Soviet reserves are not eternal. Will the Russians have enough artillery for new major offensive campaigns?
Ilya Bolgaryn
OSINT analyst
May 21, 2:00 PM
According to one of The Economist's insiders, at the talks in Istanbul, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said that Russia was ready for a protracted conflict. To support his words, he recalled the Northern War, which lasted 21 years. One of the popular episodes of this war is the order of Peter I to dismantle church bells and melt them down for artillery, which was in short supply.
Today, artillery is also in short supply, but since the Northern War, the technology for producing artillery barrels has changed somewhat, to put it mildly, so the Russians have to supply it to the front not using the methods of Peter I, but by uncorking supplies from the Cold War era.
Just like in the situation with tanks, which we described in one of the previous texts, these stocks are not eternal. At the same time, Russian production of new artillery and barrels does not seem to be able to cover the needs of the front and the dynamics of losses.
The Russians' problems in putting new artillery systems into service do not mean at all that the enemy will soon stop firing and Ukraine will be close to victory.
But artillery is one of the key elements of Russian offensive tactics. Understanding the situation with Russian artillery production is important for assessing its real capabilities to increase or at least maintain the current pace of the offensive in the medium and long term, which is the key "card" of the Russians at the negotiating table.
Build-up and destruction of Russian artillery
And although the bulk of the damage on the front is already inflicted by FPV drones, the role of artillery in combat has not decreased - on the contrary, its importance has increased. Artillery performs not only traditional fire support tasks, but also integrates into the reconnaissance and strike tandem network, providing pinpoint strikes on targets detected by tactical drones.
Due to its range, power, and ability to operate in all weather conditions, artillery remains a critically important component of firepower, and its effective use is one of the main conditions for containing or breaking through enemy defenses.
Russia has one of the largest artillery armies in the world. According to the analytical guide Military Balance, the Russian army had about 2,500 artillery systems of various types before the Great War. Most of them are highly mobile self-propelled artillery systems (SAU).
And as of early 2024, according to the Royal United Defense Research Institute (RUSI), Russia had increased the number of operational artillery systems at the front to over 4,700.
The Russians fire many times more shells per day than the Ukrainian Defense Forces. For example, during the offensive campaign in early 2024, the ratio was 1 to 8. Now it is less, as Ukraine has established the supply of shells, but the enemy's advantage in artillery remains tangible.
Dominance in artillery allowed the enemy to use the "firewall" tactic, when the positions of the Ukrainian defenders were simply destroyed by dense fire until completely destroyed.
To achieve this result, the Russians need three key components: operational artillery systems, spare barrels, and shells for them. The shells are obtained not only through their own Russian production, which provides over 2 million large-caliber ammunition per year, but also through supplies from North Korea and Iran.
According to the GUR, the Kim Jong-un regime has transferred over 5 million large-caliber ammunition to Russia since 2023. This has made it possible to maintain an extremely high intensity of artillery fire.
But the artillery systems and barrels themselves were sought primarily from their own storage bases left over from the Cold War. This allowed thousands of howitzers to be quickly put into service, even despite the huge losses at the front.
Without the same amount of ammunition and howitzers, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were forced to focus on counter-battery warfare, that is, destroying enemy artillery. To do this, the Ukrainian army used reconnaissance UAVs, counter-battery radars, and high-precision Western-style artillery systems, whose greater range and accuracy compensated for their smaller numbers.
In 2023, FPV drones and heavy copters were added to the means of counter-battery warfare, which became a new effective tool for defeating enemy artillery.
In response, the Russian troops began to adapt: they improved the engineering of artillery positions, camouflage, and equipped their equipment with additional protection, including anti-drone grilles. But they never found the final "pill".
With the increasing losses among self-propelled artillery, the Russian army began to use towed (trailer) artillery more actively, which took a leading place in their fleet. Such artillery is less noticeable for reconnaissance, easier to manufacture, and in conditions of a growing shortage of equipment, it turned out to be quite suitable for conducting positional warfare.
According to the Oryx analytical resource , which records losses of equipment based on visual confirmation, the total losses of Russian artillery systems — both self-propelled and towed — at the time of publication are about 1,500 units. At the same time, according to official data from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the losses of Russian artillery are almost 28,000 units. Where does such a large discrepancy come from?
First, the destruction or damage of artillery systems is much more difficult to record visually than in the case of armored vehicles, so not all defeats are included in the statistics of OSINT analysts. Artillery installations are usually located far from the line of contact and are well camouflaged - they are hidden in plantings, buried, covered with nets. As a result, it is difficult to obtain photo or video confirmation of their destruction.
Since OSINT resources, including Oryx, work exclusively with open visual evidence, they record only those losses that can be identified in photos or videos. In contrast, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have access to a wider range of intelligence tools — including radio intercepts, operational intelligence, and UAV broadcasts — that allow them to confirm enemy losses without the need for open visualization.
