Small Wars Journal

Drones Are Not Artillery Yet

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Mon, 11/04/2024 - 9:39pm

Drones Are Not Artillery Yet

By L. Lance Boothe

“Mushroom clouds are rising above the ground; doors in Staraia Toropa are shaking. Part of the military personnel fled during the night, abandoning the vehicles they arrived in. Everything is burning,” an unidentified villager tells Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU.[1] These things happen when munitions are left laying out in the open in a depot and stacked-up on not-so-secret railway platforms.[2] Welcome to war. A drone pack set in motion by Ukrainian special forces claims another arsenal deep in Russian territory.

A few days prior on 18 September 2024, Ukrainian special forces attacked warehouses in Toropets, Russia, belonging to the 107th Arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate (GRAU) 500 km from Ukraine.[3] One hundred Ukrainian produced drones descended on this ammunition depot, setting it ablaze after triggering earthquake producing explosions.[4] Clearly, at over 300 miles from the fight, the Russians did not see this coming despite claiming some of the drones were taken down by jamming. In war, belligerents constantly surprise each other as Clausewitz reminds us, so in this aspect there is nothing new here. But are we seeing a new evolution in drone warfare?

At first glance, the observer of the Russia-Ukraine War may be tempted to see these strikes deep into Russia with remote controlled or possibly autonomous “smart” drones as the new artillery of the 21st Century. But what we are seeing is more akin to a poor man’s air force than the next generation of artillery. Also, the observer needs to appreciate that drones are more versatile than artillery systems and munitions. Though smart attack drones could, and should, be the next evolution in artillery submunitions. The point is that intelligent machines whether unmanned aerial systems (UAS) or robotic ground systems operating by adaptive algorithms can do more than attack targets. They can perform reconnaissance and surveillance functions, deliver supplies, be communications and electronic warfare platforms, clear and emplace mines, provide security, and conduct counter-air operations. And all these functions can be done without putting a whole bunch of soldiers at risk on the battlefield.

Like with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, in the Russia-Ukraine War, we are seeing the steady evolution of drone warfare.  

For the putative Ukrainians, the last several weeks of their drone blitz into Russia have netted considerable results. The current ratio of artillery fire “between Ukrainian and Russian forces is about 1:2. This marks an improvement from early summer 2024, when the ratio was 1:3, and even more so compared to the beginning of the year, when the ratio heavily favored Russia at 1:7, 1:8, or worse.”[5] This is good news. Artillery fire produces 80% of the casualties in the Ukraine war.[6] The Ukrainian counterfire fight is having a strategic effect.[7] Instead of playing whack-a-mole against Russian artillery pieces, a Sisyphean feat, the Ukrainians are attacking the logistics that feed the Russian beast. This is just good targeting – identify vulnerable critical nodes and attack them – Targeting 101.[8] The goal being to create more than a localized effect. In these instances of the Ukrainians attacking ammunition supply points, their takedown of logistical nodes impacts a large number of systems on the battlefield, producing an effect on the entire Russian artillery enterprise which takes considerable time from which to recover. This is just competent targeting. While I would like to believe the Ukrainians have cracked this code all by themselves, I suspect otherwise thanks to the targeting professionals in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The anatomy of these strikes seems rather obvious. Group II drones are launched from within Russia by special operations teams who case the target after infiltering into position or Group III drones are launched from Ukraine proper, infiltering the Russian integrated air defense system (IADS), to strike the target acquired through satellite imagery.[9] Regardless of the exact method used to acquire and attack the target, the key takeaway is that drones are being used for precision strike against targets that are susceptible to infiltration and vulnerable to destruction by creating an explosive chain reaction, which starts at multiple points to consume a larger area, magnifying the destructive effect. Further down the line, the gift keeps giving as supply chains are disrupted to the point that artillery fires across the front are restricted. In some instances, parts of the line are left without artillery fires as ammunition is moved to more critical sectors to sustain ongoing offensive operations. Either way, planning is complicated, target engagement restricted, and dilemmas created. All this disruption is caused by killing mechanisms that are relatively cheap to produce and employ. Given that three Russian arsenals were pretty much destroyed along with their stocks of billions of dollars in artillery projectiles and missiles by a pack of drones that at most cost tens of thousands of dollars, the Ukrainians came out ahead on the cost equation. Russia cannot sustain these kinds of losses either materially or financially. When the apparent Russian strategy is one of exhausting Ukrainian resistance through attrition, degrading Russia’s ability to attrit the Ukrainian Army through their main combat arm – artillery – spells defeat for such a strategy.

