Ukraine: collective delusion

By Richard North - June 16, 2022

We’ve got first word back from the so-called Ramstein conference in Brussels, where defence ministers from throughout the developed world are gathering to decide on what additional equipment Ukraine should get. The news for Ukraine is not good.

The United States is offering – as part of the 12th “presidential drawdown” worth approximately $350 million – 18 additional howitzers with towing vehicles, 36,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition, spare parts and other equipment for the artillery.

The drawdown also includes two Harpoon coastal defence systems, thousands of secure radios, night vision devices, thermal sights, and other optics, and covers funding for training, maintenance, sustainment, transportation, and administrative costs.

Beggars can’t be choosers, of course, but considering that only a few days ago, Mykailo Podolyak was calling for 1,000 howitzers and 300 MLRS, amongst other equipment, in order to “end the war”, it’s fairly reasonable to surmise that the US offer falls a little short of expectations.

The details of this package were apparently conveyed directly by president Biden in a phone call to Zelensky.

The statement was posted on the White House website just before a “background press call previewing an executive order advancing LGBTQI+ equality during pride month”.

Zelensky’s response has not been recorded at the time of writing, but he will no doubt have been comforted by the consolation prize of another telephone call, this one with his bestest friend Boris Johnson.

The pair is said to have to have discussed the situation on the battlefield, Ukraine’s defence needs and threats to food security, but there are no indications that Johnson had anything to offer by the way of additional military hardware. Perhaps that will come later, via defence secretary Wallace. There must be some second-hand kit that the British Army can dredge up from its stores, as long as Zelensky doesn’t insist on being given anything useful – like long-range artillery.

On balance, though, Zelensky might have been better off bobbing down to Paris to visit the Eurosatory arms fest where he could have witnessed Mikael Frisell, head of the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration, sign a letter of intent addressed to BAE Systems Bofors.

The Swedes were committing to buy more Archer 155mm mobile howitzers, to add to the 48 they have already purchased, giving them a state-of-the-art weapons system, which has only been fielded for five years. It is so advanced that it is being considered by the US Army, as part of the programme to upgrade its own artillery.

Interestingly, the system has been shortlisted by the Swiss Army, which is looking to replace its ageing M109L47 KAWEST howitzers. These are based on the US-designed M-109 and were substantially upgraded in 1998 but are now considered obsolete.

It is a sign of the poverty of media reporting on artillery provision for Ukraine, though, that defence editor Larisa Brown of The Times was yesterday lauding “newly delivered” M-109s, originally under the headline “US self-propelled howtizer (sic) packs a punch in Ukraine”.

This geriatric equipment, donated by Norway after being retired from service, was discussed on this blog a week ago, but in her article, Brown wrongly attributes the guns as a gift from the United States – an error shared with Fox News.

Brown also wrongly attributes a gift of FH70 howitzers to the UK, when the donors have been Italy and Estonia, but her main error is in implying parity in performance between these obsolescent guns and the more modern Russian equipment, such as the 2S19 Msta self-propelled howitzer.

But then, I suppose, when we have a media which often struggles to tell the difference between tanks and self-propelled artillery, it is probably too much to ask that journalists should make qualitative distinctions between different weapons systems.

Even Illia Ponomarenko, the defence and security reporter at the Kyiv Independent, makes the mistake of assuming “Western artillery’s technological superiority” over Soviet/Russian pieces, when the best of the Russian guns are far superior to ageing equipment such as the M-109 – even the upgraded versions.

Ponomarenko compounds his own error by taking at face value the Military Balance 2021 database figures on the number of 155-mm artillery pieces on the British Army inventory. Put at 89, he shows no sign of understanding that these AS-90 guns are largely inoperable, due to maintenance issues. The actual number of working guns is down to single figures.

As a result, what is being almost completely missed by the media – and much of the commentariat – is the scandalous neglect of modern heavy artillery provision, throughout much of the developed world.

Apart from the other issues previously discussed, this is partly due to chronic underspending on defence, which even the European Commission has noticed. It observes that, if Member States had spent 2 percent of their GDP on defence between 2006 and 2020 – in line with Nato commitments – EU-wide expenditure would have increased by around €1,100 billion.

Only now, as DefenseNews reports, is the Russian invasion forcing technologically advanced militaries to re-evaluate their investments in areas such as robotics and artificial intelligence, creating a renaissance for spending on armour and artillery.

But, given the lead time required to produce sophisticated weapons, the reversion to “hard power” comes too late for Ukraine which is having to make do with cast-off “war surplus” equipment. Not only has much of it seen better days, it is all too often overmatched by even relatively “mature” Russian systems.

Failure to understand this dynamic is leading to some unrealistic expectations, verging on the delusional. For instance, the equivalent of the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk – and a close ally of Zelensky – believes that the war can end very quickly if Ukraine receives high-quality weapons.

Stefanchuk may well be right. The very best that the advanced militaries have to offer is vastly superior to anything that the Russians can field, except that there are insufficient quantities to make the difference.

The performance of the bulk of the western artillery inventory, on the other hand, is equal to or marginally inferior to Russian equipment, while the guns are tasked to carry out more demanding roles such a counter-battery operations. When the Russians also have a numerical advantage, it is indeed delusional to think that Ukraine can prevail.

As least, according to Izvestia, Zelensky has his scapegoat lined up. Citing Spiegel, it suggests that the Ukrainian president could invoke a “stab in the back” legend, arguing that if Germany had quickly supplied the necessary heavy weapons, “we would have won”.

Chancellor Scholz and the Germans may be looking at a no-win scenario here because, even if their entire army was stripped out to feed the Ukrainian war machine, it probably would not be enough. Years of neglect cannot be undone in an instant, so someone has to take the blame.

Perhaps Scholtz needs to take some lessons from Johnson, and perhaps Zelensky already has.