Ukraine claims to have destroyed vast amounts of Russian artillery, sometimes as many as 60 pieces in one day, with the current total topping 20,000. This figure, double the number of tanks claimed destroyed, may seem hard to credit. But video evidence shows how Ukrainian operators have worked out a way to efficiently destroy Russian artillery using small drones.
It is a high-tech variant of a very old technique known as ‘spiking the guns’.
The Toughest Targets
Nobody doubts that Ukraine has the technology to find Russian artillery, with a combination of U.S. supplied counter-battery radar systems which can track shells back to their source, pervasive drone overwatch and other sources.
Nobody doubts either that Ukraine has an ample supply of FPV drones with enough range – 12 miles or more – to hit any artillery once it is found.
The question is over whether a small FPV drone with a 4-pound warhead can do any real damage to most types of howitzer.
Self-propelled guns, like tanks and personnel carriers, are relatively easy targets. Because they have plenty of stored fuel and ammunition, any penetrating hit is likely to set off an explosion which will not just put the vehicle out of action but scatter it all over the landscape (see example below).
At the start of the war, most of Russia’s artillery was self-propelled, but now the majority consists of old-fashioned towed howitzers. These are, oddly enough, much harder to destroy. There is no fuel to ignite, and ammunition may be nearby but not close enough to cause damage if detonated. Crew members out in the open may be injured or killed, but Russia sees them as expendable, whereas hardware is more difficult to replace. The howitzer itself is essentially a large chunk of metal which is resistant to most forms of attack. Worse, it is a relatively small target.
A report by UK defense thinktank RUSI noted several cases where hits by Russian Lancet kamikaze drones failed to damage artillery: “One officer also said that although he had seen his gun ‘destroyed’ several times online, it remained alive and well.”
The problem of putting artillery out of action goes way back. Ever since the earliest days of gunpowder, the weapons themselves have been difficult to destroy. Small-arms fire might cause the crew to take cover, but bullets had no effect on the weighty bronze or iron guns. Hitting one with a cannonball was nigh impossible. The only way to reliably prevent a weapon beyond use was to spike it, which required infantry or cavalry to physically overrun the battery.
Spiking a gun consisted in hammering an iron spike into the touch-hole (the hole in the barrel to which a match was applied to fire it), then using the rammer to bend the tip of the spike so it could not be extracted. Artillery crews weredissues with special spikes to disable their guns if they were in danger of being captured. If these were not available a gun could be spiked with a bayonet which would then be broken off so it could not be pulled out. Once spiked, a gun could not be fired, and repair was a lengthy and difficult process involving drilling out the spike.
In one celebrated action in 1778, John Paul Jones led a raid to spike a battery of British 32-pounder guns at Whitehaven, leaving them unable to fire on American vessels during an attack.
The modern version also requires the attacker to get close and disable the gun by damaging the barrel. Now it is done with a drone.
Ultra Precision Strike
Ukraine’s 414th Marine Strike UAV Regiment, better known as “Birds of Magyar” after its charismatic commander, is an elite drone unit which has been in the forefront of developing drone attacks. Their compilations show the destruction of numerous artillery pieces, in one case knocking out 22 Russian howitzers in a week.
The technique is simple enough, though challenging in practice. The operator flies an FPV drone up to a howitzer at walking speed and approaches side-on, targeting the gun barrel. The FPV’s shaped charge warhead, able to penetrate thick tank armor, punches a small hole through the barrel, rendering the weapon useless. The crew have presumably been driven off by previous FPV attacks.
Of course the gun can be repaired by replacing the barrel, which is a simple operation…but Russia has a critical shortage of artillery barrels, which require precision machining of hard steel, and only has one factory capable of producing them. They have already cannibalized thousands of old artillery pieces in storage, removing the barrels to replace ones which have worn out through heavy use, as barrel life is only a few thousand rounds.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that some has though of using an ultra-precision drone strike to disable artillery. In 2017 the U.S. Army initiated a project for a “Cluster UAS Smart Munition for Missile Deployment.” This was a long-range missile payload which would release multiple quadcopter drones over the target area. Each drone would then home in on a target, land on it, and detonate: “Potential targets include tank and large caliber gun barrels, fuel storage barrels, vehicle roofs, and ammunition storage sites.”
The Cluster UAS warhead would have been fitted to GMLRS or ATACMS and might have been an efficient way of knocking out entire artillery batteries with one missile. The project was developed through 2021 but does not seem to have progressed to completion.
The modern version in Ukraine relies on pilot skill rather than automatic guidance. In principle that could change. Ukraine already has FPVs with terminal guidance, and a gun barrel is a relatively large and easily-identified target. At present, knocking out a howitzer with a small drone requires the skill of the elite pilots of Birds of Magyar. In the coming months the operator may only need to get a howitzer in their crosshairs and push a button for an autopilot to carry out the tricky process of disabling the gun barrel.
As Ukraine deploys flying drone carriers and long-range “Ukrolancets” to extend the range of their strikes, Russian artillery losses are likely to keep mounting. And others may start to question just how survivable traditional artillery is in a world when where can be destroyed by a $500 drone.
