part two
One of the most significant developments on the Ukrainian front last week was the arrival of long-awaited Western missile artillery systems and long-range guns, which resulted in daily pictures and videos of Russian ammunition and fuel depots going up in smoke or being destroyed in explosions. Below is a look at the impact of this new development on Russian artillery logistics. This post is largely a translation of a paper by Thomas C. Theiner, with additional information from elsewhere.
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Since 2014, the Russian military has deployed dozens of ammunition depots near railway stations in separatist-held areas. Russian ammunition depots are always located close to the railways, as their army suffers from a serious shortage of logistic units and transport vehicles. This is compounded by army corruption and technological backwardness. The latter is reflected in seemingly ordinary things such as the lack of forklifts and crane trucks for loading, but they also lack standard pallets and optimised transport capacity.
Supplies and ammunition are loaded onto trains by hand, transported to the front, unloaded again by hand and then loaded onto trucks by hand again. These are then taken to the direct combat units, where they are again unloaded by hand. This is, of course, an extremely time-consuming process.
How did the Russian ammunition supply work in Donbass before the Ukrainians received the M142 HIMARS systems, the PzH 2000, AHS Krab and CAESAR self-propelled guns?
2-4000 tons of ammunition were loaded onto train trains in Russia. The train reached Ukraine and the cargo was unloaded and stored 30-40 km from the front. Units fighting at the front sent their transport vehicles to the depots for ammunition, but the same was true for food, fuel, spare parts and other supplies.
The Russians, so dependent on the railways, maintain a corps of nearly 30,000 men just to run the network, whose task is to repair, maintain and build railway lines. If the Russian army loses its link with the railways, its entire logistics system will collapse.
Their march on eastern Kiev in the early stages of the war failed because they could not capture the railways around Chernihiv and Sumy due to unexpected resistance from the Ukrainian army. They had to use trucks to transport the war material under Kiev, which ended in disaster. Russian units cannot move more than 90-100 kilometres from their depots, and even this distance is only enough to maintain defensive lines. The distance between the Russian rail network and the Kiev suburbs was 300 kilometres, and was inundated by Ukrainian special forces and partisans hunting convoys.
In Donbass, Herzon and Zaporizhzhya, however, they can supply the army via railways. This allows them to deliver endless quantities of artillery ammunition to the front for the total destruction of Ukrainian villages, along with combat vehicles, fuel and all other supplies.
However, Russian munitions depots are now falling within range of Ukrainian guns and missiles. The German PzH 2000, the Polish AHS Krab and the French CAESAR can fire up to 40 kilometres, and even further with special ammunition. These guns use a GPS-based fire control system that can set the right firing parameters by accurately comparing their position with the position of the target. In addition, all three systems use their own radars to track the fired projectile and, if necessary, refine the aiming before the next shot is fired.
The Ukrainian army has never before had such a long-range and accurate gun. However, they allow them to destroy targets 35 kilometres behind the front line with pinpoint accuracy, thanks to data provided by partisans and civilians in the target area. The Ukrainians have developed a special phone application through which anyone can transmit target coordinates to their army.
In addition to these, the Ukrainian army has also received GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) missile systems with a range of 85 kilometres, but if less precise targeting is required, say for large buildings, this can be even more.
Effect of these weapons:
1, The Russians lose thousands of tons of ammunition due to the targeting of their stockpiles
2, They will have to move their depots back, up to 100 kilometres from the front
irst, each destroyed depot reduces the Russians' ability to properly supply their artillery, and the ammunition destroyed must be replaced. Although they have huge stocks, they cannot produce ammunition at the rate at which it is now being used. The fact that Belarusian stocks have already started to be shipped to Ukraine is an indication of this.
Secondly, the Russians cannot bring this large quantity of ammunition within range of Ukrainian rocket artillery, so they have to stop train trains 95-100 kilometres from the front, otherwise the Ukrainians will shoot them down. This will result in the Russians being forced to use trucks again.
Russia has lost over a thousand transport vehicles during the war, and the trucks now running have been subjected to months of heavy use, and the notoriously poor Russian maintenance methods are sure to decimate them.
So how will Russian logistics work in these circumstances:
1, Train trains will stop 100 kilometres from the front and be unloaded by hand
2, The trucks are loaded by hand and driven to the front. Both processes take hours, and Russian trucks carry less payload than Western trucks, as Russian ammunition does not come in standardised packaging, but in large wooden crates (remember the large crates under Kiev at the beginning of the war)
3., Ammunition arrives at the front, is unloaded by hand, the truck drives back to the depot
At this distance, with manual loading and unloading, a truck will not really be able to make more than one turn a day, and then we haven't even counted the errors. The Russian military does not have logistics management systems capable of handling this task, so without further ado, ammunition could go to the wrong place. This causes further problems, because there will be too much somewhere, which may have to be left there, and not enough elsewhere. If the car is left with the gunners, there will be a lack of delivery capacity from elsewhere.
NATO member states use advanced software and AI to manage logistics, but the Russians rely mostly on the instincts of their officers, which is not necessarily a problem when everything is ideal for them. In Donbas, this was the case until last week.
But the Russian is a 20th century army with 19th century logistics in a 21st century war. It will take time, but just as the NLAW, the Javelin and the Stinger helped the Ukrainians to victory at Kiev, the PzH 2000, the Krab and the CAESAR could be decisive factors in the theatre of operations in Donbass and Kherson. As the saying goes: amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.
Translated with
www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)