The second factor is the counting methodology. The General Staff of Ukraine also includes mortars, which formally belong to artillery, in the general accounting of losses - they are much smaller in size and rarely fall into the field of view of drones.
We know that Russian artillery losses are much higher than the 1,500 visually confirmed ones thanks to OSINT analysts who use their own money to purchase satellite imagery and analyze Russian storage bases. Artillery has been stored there in the open since the Cold War.
Since the gap between the production of new howitzers and battlefield losses is huge, the Russians began to massively withdraw artillery from these stocks and put it into service or disassemble it into components.
According to OSINT analyst Jompy , as of 2022, there were 22,367 artillery pieces in Russian storage bases, of which 17,197 were towed. By 2024, the total number was 9,325. Six months have passed since then, so there are even fewer of them now.
At first glance, there are still enough howitzers left in these warehouses, as only 60% were used by the end of 2024. But it should be taken into account that not all artillery from the reserves is suitable for combat use.
The Russians first of all rake out the most repairable equipment from warehouses, and leave the most problematic ones "for later" - this is exactly what is happening with heavy armored vehicles now.
From this, we can assume that a significant part of the artillery at storage bases is now obsolete or in poor condition - in the warehouses you can see systems from the Second World War that cannot be operated without long and expensive repairs.
Such mass decommissioning of artillery from warehouses is related not only to replacing losses, but also to the exhaustion of the barrel life.
The fact is that artillery has a limited service life, determined primarily by the barrel's life — that is, the maximum number of shots that can be fired before it needs to be replaced with a new one. Accordingly, some of the equipment can be removed from storage bases simply to replenish stocks of these consumables.
The barrel life depends on many factors: the intensity of fire, the quality of maintenance, the condition of the ammunition and the professionalism of the crew. For example, 122-mm systems such as the D-30 or 2S1 "Gvozdika" have a life of about 30 thousand rounds, while 152-mm howitzers of the "MSTA-S" type have only a few thousand, and the 203-mm self-propelled guns 2S7 "Pion" have about 500 rounds. These are approximate figures from textbooks - in combat conditions the actual life can differ significantly.
The intensive use of artillery leads to rapid barrel wear, which reduces the accuracy of fire, the effectiveness of the systems, and even creates the risk of detonation in the barrel itself. This is precisely why the need for reserve howitzers from warehouses has increased - they are either used directly or disassembled for repair of other units.
An additional factor that accelerated the wear of the barrels of Russian artillery systems was the use of low-quality ammunition. In particular, the Russian military has repeatedly complained about shells supplied from the DPRK: according to them, the low quality led to ruptures in the barrels, which not only disabled the equipment, but also simply endangered the crew.
Such mass decommissioning of artillery from warehouses is related not only to replacing losses, but also to the exhaustion of the barrel life.
The fact is that artillery has a limited service life, determined primarily by the barrel's life — that is, the maximum number of shots that can be fired before it needs to be replaced with a new one. Accordingly, some of the equipment can be removed from storage bases simply to replenish stocks of these consumables.
The barrel life depends on many factors: the intensity of fire, the quality of maintenance, the condition of the ammunition and the professionalism of the crew. For example, 122-mm systems such as the D-30 or 2S1 "Gvozdika" have a life of about 30 thousand rounds, while 152-mm howitzers of the "MSTA-S" type have only a few thousand, and the 203-mm self-propelled guns 2S7 "Pion" have about 500 rounds. These are approximate figures from textbooks - in combat conditions the actual life can differ significantly.
The intensive use of artillery leads to rapid barrel wear, which reduces the accuracy of fire, the effectiveness of the systems, and even creates the risk of detonation in the barrel itself. This is precisely why the need for reserve howitzers from warehouses has increased - they are either used directly or disassembled for repair of other units.
An additional factor that accelerated the wear of the barrels of Russian artillery systems was the use of low-quality ammunition. In particular, the Russian military has repeatedly complained about shells supplied from the DPRK: according to them, the low quality led to ruptures in the barrels, which not only disabled the equipment, but also simply endangered the crew.
And these are not isolated cases. Satellite images of storage bases increasingly show artillery guns and howitzers of the D-20 and M-46 types, which were manufactured in the 1950s. Osint researcher HighMarsed published information that as of 2022, there were about 600 M-46 units at Russian bases, and 380 of them have already been taken away.
Systems developed during World War II have also been spotted on the front lines. In particular, photographs recently emerged of the 122mm M-30 howitzer, which was in service with the Soviet Army as early as the 1940s.
Why is there so little new artillery?
In 2024, Sergei Chemezov, CEO of the state corporation Rostec, stated that the production and repair volumes of self-propelled artillery in Russia had increased 10 times, and of towed artillery 14 times compared to 2022. Here again we encounter the manipulative formulation of "production and repair", which also covers the lifting of vehicles from Soviet warehouses.
The bottleneck in the production of new artillery is the barrels. They require high-precision heavy machine tools and a number of key components. Establishing such mass production is not an easy task.
