A Russian D-44 battery during the Second Chechen War.
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In the nearly four months since Ukrainian forces launched their long-awaited counteroffensive along multiple axes in southern and eastern Ukraine, Ukrainians have taken out no fewer than 80 Russian howitzers and rocket launchers. Meanwhile, the Russians have only disabled 24 Ukrainian howitzers and launchers.
While the Russian armed forces, with their 4,000 prewar artillery systems – more than double Ukraine’s inventory – have more artillery to lose, the disparity is still stark. And for the Russians this trend is threatening.
At the same time, increasing Russian losses in howitzers and launchers explain why the Russians are increasingly relying on older artillery. It is not for nothing that in recent days a Ukrainian operator of a first-person view drone came across and destroyed an almost 80-year-old Russian field gun.
Famous Ukrainian drone operator Robert Brovdi released video of the explosives-laden FVP drone hurtling toward the D-44, a so-called “division gun” that entered Soviet service in 1946.
This is not the first time that an 85-millimeter D-44 has appeared in the Ukrainian war. Ukrainian engineers even installed the ancient gun in 1970s MT-LB tank tractors to create a new type of tank destroyer: an MT-LB-44.
But the presence of the old field gun on the Russian side is a reminder that Russia is losing a lot of artillery and is struggling to make up for those losses.
The Soviet Union’s Uralmash factory produced more than a thousand D-44s each year between 1945 and 1953. The weapon was widely used in the Warsaw Pact and Allied countries until it was replaced by the more powerful D-30 in the early 1980s.
With a maximum range of 10 miles, lower altitude than a howitzer, and lower armor penetration than a D-30, the old D-44 wasn’t worth all that much until Russia expanded its war against Ukraine starting in February 2022.
It was obvious why the Ukrainians would take the D-44 out of long-term storage. At the start of the larger war, Russian howitzers and launchers outnumbered Ukraine’s by almost three to one – and Ukraine had yet to receive from its NATO allies the 1,100 modern artillery systems that transformed the Ukrainian artillery corps.
But it took a while for the steady losses to affect Russia’s larger artillery arsenal – forcing the Kremlin to reactivate at least a few guns from the 1940s. As the all-out war approaches its third year, the Russians have lost more than a thousand howitzers and launchers; the Ukrainians lost less than 500.
Arty Green, a senior Ukrainian artillery officer, explained the artillery gap that is increasingly favoring Ukraine. “Precision grenades – the Russian army has no answer to that,” he said, referring to U.S.-made Excalibur 155-millimeter grenades and other laser- and GPS-guided munitions.
Ukraine’s drone-guided Western artillery fires farther and more accurately than Russian artillery, allowing Ukrainian gunners to fire on Russian gunners before the Russians even realize they are in the crosshairs. “It’s mostly about working with precision weapons at longer ranges,” said Arty Green. “When we detect enemy artillery, we select the most appropriate fire system and strike.”
At the same time, says Art Green, Ukrainian cruise missile attacks on Russian convoys and depots destroy so much artillery ammunition that Russian batteries sometimes run out of shells – even though Russia has greater capacity to produce ammunition.
Taking out an old Russian D-44 field gun doesn’t change much of the overall artillery power balance. But it is a potent symbol of Russian desperation as more and more of their modern artillery falls victim to Ukrainian bombing. With one counter-battery strike after another, Ukraine is slowly winning the artillery battle.
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