Ukraine

I know this isn't a new observation either from other people or from my ranty self, but the rate of artillery losses by the Russians continually astounds me in its daily march... I don't know if they will run out of artillery cannons, but they will run out of ones that aren't suicidal for the operators... if they haven't already?

I am sure Russia still has a base of artillery professionals and that this is one of the main necessities Russia has been requesting from North Korea and other foreign participants in Russia's invasion of Ukraine... but they likely increasingly can't afford to risk them in situations that before could have otherwise yielded significant gains at only a moderate risk and instead along most stretches of the offensive it is likely they are throwing away fairly green artillery crews to very short deployments on the front. This means the quality of their artillery fire coordination has an effective ceiling independent of doctrine, it is a simple reality of experts dying too quick to pass the knowledge on to the broader body of new recruits.

I imagine Russia has very capable long range artillery crews both foreign and domestic (using both foreign and domestic artillery pieces such as the Pion, Koksan or Msta series of self propelled and towed artillery pieces) but can they afford to use them in the risky but necessary pivotal manuevers that actually decide the course of battles hanging in the balance? Or does that burden fall to disposable green troops operating incredibly obsolete artillery as a onetime assistance to infantry that are also participating in a mass self-immolation upon the defenses of Ukraine...

Further the digital fire control systems of Ukrainian produced and foreign donated artillery take much less manual calculation to operate in basic use... which also leads to a compounding strategic imbalance in artillery expertise that is only going to grow overtime in favor of Ukraine as Ukraine can onboard green artillery operators and make them effective artillery operators on the field of battle much more quickly.

We truly live in a brutal time, it is shocking to see a former superpower's world reknowned/feared military sacrifice an incomprehensible number of poorly equipped soldiers to their death without even giving them the decency of giving a ride to their grave in the first place... and to see the international world media shrug and conclude this is a sane or effective way to fight a fullscale mechanized war.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GnY2klbd9U4

This video begins with a nice rundown of how reactive artillery systems work in a professional military in this case the US military, you can't just throw a green recruit who can follow basic orders and do nothing else and expect the system to function well. The only way to maintain a volume of fire is to doom your artillery crews to dying quick deaths to UAVs and counter battery fire by using them to support manuevers even though they are hopelessly vulnerable to counterattack by Ukrainian forces.