So Much for Counter-Battery Fire: Ukrainian Howitzers Are Surviving to Have Their Barrels Wear Out

RU arty has underperformed expectations but maybe we're to blame for having them

The artillery the West has provided Ukraine is “breaking” the NYT says:

Time for everyone rooting for Russia or against the West to open the champagne?

Probably not.

A barrel wears itself out over time. That’s a normal thing. But that Ukrainian howitzers are living long enough for their barrels to wear out tells us that they’re mostly not being taken out by Russian counter-battery fire.

By late October Ukraine had received 1.1 million 155 mm shells. The majority of these have been expended, fired by just 350 155-mm weapons in Ukrainian hands. That Ukraine successfully fired off around a million shells is another indication Ukrainian artillery isn’t being suppressed.

Read more: Substack

8 Comments
  1. Blackledge says

    “The Ukraine has been demilitarized,” Dmitry Orlov once smugly claimed. Obviously, he is either a self-deluded fool like Douglas MacGregor, or he’s a liar like The Bloated Faker.

    You decide.

    1. Yuno says

      Effectively, Ukrainia HAS been ‘demilitarized’…

      and refashioned, as the forge pon which the dying eastern ’empire’ will hammer itself to death. Western weapon superiority has only begun to tell; this process will speed up, and if the Bela-fellas are lured into the action, the gloves will come fully off – and the whole gamut of western armaments will be ‘field-tested.’

      That is why the Ukies are praying that the enemy will be led into the LVIV gambit. The ‘military’ phase of the ‘police action’ was over as of when the rabble of ‘territorials’ held up the elite ”paras” long enough to bust the bubble of mythos by which the Russkies rode into town.

      The pundits sanctimoniously now pretending that the ‘problem’ lies ‘up top’… and not with the military machine itself

      never got that the entire production was based upon sending a group of ‘re-enactors’ forth to replicate the ‘glories’ of the “Great Patriotic War” – complete with the obligatory slogans of ‘de-nazification’ and so on. The Russkie military only believed in the myth – and their role – till the time they first got stuck in the mud and realized that there were ‘live fire’ opponents out in the dark, instead of ‘actors’ like themselves. Natty ‘elite’ uniforms got soiled substantially in those moments of dawning understanding.

      Even daily planeloads of fresh underwear and dry socks from China and NK will not stem the horror of that realization now. The stink of defeat is only gonna get worse.

      And after that… it will be the Ukies turn to realize that ‘the fix is in’… and not only is nobody scripted to ‘win’…. but as Chuckie called it –
      “nobody gets out alive!”

      1. Blackledge says

        Truth.

    2. Borg 1 says

      What a moron you are. The barrels wear out fast if not properly maintained.

  2. peterinanz says

    “…There’s a Russian artillery superiority,..
    Amateur. There is nothing of the sort.

    Won’t get into details; just two things: fire control SYSTEM, and smart ammunition.

  3. Oscar Peterson says

    “Time for everyone rooting for Russia or against the West to open the champagne?”

    That depends on whether the barrels and ammunition can be easily replaced/restocked or not–regardless of how ineffective Russian counter-battery fire is.

    Will 350 new barrels and 1m more rounds of 155mm shells be forthcoming?

    1. Field Empty says

      The replacement M777 barrels were already included in a previous package. Barrels for non-US stuff might take longer, but Lithuania has already repaired a couple of Pzh2000 and sent them back.

      On the 155mm ammo issue I already wrote.

  4. Dan Redd says

    This is bad

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