Why Russia Was Unprepared for Modern Artillery Warfare

Russian artillery retreated from 4 to 20 kilometers behind the front line

Russia has not run out of cannons. It has lost the complete chain that connects spotting the enemy to destroying them. Identification, tracking, and engagement form what is known as the kill chain, and in an artillery duel, victory goes to whoever completes it first. The simplest analogy is a Western gunslinger: spot the rival, track him, and shoot first.

After nearly two years of large-scale war, the army no longer positions its pieces where its own manuals dictated. The pre-war doctrine’s 4-kilometer distance from the front has shifted to between 15 and 20 kilometers, with units emerging only briefly to execute fire missions. This is the difference between firing and surviving.

What is the kill chain and why does it decide artillery duels?

The chain can be broken in two ways. First, by preventing the adversary from completing any link: avoiding detection, evasion, armor protection, and physical or electronic countermeasures. Second, by finishing your own sequence faster, like the gunslinger who draws quicker. Neither option involves diplomacy; both are calculations of time.

On paper, both sides possess artillery. The question is who spots first, corrects better, and fires before being located. Everything else—the number of tubes, tons of steel, daily propaganda tallies—is secondary if the process stalls at the first step. And it does stall. A full breakdown of the three links, including distances and times, is available in the analysis that initiated this discussion.

From Soviet Deep Battle to Battalion Tactical Groups

Russian doctrine did not emerge in 2022. It stems from Soviet theory, which dates back to the final days of World War I. While the Germans concentrated mass to break through fronts with mobility—what would later become Blitzkrieg—the Red Army developed the concepts of “Deep Battle” and “Deep Operation”: striking the enemy rear with artillery while keeping the contact line static, then piercing it with armored mass.

Atomic power and the general increase in firepower during the 1950s made concentrating tens of thousands of men and vehicles in one point unsustainable. Zhukov’s reforms pushed toward smaller operational units without abandoning the goal of degrading the enemy in depth. In the 1970s and 1980s, so-called “non-linear warfare” was formalized: the battalion, comprising 800 to 1,000 soldiers, became the preferred tactical unit, equipped with its own anti-aircraft, armored, mechanized infantry, and artillery contingents. A corps exceeded 25,000 men; a division, 10,000.

This lineage culminated in the Battalion Tactical Group (BTG), largely abandoned as an organizational model by late 2022. New manuals exist. The training required to turn them into actual tactics, however, is lacking.

Why Russian Counter-Battery Fire Has Slowed Down

Losses force adaptation. If pre-war doctrine kept brigade artillery 4 kilometers from the front, maintaining such deployment means giving away the pieces. The Russian response has been to retreat to the 15-to-20-kilometer band, accepting worse reaction times and less coverage over the frontline in exchange.

On the other side of the balance, some argue that supplied Western artillery, being more modern, has greater range and precision, allowing targets to be struck without entering the enemy’s counter-battery radius. This is exactly the trade-off described by the kill chain: whoever fires first from outside the opponent’s reach completes their sequence without offering a chance for retaliation.

The Counterpoint: Ukraine Doesn’t Shoot for Free Either

Some temper enthusiasm with non-trivial arguments. Ukrainian artillery is equally inefficient, with a limited number of companies capable of good fire adjustment. On the Russian side, there are also battalions with precise correction, and many more relying on volume. Guided munitions are extremely expensive and difficult to sustain in a war of attrition: howitzers need “dumb” rounds for suppression fire, which infantry would welcome.

The summary of this view is uncomfortable for both propagandas: precision wins duels, but logistics decides campaigns. And neither side has ample ammunition.

The Figures Each Side Puts on the Table

Casualty estimates are where authorship bias shows most. Circulating figures suggest a ratio of four Ukrainians per Russian and over 500,000 Ukrainian casualties fallen. The other side emphasizes that Russia retains less than half of what it conquered and that after three months of offensive operations, positions have barely moved a few kilometers. Artillery explains part of this paralysis; not all of it.

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If attrition continues and neither kill chain closes with a clear advantage, the likely outcome is more of the same: fronts moving via counter-battery fire and infantry assaults, without breakthroughs. With one major caveat: the material advantage Russia entered the war with was theoretical, and theories don’t shoot.