Requiem for Revolution: Artillery in the War in Ukraine and Post-Industrial Armies Facing the Still-Industrial War

The on-going war in Ukraine sees the use of artillery unprecedented since the Second World War. However, the discussions thereof are often dominated by the notions of range and precision rather than massed firepower. These ideas go back to the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) – a trend in military thought emerging in the late 1970s and stressing long-range, high-precision weaponry used by smaller, manoeuvrable, professionalized armed forces. Yet, being a brainchild of specific historical circumstances of the late Cold War and heavily influenced by the ever-resent idea of imminent nuclear exchange, the RMA holds up poorly to the realities of high-intensity near-peer conflict of the 21st century. Numerous operations in the war in Ukraine – such as the Lisichansk, Kharkov and Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) operations of 2022-2023 – demonstrate that the ability to amass manpower and hardware more often than not prove more influential in deciding the outcome than numerically limited high-precision options. When viewed through the lens of the use of artillery by both sides, this observation becomes even more evident, as the most significant operational successes coincide with the largest expenditure of artillery munitions rather than bold manoeuvre enhanced by pinpoint high-precision strikes. Correspondingly, the industrial capacity to sustain one’s artillery becomes more crucial than it is perceived through the lens of the RMA. As a result, the present war calls the RMA into question and suggests the ensuing pre-eminence of massed firepower and industrial capacity to sustain it over a smaller number of higher-performing weapon systems and munitions.