Of course, this begs the question: are drones a replacement for rocket/missile artillery? Well, the Ukrainians do not think so. They have been wailing incessantly about being “allowed” to strike into Russia with missiles like the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) provided by the US.[10] Of course, a debate rages among armchair generals as to whether it is advisable to expand the war in this manner.[11] Operationally, it makes sense. And Ukraine should ignore NATO’s handwringing. The strategic gains already achieved by striking deep into Russia are proof enough of drone effectiveness in particular, and surface-to-surface fires in general. But alas, the timidity with those with no skin in the game always seems to trump operational imperatives when it comes to Great Power Competition. But to answer the question as to drones being the new artillery, the answer is no – at least for now.

While what the Ukrainians have achieved to-date with drones is specular, bear in mind they are also losing about 10,000 of them a month primarily due to electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) interdiction.[12] For that outlay in drones, there is no evidence Russian casualties are exponentially increasing. War is about more than destroying stuff. It is about killing. Well trained and competent people are much harder to replace than things. So while precise strikes with drone packs garner headlines by igniting explosive chains from stockpiles of munitions on pallets sitting in warehouses stacked on top of each other and carelessly piled in the open, what is not happening here are high casualty rates. No deaths and only 13 injuries were reported after the drone raid on the 107th Arsenal of the GRAU.[13] Substantially more casualties come from massed artillery fires on exposed positions, maneuver formations in the open, artillery and mortar firing points occupied too long, or at ammunition exchange points directly feeding the fight.[14] Remember, 80% of the casualties in this war are being produced by massed artillery fires from volleys of “dumb” munitions (rockets and cannon projectiles unaided by GPS) against formations and their field trains and command posts. Drones are not the preferred means for producing mass casualties despite YouTube videos showing drones attacking Russian trucks stuck in the mud or armored vehicles (and personnel in the open) scurrying around the battlefield.[15] Drones are good at precision strikes, not area fires. Drones are most effective where EMS interdiction is limited, so that their circuitry does not get fried, or transmitter-receivers jammed. It is about the permissibly of the environment around the target and the target itself (and effect desired on it) that dictates the means of attack. Every munition has its time and place – the entire point of weaponeering – and make no mistake drones are now munitions as we are witnessing.

Also, we are not seeing large swaths of critical infrastructure or communications networks being crippled exclusively through drone attack. Yes, infrastructure is attacked with drones, particularly oil refineries and power generation stations, but interestingly, those effects appear rather localized and temporary. Neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians are freezing to death in mass when winter hits. Cars are still on the road. Communications networks while suffering disruption from limited drone attack remain largely functional. The internet is running and accessible for all the war bloggers on both sides to keep us appraised from their mothers’ basements on every detail of the fight. Most structures, whether of military value or not, in towns and cities where the fighting is raging are being reduced to dust by copious amounts of high explosive. This destruction is wrought more by cannon projectiles, rockets/missiles, and glide bombs than “kamikaze” drones. Group I-III UAS do not have the payload capacity for the amount of high explosives required to bend steel I-beams, nor are they heavy enough to penetrate reinforced concrete in any structurally compromising way. Of course, if one of these drones comes crashing into, say, some Soviet era concrete tenement building, the folks in the apartment that gets struck will have a bad day. There will not be much left of their drab digs, but the entire building is not going to come down on them or the other tenants as witnessed in Ukraine’s most recent drone attack in Moscow.[16]

