Footage of a Russian Iskander-M ballistic missile strike on positions of the 411th Separate Unmanned Systems Regiment of the Ukrainian Army. The video was filmed near the village of Varvarovka in the Donbas, in the Kramatorsk-Druzhkivka direction. Ukrainian units and military equipment were positioned in a forested area.
The War in the Ukraine
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
I still see videos of Russian drones picking off Ukrainian artillery, which indicates that artillery is still present. Lancets and FPV drones are often the killer of Ukrainian artillery these days. In one sector, even if the drone footage were published as seperate videos, the Russians took out three 2S22 Bogdanas, one Grad MLRS and one M109 Paladin in a wave of repeated FPV drone strikes. One drone isn't enough to take out a vehicle, so the drones kept hitting and hitting till the vehicle is visibly on fire, with one drone hitting the fuel tank of the 2S22 Bogdana directly. The grills used to protect the vehicles were hit by a drone first, which opened it up for subsequent fiberoptic FPV drones to take out.
The Russian armored assaults towards Shakhove fell under heavy Ukrainian drone and artillery attacks, and took casualties.
I also see frequent Krasnopol use, particularly the M2 variant, taking out strongholds, the shells directly hitting the bunkers or the shelters. These are especially used against drone control points.
I still see videos of drone and artillery strikes against mortar positions which indicates mortars are still popularly used.
Tanks are frequently used on an indirect fire mode, which let's the tank strike as far as 10km, using drones as artillery spotters. This scheme turns a tank into an SPG. But it works, with targets focused on fortifications and even on opposing drone crew. This indicates that tank crews are trained like artillery crews, kind of similar to the way German StuG crews in WW2 were originally trained as artillery crews.
There's also plenty of MLRS use. A Ukrainian bridge scouted by FPV drones and hit by Tornado-S.
Drones and glide FABs have indeed taken on a lot of the work barrel artillery used to do. On top of this, we also see more air to ground missile used by the Russians, in particular with the X-38ML and X-39 LMUR missiles. MLRS are used on positions hidden on forest patches.
But the fact that you often see black spots on the ground in many footage indicates barrel artillery is still uses frequently in general.
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As Russian infantry and equipment enter Pokrovsk along the E-50 highway, the Ukrainian army is also attempting to push its forces into the encircled city. The video shows several Ukrainian groups attempting to enter Pokrovsk. It is unknown whether the Ukrainian units succeeded, but they were attacked by Russian FPV drones from the "Irish" unit. The drones also struck a Ukrainian 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer, a BTR-4E armored personnel carrier, and a pickup truck.
Video of a Kh-47M2 launch from a MiG-31K. Cockpit is visible, shows 3 large MFD's and 2 smaller displays with barely no "steam gauges" are apparent
plawolf
Lieutenant General
You can already see how the combination of drones and artillery is proving to be a potent combination and creating significantly increased difficulty for opfor artillery. This is one of the reasons the Russians are so focused on taking out Ukrainian artillery and drones as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
With drones roaming, SOP for Russian artillery has evolved to shoot and conceal instead of the traditional shoot and scoot due to drones making the scoot phase much more hazardous and costly. But if the Ukrainians also have artillery, staying put after a barrage is not a great idea either as then you put yourself at risk of traditional counter battery fire.
Taking out drone teams is always a high priority, but by taking out Ukrainian artillery, at least you reduce the counter battery risk and gives you a nice easy decision tree.
But the continued existence of this deadly duo on the Ukrainian side may explain why the Russians are increasingly using older tanks for tubes artillery, since those tanks offer superior mobility to towed artillery and much enhanced survivability against both counter battery fire and FPVs compared to traditional SPAs.
This could have interesting implications for further SPA development across the globe.
If they can do guided Krasnopol round that fit T-62 115mm and T-72,80,90 125mm guns, they would have so many precise artillery tubes.
There's versions of the Krasnopol for 120mm mortars and 122mm howitzers called Kitolov-2M and Kitolov-22 respectively. They are used on towed and self propelled 120mm mortars like the Nona-K and Nona-S, and the 122mm versions for the 2S1 Gvozdika SPG and the popular D30 howitzer. There's a 240mm version called Smel'chak for the 2S4 Tyulpan self propelled mortar. The main 152mm version already works for all legacy Soviet artillery and SPG as well as the new ones. So that's already a lot of tubes. The round requires very little to no modifications for use on legacy equipment since the guidance is directly via the drone anyway.
The real bottleneck is with the drones compatible with it using the Malachite laser guidance system. Not all Russian UAVs have it. Those that do are the Orlan-10/30, the Granat-4, Orion and Forpost UAVs. For the other drones, like SKAT or Zala-16, it's back to artillery spotting using unguided rounds.
Russians don't use GPS guided shell munitions like the NATO supplied Excalibur. GPS munitions only need the drone, any drone, to determine the GPS coordinates of the target, or have the operators on the backoffice determine it. However GPS munitions are vulnerable to GPS spoofing, which laser guided munitions are not. Russians do use GPS (GLONASS) guidance on point to point kamekaze drones like Gerans, Chernihiv, KUB and Italmas.
Tanks have a problem when used as artillery. Their elevation with respect to the 125mm 2A46 gun is only around 14 deg. This limits the range and obstacles that it can clear, making it more effective in flat terrain. This is probably one factor why Russians advance along flat terrain the fastest, but slows down on forest, hilly and urban terrain which makes it more difficult to use these cannons indirectly. The 120mm mortars have elevations 70-80 deg, while the howitzers have up to 70 degrees.
I think if it was a tank, it's better to use an ATGM instead so the missile can fly up and over obstacles across the horizon, then laser guide it down to the target via drone like a Krasnopol.
This Malachite laser guidance system is already used on air to ground missiles, namely the Kh-38ML. No aircraft mounted laser targeting pods needed. The missile flies to the target area via satellite navigation and is guided to the target directly by an Orlan drone. This missile is heavily used against bridges, deployment and drone control points in concrete shelters, with an explosive power equivalent to a FAB-250.
I would think Krasnopol variants for MLRS like Grad, Uragan or even Tornado-S might be interesting.
Rare footage of strikes by three Russian FAB-3000 bombs, each with a UMPK module, on the temporary deployment sites of the 38th Separate Marine Brigade of Ukraine and the 155th Separate Mechanized Brigade. The video was filmed in Myrnohrad, Pokrovsky district, Donbas. The attack was carried out by a Russian Su-34 frontline fighter-bomber.
Leonardo is developing 120mm rounds and 120mm L55 gun specifically for this purpose, to provide tanks with enhanced indirect fire capability. The guided round can reach a range of 30km and is compatible with existing 120mm guns.
Footage of the results of an attempted counterattack near Kupyansk by five BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles from the 116th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army. BMP-1s were produced in the USSR from 1966 to 1983. The BMPs were camouflaged in a forest belt on the northern outskirts of the village of Kupyansk-Uzlovaya, adjacent to the city of Kupyansk. The concentration of BMP-1s was discovered by Russian reconnaissance aircraft from the 6th Army of the "West" group of forces during aerial reconnaissance. After spotting the Ukrainian BMPs, they used unidentified FPV drones to strike them. Judging by the video, all Ukrainian BMPs of the 116th Separate Mechanized Brigade were destroyed.