How Precision Artillery Ammo Is Giving Ukraine Attack Advantage Over Russia

Greater accuracy is more effective, eg deadly, and thus makes it harder for the target to hide or avoid being hit. 

In the Kharkiv and Kherson counteroffensives, this has enabled Ukrainian forces to eliminate Russian obstacles more quickly and certainly. JL 

Michael Peck reports in Business Insider:

Ukraine's recent counteroffensive owes much of its success to precision-guided munitions. Guided howitzer shells can destroy a pinpoint target - a tank, a bunker, or a supply depot - with a single shell where a barrage of old-fashioned unguided projectiles might have missed. The howitzer's crew puts GPS coordinates into the shell, which has a range of  25 miles. After launch, the fins pop out, allowing it to adjust its trajectory to hit the designated location. The Excalibur shell can hit within 7 feet of a target, though other figures suggest it can hit within 250 feet to 500 feet.

Ukraine's recent counteroffensive owes much of its success to precision-guided munitions. In particular, US-made HIMARS rockets have devastated Russian ammunition dumps and command posts.

But Russian forces face another threat: guided howitzer shells that can destroy a pinpoint target — a tank, a bunker, or a supply depot — with a single shell where a barrage of old-fashioned unguided projectiles might have missed.

The US has already sent M982 Excalibur GPS-guided 155 mm shells as part of an aid package that will include at least 1,000 shells. Germany has pledged 255 Vulcano 155 mm guided shells.

The M982 Excalibur shell is modified to include GPS guidance and deployable fins. The howitzer's crew puts GPS coordinates into the shell, which has a range of about 25 miles. After launch, the fins pop out, allowing it to adjust its trajectory to hit the designated location.

The Excalibur shell can reportedly hit within 7 feet of a target, though other figures suggest it can hit within 250 feet to 500 feet of the aimpoint.

The Vulcano has a range of about 43 miles and is accurate to within about 5.4 yards, according to its manufacturer, the Italian firm Leonardo. The shell is GPS-guided, though it can also be guided to its target by a semi-active laser illuminator.

One problem with GPS-guided rounds is that a moving target may change location by the time the round arrives. Laser-guided shells are considered more accurate as they home in on a target illuminated by a laser designator.

The Excalibur S variant has the option of using a semi-active laser, as does the Vulcano. The laser offers "further improved precision with respect to pure GPS guidance," Leonardo says.

 

As with debate over smart vs. dumb (unguided) air-dropped bombs, one issue with smart artillery shells is cost.

Each Excalibur round costs around $100,000, while even unguided 155 mm rocket-assisted projectiles, such as the experimental XM1113, cost almost $15,000 each. This compares to a few hundred dollars for a conventional munition such as the M795, the US military's standard unguided 155 mm shell.

The US Army developed the Excalibur in partnership with the Swedish army. 

US Army Acquisition Support Center/Catherine Deran

On the other hand, the M975 only has a Circular Error Probable — how close 50% of the rounds land to the target — of about 456 feet, according to US Army documents.

Thus, since World War I, the standard technique has been to fire a few spotting rounds so a forward observer — one of the more hazardous jobs in the military — can tell the gun crew how to adjust their firing coordinates.

 

For hitting small targets, artillery had to lay down barrages in hopes that at least one round would hit the mark. Guided munitions offer the prospect of "one round, one kill," which evens the economics a bit.

The concept of smart artillery shells goes back to the Cold War, when NATO was constantly searching for ways to offset Soviet numerical superiority in tanks and other weapons.

The first guided artillery projectile was the M712 Copperhead laser-guided shell, developed in the early 1970s, fielded in Operation Desert Storm, and still in use today.The Copperhead is a 155 mm shell that deploys fins as it descends and makes a controlled glide to a target illuminated by the laser. However, the laser guidance system had limitations.

The Copperhead "has a minimum firing range of 3 kilometers [1.9 miles] to allow the round to maneuver on target and is less effective in heavy cloud cover and in low visibility conditions," according to the White Sands Missile Range Museum.

"Additionally, the forward observer must keep the illumination laser trained on the target until impact, something difficult to do on a moving target or from far away," the museum says.

While Russia has laser-guided artillery like the 2N25 Krasnopol, Russian gunners in Ukraine have favored the approach of their Soviet forbears: mass artillery firing mass salvoes of shells and rockets to destroy or stun the defender.

But for Ukraine, whose artillery arsenal is far smaller than Russia's, quality may be more valuable than quantity.