Hacker News Reader

Comment by exar0815 | Hacker News Reader

Drones basically have flipped the total modern artillery doctrine on their heads.

With the proliferation of fire-finder-radar, modern artillery started to switch from dug in stationary guns to highly mobile "shoot-and-scoot"-tactics, in which a gun quickly fires half a dozen rounds in a time-on-target salvo and relocates to dodge the counterbattery fire. For this, modern Artillery systems like PZH2000, Archer, RCH155, Dana and Caesar are optimized.

Since the advent of quick and cheap FPV drones, moving artillery on the road is much more in danger, and dug-in guns with jammers, SHORAD and overhead protection again regained the survivability edge - albeit mainly because russia lost most of its modern radar.

The only western SPA with any chance of survival seems to be the PZH2000, as its on a tracked carriage allowing it offroad movement and concealment and being better armored than most wheeled contemporaries on Lorry-Chassis

View on HN

Uh, I'm not sure FPVs have all of the effects that you're discussing.

FPVs are significantly range limited (~10km), and have relatively small surveillance footprint. It's true that persistent ISR is significantly increasing the danger posed to all vehicles within the 10-30km (perhaps further) of the 'front line', but these are predominantly coming from different classes of drones.

And yes, while FPVs can be queued onto SPGs (or whatever) by these other drones, so can other means of fires (like traditional artillery). As a reminder, tube artillery can usually reach out to at least 20km.

I am not downplaying the impact that drones in general have, and I'm also not claiming that FPVs cannot significantly shape artillery operations within 5-10km of the front line.

Here's the rub - Russia is clearly cable to assembly company sized AFV elements (though not consistently) to attack. And yes, we see these attacks generally get repulsed (with significant FPV drone involvement). So we know that Ukrainian ISR + FPV combination (Ukraine has been limiting its artillery usage) can be overwhelmed in the deeper space - it is possible to mass company sized elements, and transit them through into the line of contact, reasonably intact.

There's no denying that PzH2000 is more survivable than Archer or Caesar (that is infact the entire point of Archer and Caesar - trade suitability and tactical mobility for strategic/operational mobility). But you're also missing like... M109? Like by numbers, there were more M109s donated than any other western platform.

Domakha has ~50km range.

Here's a report (in Polish) from a FO mission to correct HIMARS fire (sadly the drone was lost but the Russians had to send a fighter jet to shoot it down with a rocket): https://x.com/Aldohartwinska/status/1792838189494706220

FPV drones have been used at much longer ranges than that - it’s pretty well documented with videos that with repeater systems there’s now been strikes in excess of 25km using FPV, by both sides.

That’s not to downplay artillery though: you simply cannot deliver the volume of fires with drones that you can with tubes.

>>And yes, while FPVs can be queued onto SPGs (or whatever) by these other drones, so can other means of fires (like traditional artillery). As a reminder, tube artillery can usually reach out to at least 20km.

Yeah but that's the whole point thats been discussed in interested circles - the shift of the vulnerability of SPGs from the firing to the travel phase in absence of accompanying VSHORAD. (If they just had 2000 Gepards) And as Gunlorrys have to travel and fire on certain roads, that decreases the problem space.

For the M109, you are completely right. I missed that one.

I am not saying that tube artillery has a problem, but that ~10-20km around the line of contact seems to be the place you don't want to rely on mobility alone for survivability. Rheinmetall currently seems to be developing a 100km ranged base bleed grenade for 155mm pipes.

Ok that makes sense.

I agree that persistent ISR has dramatically increased the vulnerability of especially road bound SPGs behind the line of contact.

I guess in my first post, I was emphasizing that the catalyst for this increased vulnerability was not the FPV drones, but rather of ISR drones.

I'm not going to go into details of why I know (other than I'm an FPV pilot with a drone licence in my country and I have direct connections to pilots operating in a certain conflict), but you're more wrong than right. FPV drones have become a factor and like all new technologies, had an immediate impact that has since been blunted by adapting, eg EM warfare/jamming, "cope cages" around tanks, and the fact that it's still artillery killing the most soldiers.

FPV drones carrying anything more than antipersonnel grenades are heavy, with limited range and can have EW sensors track the control link signal sources that can then be responded with artillery.

Since a lot of the adaptions have happened, FPV pilots on both sides have become more about harassing the enemy than a strategic flipping of artillery doctrine (which was shifting to more mobile batteries before FPV drones came into the picture).

Primary reason the 2000 fares better in terms of survival is because they are being extra careful with them. Likely the condition under which they were provided. But that means fewer missions, greater distance and so on.

Lancets are much bigger problem for artillery as they are not as limited in range as FPVs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com