Simply put, the Ukrainians are using drones as long-range precision fires that would otherwise be provided by artillery systems and munitions (and of course, fighter-bombers), because drones are all they have available given the restrictions placed on them by their Western benefactors. The right answer for efficient shaping fires is to use both drones and rockets/missiles.[17] As Matthew Savill at the Royal United Services Institute asserts, “ATACMS could do serious damage to Russian air defense radars and systems.”[18] He claims, “if you punch a hole through…Ukrainian long-range drones have got better options to penetrate deeper into Russia” to interdict lines of communication (LOCs) mostly insulated by distance from the forward line of troops.[19] Interdicting LOCs should be the norm for deep strikes, only the means of attack will vary. Drones are best suited to attack LOCs at points where IADS and EMS defense is weak. Let rockets/missiles kick in the door, opening a route to the target area for the drones. Rockets/missiles can be impervious to electronic interference while overwhelming IADS at points along LOCs where these defenses are strong, creating mass casualties and destruction over a greater area than drones.[20] Again, it comes down to the target, and the environs around the target. Neither the use of attack drones or rockets/missiles (guided or not) is an aberration, they ought to be complementary and routinely used to interdict LOCs. I suspect that if the Ukrainians were unrestricted in their means of attack, they would mix it up in ways that would discomfit the Russians, and surprise Western observers. Necessity remains the mother of invention.

War is a harsh schoolmaster.[21] And the war in Ukraine is only going to get harsher. Drones are the wave of the future. This is beyond dispute. What neither side is doing in this war so far is delivering smart drones via missiles to hunt in wolfpacks, attacking high payoff targets (HPTs) without human control or oversight. This is the next evolution in drone warfare. This is a capability the US military needs to be developing in earnest. Once drones are truly autonomous, enabled by artificial intelligence, hardened against EMS interdiction, used in packs, and delivered into target areas of interest at hypersonic speed, then the war gets interesting and far more deadly. Let us hope the madness in Ukraine is ended before we get a nasty surprise from it. War at machine speed without respite will break human endurance, spiraling well out of control.

As I have asserted in Military Review, intelligent machines are going to take warfare to a whole new level. Enemies will aim to draw blood at each other’s industrial, agricultural, and energy underbelly – the center of gravity for any nation. Once the people who make life possible are dead and the associated infrastructure is wrecked, the means to resist is shattered. To presume the advent of smart drones will turn warfare into an intelligent machine on intelligent machine melee is folly. Clearing an adversary’s intelligent machines from the battlespace is just the prelude to attacking the center of gravity. Smart drones jeopardize a nation’s center of gravity as never before because they are relentless killing machines, taking war to maximum effectiveness and its logical conclusion without nuclear holocaust.

Chantal Grut argues in the Journal of Conflict & Security Law that

as weapons technology becomes more and more advanced, humans are moving further and further away from the battlefield. We already live in a world of robotic warfare, in which a pilot sitting in an operating room … can control an unmanned aerial vehicle or ‘drone’ to conduct lethal targeting operations on the other side of the world. In a sense, weapons development has always been moving in this direction, with the goal of removing human personnel as far from the risk of harm as possible. The next step may remove the human from the process altogether.[22]

 

However, where Grut gets it wrong is that people will never be removed from risk. The Russian villagers around those GRAU arsenals found this out when those facilities went up in flames right in their backyards. The unpleasant truth is humans at the center of gravity of a nation are more at risk than ever before, both combatants and noncombatants. Intelligent machines are not just built to fight other machines. Look no further than how remote-controlled drones or ones with limited programming for autonomy are being used in the Ukraine war. The Russians are certainly attacking critical infrastructure with the drones they send into Ukraine.[23] Nor are the Ukrainians ignoring Russian infrastructure, striking refineries and power generation facilities in addition to grabbing headlines with their drone attacks on “military” targets like GRAU arsenals.[24] For nation-states, particularly developed ones, food, fuel, electricity, and consumer products rule the day. The people who feed society, power society, and bring society its daily necessities are the linchpin to life. Attacking them and the infrastructure which sustains society can bring society to its knees.