According to a rough estimate by the Kiel Institute , the Russians were producing dozens of new artillery systems every quarter in 2023, and in the first and second quarters of 2024 they reached a capacity of 100 and 112, respectively. According to RUSI, the production of new barrels could be "hundreds" per year. This does not cover Russian combat costs and the depletion of barrels on the battlefield.
If this estimate is close to reality, then it is roughly comparable to the known production volumes of Ukrainian "Bogdan" self-propelled guns.
In fact, it is difficult to objectively assess the volume of Russian howitzer production, since reports from enterprises often show only individual sites, without disclosing the scale of production.
Several key enterprises are responsible for the production of new artillery systems in the Russian Federation: in particular, Plant No. 9, which specializes in the manufacture of artillery barrels for 122-mm D-30A howitzers and tank guns; Uraltransmash, which produces the 152-mm MSTA-S self-propelled guns; and Motovilikhinsky Plants, which have a full production cycle of artillery systems such as 2S1 Gvozdika, 2S3 Akatsiya, 2A36 Hyacinth-B, 2S5 Hyacinth-S, and Msta-B.
But if you look at the history of Russian artillery production, you can see that Russian factories were not in the best shape for the great invasion.
In the 1980s, during the development of the 152-mm self-propelled guns "MSTA-S", the existing capacities of "Uraltransmash" were not enough, so it was decided to build a separate Sterlitamak Machine-Building Plant. However, due to internal competition, the management of "Uraltransmash" put forward the idea of creating its own workshop worth 600 million rubles within the existing plant. It is not known whether the construction of a new workshop for the production of "MSTA-S" was completed, but the Sterlitamak plant that produced it ceased operations back in 2013 and was demolished.
Motovilikhinsky Zavody has been in bankruptcy since 2018. This does not mean that it has stopped working (at least Ukrainian drones were hitting there for a reason) , but this generally characterizes the state of the enterprise.
Against this background, the emergence of new models of wheeled, rather than traditional tracked, artillery systems is interesting, in particular the Malva and Hyacinth-K self-propelled guns. According to Pavel Luzin, an expert on the Russian military-industrial complex, the choice in favor of creating new artillery systems on a wheeled chassis is due to the lack of tracked platforms. The MSTA-S self-propelled gun, for example, is based on the T-90 tank chassis, which is also necessary for the production of main battle tanks, and this competition for resources significantly complicates the mass production of self-propelled guns.
A wheeled self-propelled gun is a good option in itself. Wheeled chassis are much easier to manufacture, do not require the same number of expensive components as tracked ones, and do not compete with tank production.
But the mere appearance of these new artillery systems does not indicate a significant increase in barrel production capabilities. First, both models went into mass production only sometime in early 2024. Second, Andriy Tarasenko, the author of a specialized portal about armored vehicles, has already noticed an old barrel from the Hyacinth-B on the Hyacinth-K, which was most likely removed from storage. This once again indicates a shortage of these components in Russia.
Artillery parity is actually possible
It is obvious that the Defense Forces will never be able to physically destroy all of the Russian artillery systems. The Russian Federation is trying to compensate for the loss and wear of barrels by increasing production, continues to raise the remaining stocks at storage bases, and imports artillery systems from North Korea. And although the quality of the latter is questionable, they exist and they work.
The Ukrainian army has many comparable problems, up to the use of artillery from the Second World War, only American M114 systems. Moreover, we do not have such large reserves of Soviet-era weapons as the Russians and are heavily dependent on supplies of shells. That is why we are systematically losing in artillery power.
But it so happened that Ukraine has had its own strong and scalable production of the Bogdan self-propelled guns, including barrels and machines for their manufacture, since 2022. At the same time, many foreign enterprises work for the Ukrainian army, which gives much more room for scaling.
For example, France sends 90% of its manufactured barrels to Ukraine. And after all, Ukrainian long-range artillery, especially Western models, often surpasses Russian ones in quality, which is also important.
This situation suggests that in the long term, after even greater depletion of Russian reserves, at least parity between Ukraine and Russia in the ratio of artillery fire may eventually become a reality. Of course, provided that the Western supply of shells to the Defense Forces is stable, which has come into question for political reasons.
To avoid a collapse in the artillery component, Russia will have to reduce the intensity of artillery shelling and compensate for the lack of firepower with other means, including FPV drones.
Thus, according to the spokesman for the State Border Service of Ukraine Andriy Demchenko, the use of fiber-optic drones has become more frequent in the border areas with Russia. The same situation is in the Novopavlivske direction, according to the spokesman for the Khortytsia Regional State Administration, Viktor Tregubov.
The factor of the Russians' more active transition to the use of FPV drones in the conditions of a gradual loss of artillery power cannot be underestimated and it is necessary to prepare for this by supplying the front with appropriate protection. At the same time, the gradual depletion of artillery power should also be taken into account when assessing the Russians' ability to conduct new major offensive campaigns.
But we should not forget that right now thousands of Russian guns are being directed at Ukrainian soldiers, and there is no need to doubt their combat readiness.
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