the hand turns from a multiple launch rocket system
into an operational-tactical missile system similar to the Russian Iskander.
It can strike at a distance of up to three hundred kilometers,
which means it can attack Russian territory, which the US leadership does not want yet.
However, nothing prevents the United States from supplying the MLRS in a truncated configuration, only as a MLRS.
Even this, in the case of mass deliveries, will change the game.
The delay in the delivery of heavy weapons is entirely the political responsibility of Ukraine's Western allies.
They still, albeit less and less, but cherish the hope of “appeasement” Putin.
Such a strategy leads nowhere and costs Ukraine very dearly.
Nevertheless, we must remember that, as in the case of sanctions on Russian raw materials, it is only a matter of time.
It has already dawned on Western leaders in general terms that this war will kill and ruin exactly as long
as Putin does not suffer a military defeat, that there is no way of negotiating here.
Sooner rather than later, this conclusion will be transformed into action — into the supply of weapons that Ukraine really needs.
It is needed not for the successful continuation of the war, but for its completion.
See you tomorrow.