Realism drives war. Since Napoleon Bonaparte, warfare has been the “nation in arms,” so everyone at the center of gravity is fair game.[25] For one nation to defeat another, war must be taken to its logical conclusion. We should bear in mind, the United States dropped atomic weapons on Japan to shatter that nation in arms, bringing the worst conflagration in human history to a decisive end. In war, there is no substitute for victory, and the unmitigated employment of intelligent machines is the next, best, means to victory.

Every capability has a counter or weakness. Direct energy (DE) weapons show the potential to effectively counter drones. But can DE be everywhere at once, particularly around all critical infrastructure or over extended LOCs? Can it be overwhelmed? These things are yet to be seen. Power generation is critical to DE. If power is being supplied by the national electrical grid, then the grid is a logical target, which is easy to strike in mass at hundreds if not thousands of points of failure. While DE will be formidable once it arrives in force on the battlefield, it can and will be countered. Part of that counter comes in the form of presenting multiple dilemmas – a combination of smart drones, guided and dumb artillery munitions (even bombs and missiles from Big Blue or the US Navy) delivered in coordination with a variety of non-lethal enablers can open windows for these lethal munitions to get in to destroy HPTs or compound the destructive effect of these Joint fires.[26] I believe the Ukraine war is teaching us that massed artillery fires matter more than any other means of attack. When GPS aided munitions or remote-controlled and semi-autonomous drones work, they produce devastating results. The Ukrainians clearly want to use all the means at their disposal just as we would if we were in their predicament. What will be interesting to see is whether DE proliferates in the Ukraine war as a counter to the pervasive drone warfare witnessed so far. My bet is that when DE starts to make a significant appearance, artillery fires will increase further. Then DE systems will struggle to survive on the battlefield and elsewhere. And the drones will keep on flying.

 In conclusion, it is too soon to draw definitive conclusions, but as a friend and respected old soldier reminds me, it is never too late to speculate. What is obvious is that drones work. At the writing of this piece, Ukraine launched another drone attack deep into Russia. This time attacking the “Chechen special forces university” (whoever they are and whatever that is), damaging the facility and presumably disrupting operations. Like with the arsenals around Staraia Toropa out of ATACMS range, but clearly within drone range, the Ukrainians continue to do what they can to bring Goliath down. If the Ukrainians get the green light from the West (the US in particular) to do what is operationally sound and strike LOCs within Russia with ballistic and cruise missiles, a new chapter in this war will open – perhaps even a decisive one for the valiant Ukrainians. Indications are they would strike using a combination of drone and artillery fires. One complimenting the other and vice versa. Once truly intelligent drones capable of hunting targets autonomously, expelled from missiles traveling at hypersonic speeds into target areas, make their debut, the game changes. Then drones become artillery. And then the vicious cycle of countermeasure upon countermeasure to yet more counters begins until the next technological breakthrough emerges, worlds without end in our eternal quest to better slaughter one another.

 

[2] Ibid.

[7] Counterfire is more than just counter-battery fire (acquiring and engaging artillery systems). The counterfire fight is about defeating threat artillery logistics and command and control (C2). Given that modern artillery systems (self-propelled howitzers and rocket launchers) emplace and displace rapidly, employing “shoot and scoot” tactics, it is nearly impossible to engage artillery when it is shooting. Howitzers and launchers simply are not around long enough after firing to engagement with counter-battery fires from other howitzers and launchers. Between the time it takes from acquisition (usually by radar) to mission processing to fire mission execution and the time of flight of the projectiles or rockets onto target, the howitzers or launchers you are shooting at will be long gone. This is why you must either anticipate where the threat might be or more effectively track them to rearm, refuel and refit sites. Better yet, find logistics resupply points (or the unit supply trains) and destroy them, depriving the guns or launchers of ammunition and fuel. The next best thing to do is break the link between guns/launchers and observers/sensors or the ability to issue fire orders to the guns/launchers, i.e. attack their C2. Artillery is useless if it can’t shoot or communicate, and dead if it can’t move. And if you must punk individual firing platforms, it is best done by attack helicopters or fighter-bomber aircraft, and now drones, after the guns or launchers are rendered ineffectual and trying to hide or retreat – movement attracts predators.

