The outgunned Ukrainians face Russia, which is well-positioned to defend and has a clear artillery advantage for the coming months
By Jayant Chandel
In the past few weeks, there have been plenty of discussions and debates about the nature of cluster munitions and morality around the decision by the United States to send them to Ukraine. According to American policymakers, the decision was necessary to sustain the Ukrainian counteroffensive. So US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan defended the decision in an interview with NBC as a means to “defend their homeland, protect their civilians”.
Providing Ukraine with the cluster munitions at this juncture of the war, argued Sullivan, is a way to “not be defenseless in the face of a Russian onslaught”. President Joe Biden echoed the sentiments when he said in an interaction with Fareed Zakaria that the decision was needed because Ukraine “either have the weapons to stop the Russians now from their — keep them from stopping the Ukrainian offensive through these areas — or they don’t”. Similarly, Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, argued that soon Ukraine “will run out of ammunition. If they run out of ammunition, then they will be defenseless”.
Matching Russia
Morally speaking, one can justify the decision on the ground that the lack of ammunition means that Ukraine cannot successfully defend itself. But, related to the policy choice, there is another military dimension of this story which will be far more consequential in the coming months: the difficulty of the US and the NATO allies to keep producing the artillery ammunition to match/outpace the Russians.
According to their own public admission, the US policymakers accept that so far they have failed to keep up with the Russian artillery production. This admission is significant as the war in Ukraine has long become attrition warfare. In this case, the production of artillery matters. It is one of the most important components of any attrition warfare in modern history. Attrition as a military strategy entails wearing down your adversaries by making them lose men and machinery on a continuous and sustained basis to the point that their will to fight collapses.
The Russian army, historically, has been a force which depends a lot on artillery warfare. Unlike the US Army doctrine, which depends on the precise use of explosives and ammunitions, the Russian doctrine rests on massive firepower, less precise and highly dependent on artillery warfare. Throughout the modern history of Russian warfare, this has been a truism for a long time and recently we have seen that in Chechnya and Syria.
Military Doctrine
In the history of attrition warfare, it has been observed that two basic elements are needed to achieve a decisive victory: artillery superiority and a higher population. In the case of artillery, Russians throughout the war have outgunned the Ukrainians by a huge margin. Due to their military doctrine, Russians always had a huge advantage when it came to the available stocks of artillery ammunition and their production in comparison to the West. The current situation, with Ukraine fighting a counteroffensive and the Russians defending, makes the life of Ukrainians much more difficult.
According to recent western estimates, like that in business insider, the artillery gap could be anywhere between five and ten times in the favour of Russia. We have seen how the major suppliers of Ukraine, NATO and the US, are failing to match that even after more than a year of the deadly war in Ukraine. Hence, the rush to transfer cluster ammunition. Even if in the coming year/months they somehow close the artillery gap, how are the western allies going to tilt the population and number of combatants in favour of Ukraine without entering the war themselves? This brings us to the issue of population. The issue that some of the enthusiastic pro-Ukrainian observers fail to grasp.
Artillery Gap
Some even argue that “smart warfare” by Ukrainians will close such a huge artillery gap. Such observers cite Ukrainian data related to combat deaths to support their argument. No matter how smart you fight, closing these gaps require a significant ramp-up in the production of artillery shells and equipment primarily. There is no substitute for that. No amount of smart warfare can substitute the basic structure of attrition warfare and replace artillery and the population gap.
Even if we take pro-Ukraine estimates at face value and accept that Russians have lost twice to thrice more soldiers than Ukraine, the fact remains that Russia maintains a significant population advantage over Ukraine in terms of the sheer number of people available to join the war. More importantly, with Ukraine now going on a counteroffensive, and Russians well-positioned defensively, the death ratio is only going to tilt in favour of Russia now. The outgunned Ukrainians face a force which is well-positioned to defend and has a clear artillery advantage for the coming months. How do we close this population gap or win the war despite it? Will the pace of production and delivery of the latest military equipment in the immediate future manage to close this gap to the point that the Russians are exhausted and outmanoeuvred?
Unless and until the strategists and leaders in the West solve these problems, there is no end in sight for this bloody war of attrition in Ukraine and regaining Crimea is going to be a distant affair. With both parties not in any mood to negotiate a ceasefire before gaining a significant advantage on the battlefield, Europe faces a long and bloody war in the coming months or even years to come. Smart warfare and innovative tactics in themselves, without military means to match your adversary, are not enough in this war.