“It’s Begun”: Russian Artillery Losses Have Jumped Sharply, Possibly a Turning Point – Forbes

Ukraine has probably managed to find a countermeasure to the main tool of Russian war tactics.

In recent months, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have significantly increased the rate of destruction of Russian artillery . If this information is true, this could be a turning point in the entire war, writes Forbes .

Russian barrage tactics

Artillery is a central element of Russian warfare tactics. Some describe the Russian ground forces as an artillery army that just happens to have a lot of tanks.

“Put simply, Russia uses artillery as its primary form of lethality in deep and close combat,” according to a 2023 report by the British think tank RUSI.

Capturing cities in street fighting requires well-trained and disciplined infantry, but Russia can instead simply use its artillery to level the city block by block, Forbes writes.

According to one often-cited figure, Russian artillery was responsible for about 80% of Ukrainian casualties. And throughout the war, Russia had a consistent numerical advantage in both the number of artillery barrels and the number of artillery rounds fired.

“But everything could change dramatically if Ukraine could easily find and destroy Russian artillery. Deprived of its main weapon, Russia would be defeated. And it may have begun,” Forbes writes.

Russian losses are mounting

Russia has a staggering amount of artillery, both at the front and in reserve. Combat losses are quickly compensated for by Soviet-era reserve stockpiles. At the start of the conflict, Russia had about 19,000 pieces of artillery in storage, but many are unusable after decades of rusting in the open air.

The big question is the “burn rate,” or the rate at which Russian artillery is destroyed at the front. Unlike tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, which are destroyed at the front line and close to the front, artillery fights from the near rear and its losses are less often captured on film. At the moment, the Oryx project has been able to visually confirm the loss of only 382 towed and 783 self-propelled guns by the Russians.

According to OSINT analyst HighMarsed, Russia has removed about 1,500 self-propelled guns from storage, in addition to the 2,500 that were in service before the war. But instead of having 4,000 on the front lines, they now have only 1,000. Some of the missing 3,000 are still being rebuilt, but most were likely lost in combat, although their destruction cannot be visually confirmed, Forbes writes.

The statistics of Russian losses, which the Ukrainian Defense Ministry reports daily, are considered in analytical circles to be seriously inflated or at least “optimistic”. However, the dynamics of Russian losses, which are observed in these reports, are noteworthy.

In May 2023, the number of destroyed Russian guns, according to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, was 553. In May 2024, this number increased to a record 1,160 at that time. In June, the record was broken: 1,460 destroyed Russian guns. In July (as of the 15th), the losses of Russian artillery already amounted to 769 units, which indicates the likelihood of updating the record by the end of the month.

The number of visually destroyed guns is ten times smaller, but the upward trend is the same. According to analyst Andrew Perpetua, in the first two weeks of July, the Russians lost 75 guns (incidents that were captured on photo or video), and this is the largest figure in the entire history of this war.

Forbes notes that the absolute figures provided by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense may be inflated for propaganda purposes. However, it is significant that the statistics on Russian tank losses in these reports remain stable, while it is the artillery that demonstrates a galloping rate of growth in losses.

“This means that something has changed,” the publication notes.

What exactly caused these changes is a debatable issue. The author of the publication notes that in the spring Ukraine announced the creation of its own analogue of the Russian kamikaze drone “Lancet”. If Ukraine was able to put its analogue of “Lancet” into large-scale production, this could really put an end to Russian artillery, writes Forbes.

When will Russia run out of artillery?

As the aforementioned HighMarsed analyst notes, Russia still seems to be able to successfully compensate for its frontline artillery through stockpiles, and the limiting factor is the number of shells. There are still many of these guns in stockpiles, although the stockpiles are very low.

According to Forbes, at the previous level of losses, Russian artillery reserves would last until 2025. But if the level of losses continues to grow, then Russia will start having problems with artillery much earlier, possibly as early as the end of the year.

(C)UNIAN 2024