[8] Whether it’s the US Army’s targeting methodology of decide, detect, deliver, assess (D3A) or special operations world’s find, fix, finish, assess (F3A) or the USAF’s convoluted find, fix, track, target, engage, assess (F2T2EA), targeting in practice all boils down to matching sensors to targets to killing / engagement mechanisms. The nodal analysis done to decide what to attack is the most critical part of the process. The point is to get the best result (effect) for the most economical expenditure of resources at the least risk to our forces. Identifying and striking the critical point or points of failure in the enemy’s system of systems and operations (this part tends to get overlooked by the targeting Rain Men in the USAF) is the Grail Quest for the targeting community.

[9] For a pretty good explanation of UAS groups visit https://cuashub.com/en/content/what-do-the-uas-groups-mean/. Of course, the exact ranges for these systems are protected by the pay wall of officialdom. But the real takeaway here that’s being lost in translation concerning drone warfare is its cost effectiveness, and the fact that the US military is behind the innovation curve after essentially pioneering drone warfare. Elliot Ackerman put out an article in The Free Press (https://www.thefp.com/p/usa-germany-world-war-three-weapons) warning us that our military isn’t ready for modern war; that is to say, the next evolution in drone warfare. And if this isn’t startling enough, even our Congress has figured out that drone warfare is upon on us and essential to Ukrainian succuss on the battlefield, which as Ackerman points out in his article, and I quote: “This past May, a bipartisan group from Congress grew so concerned they sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. It read, in part: ‘we strongly encourage you to include the delivery of small, American-made drones [to Ukraine], which are essential for tactical success on the battlefield’. Six months later, these American-made drones have yet to arrive in Ukraine.” Say it isn’t so. Let’s understand this for a moment – we have spent billions on the mess in Ukraine and delivered them none of the cheap drones they want and need yet have managed to deliver a whopping 700 high-cost Switchblades at $60-80,000 a pop, whereas the Ukrainians are using (and prefer to use) the Mavic 3 series, an off-the-shelf drone which costs anywhere from $2,199 to $4,799 on Amazon. If this isn’t fraud, waste, and abuse, then nothing is. And since that war consumes 10,000 drones a month, the Switchblades we did manage to send are long gone by now, while the Chinese, yes, that is right, the Chinese seem able to ship all the Mavic 3s the Ukrainians could possibly want. Apparently, the Chinese aren’t afraid to profit from both sides in the Ukraine war. The cynicism at play here would make Lucifer cringe.  Go free market – the irony is rich.

[11] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr75r70jgp7o; De-escalation is the obsession of the weak, indecisive, and feckless. De-escalation is no more a strategy than fighting the Russians to the to last Ukrainian. And concerns over escalation are not an excuse for failing to do what is operationally expedient. The Ukrainians are engaged. Now, it is time to finish the fight. Of course, this will never happen because the West fears its own shadow, so the Ukrainians will be forced into a settlement – a casualty of Great Power Competition – despite their sacrifice in blood and treasure. War is not just (as I have opined in this august journal previously).

[14] https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-taking-heavy-casualties-counteroffensive-soldiers/story?id=102347740; Note that this report is on the casualties being taken by Ukrainians from Russian artillery fires. Those fires are persistent, pervasive, and demoralizing, and of course, deadly. War is made with artillery. This remains as true today as it was when Napoleon practiced it in the 19th Century.

[15] While dropping grenades on hapless Russians in open personnel carriers or chasing them around exposed positions with drones makes for good YouTube videos, the propaganda value and psychological effect is far greater than the actual casualties produced when compared to massed artillery fires. Frankly, the videos are kind of sick, and by-the-way, the Russians are doing the same to Ukrainian soldiers (and civilians). War is not some sort of grotesque reality video game despite what social media would have us believe. You are not going to win a war by droning individuals, but you can win through accumulating mass casualties, something we have yet to see drones do.

[16] https://www.pbs.org/video/russian-invasion-1726003005/; https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn7l375z720o; Of course, not much condemnation is forthcoming over these nonmilitary (“civilian”) targets being struck by the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are just as guilty of creating collateral damage as the Russians, but only one is called a war crime – interesting how that works.

[17] And lest we forget, these ground-based fires should be integrated with air support, performing air interdiction. But we’re not here to discuss air component operations, which for the Ukrainians are relatively nonexistent outside of UAS employment by their land component.

[19] Ibid.

[20] The Russian arsenals attacked by the Ukrainians are out of range of ATACMS, but in range of ground-based cruise missiles. When the new missile replacing ATACMS comes online fully, and if given to the Ukrainians (doubtful), supply depots like the Toropets arsenal could be held at risk by ballistic missiles that are cheaper and faster than cruise missiles, not to mention far easier to plan and shoot with the US Army Field Artillery’s current C2 system. Also, it is not always possible or even desirable to carry out precision strikes down to a gnat’s butt. Target size and dispersal or disposition matters. And all sensors contrary to popular belief do not have the same degree of accuracy in locating targets (or share the same confidence level), thereby requiring area fires to hit the targets they acquire. Area fires hit the target with shrapnel from the casing around the explosive warhead or projectile, ball bearings or tungsten cubes encased in front of or embedded in the high explosive filler, or shape-charge bomblets expelled from the rocket/missile or cannon projectile. Hence the term “steel rain.” You are covering an area with metal to ensure you hit the target. So not only does raining down metal all over the place have the advantage of hitting imprecisely located targets (in the artillery we call it high target location error – TLE), but it allows us to hit large targets that would otherwise require multiple aimpoints to destroy with hit-to-kill munitions like laser guided bombs, GPS aided unitary warhead rockets, or full motion video attack drones with high explosive (HE) payload. Steel rain falls on the just and unjust, hitting multiple things spread-out all over God’s green earth, maximizing death and destruction beyond blast overpressure. Yes, how pleasant. Killing is ugly. Artillery is not an extreme range snipper rifle, and we are not putting rounds into a one-inch bullseye lined up in crosshairs. Artillery is an indirect fire weapon where rounds are calculated to essentially be lobbed onto target, producing casualties and destruction with the area containing that target through HE. We must stop confusing accuracy with precision. Cannon projectiles and rockets/missiles are not bullets precisely aimed directly at targets. That’s not how it works nor intended to be. Artillery munitions are accurately put into the vicinity of the target, and HE does the rest.

[21] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by C. F. Smith (Cambridge: Loeb Classic Library Harvard University Press, 1920), III: LXXXII.

[22] Chantal Grut, “The Challenge of Autonomous Lethal Robotics to International Humanitarian Law,” Journal of Conflict & Security Law 18, no. 1 (2013): 5–23, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcsl/krt002.

[25] Hugh Nibley, Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints, ed. Don E. Norton and Shirley S. Ricks (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1994), 295.

[26] What would any article on military affairs be without mentioning the Joint Force? All things “joint” is military jargon for the Armed Services working together in perfect harmony (at least in theory). The US military has been obsessed with “jointness” since it got force fed it after the debacle in Grenada in the 80s. Ever since the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, it’s been joint this and joint that, which is really to say the USAF runs everything now. Anyhow, what is being described here, looking passed the reference to Joint fires, is the US military’s aspiration to achieve effects in all domains (or cross them or throughout them or from one to another – no one has yet to really figure out how to describe it to the collective’s, that is to say, the Joint Force’s satisfaction in some pithy term). We think the key to success now and in the future is to integrate lethal fires (things that go boom) from all the Services with nonlethal effectors (things that buzz) from all the Services to create effects on land, at sea, in the air, in outer space, and, of course, cyberspace to discomfit and otherwise destroy our foes in battle.

About the Author(s)

L. Lance Boothe

L. Lance Boothe is a senior Concepts Developer for Field Artillery in the Concepts Development Division of the Fires Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  He is a retired Field Artillery Officer and veteran of Afghanistan, Iraq, Albania, and Bosnia.