OPINION — “Russia’s industrial might can and should be disrupted with a focused effort on the artillery supply chain. Doing so will save Ukrainian lives, degrade Russia’s offensive and defensive capabilities, and weaken its overall ability to fight the war in the way that its units have grown accustomed to. The Russian threat will not disappear, regardless of what happens in Ukraine – the expansion of its defense industry and armed forces makes this clear. However, there is a window of opportunity for Western powers to disrupt this expansion and slow production to prevent further Russian successes in 2025. That window is small, but Ukraine and its Western partners have the tools and knowledge to make the most of it and reduce the threat posed by Russia.”
That quote is from Ore to Ordnance: Disrupting Russia’s Artillery Supply Chains, a 69-page report put out on October 14 by two British-based research groups, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and the Open Source Centre (OSC). RUSI is the world’s oldest security think tank, and OSC produces open-source intelligence and analytics on important questions related to national security and defense.
The report is worth attention because it not only presents a view of Russian artillery operations in Ukraine that I have not read elsewhere, but also says that, “so far, attempts to disrupt Russia’s military supply chains have achieved some successes, with thousands of Russian entities and individuals sanctioned, and evidence of raw materials being diverted from the Russian supply chain. By and large, however, they [Western sanctions] have targeted components or high-priority items that are difficult to disrupt, such as microchips, and have not taken a view as to which supply chains should be disrupted. Instead, the current approach has been to try and restrict the access of the entire Russian defense industry to key materials and equipment like machine tools.”
The institution’s assessment is that this approach, while admirable, “has struggled to measurably restrict the growth of Russia’s defense industry and its ability to fuel the war. This paper’s findings indicate that a more effective approach is to focus on a single supply chain and identify the raw materials, products and machinery that sit outside Russia and must be imported. These elements of the supply chain may be open to Western interventions from a variety of angles…to meaningfully degrade and disrupt Russia’s artillery supply chain.”
The ”center of gravity” in Russia’s war against Ukraine
As a starting point, it is worth looking at how the RUSI/OSC report describes the role of artillery in the Russian warfighting plan.
“Artillery is the center of gravity for Russia’s ground forces,” according to the report. “It is seen as the most efficient means to defeat an opponent’s forces, either through destruction or weakening them to such an extent that an offensive is certain to succeed.”
On the other hand, the report notes, “NATO sees artillery as a supporting element designed to set the stage for maneuver forces to engage the enemy; the Russians see maneuver forces as responsible for both getting the enemy into a position where artillery can defeat them and then exploit the destruction achieved by artillery.”
The report uses numbers to tell its story.
Russia’s highest rate of fire came at the start of the 2022 invasion, reaching a high point, according to the report. of “around 38,000 rounds per day in June 2022.” Since then, however, “the rate of Russian fire has been fairly consistent, at between 7,000 and 16,000 rounds per day, averaging at around 10,000 rounds per day. Ukrainian artillery fire, meanwhile, peaked at around 9,000 rounds per day, and has rarely exceeded 6,000 rounds per day, while in early 2024, Ukraine was firing fewer than 1,800 rounds per day.”
Despite the losses inflicted by Ukraine, the report says that Russia has increased the artillery systems available to its forces since the invasion, and stabilized the supply of ammunition by increasing its domestic production. In 2024, Russia is expected to produce 1.325 million new 152-mm rounds of ammunition, and 800,000 122-mm rounds, and to refurbish an even larger number of rounds from remaining stockpiles. That’s in addition to procuring more ammunition from North Korea, Iran, Syria and Belarus.
Casualties of war
The report discloses “the reality that artillery continues to be the biggest cause of death and injury among Ukrainian troops. The actual percentage varies along the length of the frontline and is not uniform, but a paper written by the Global Medical and Surgical Support Group in 2023 observed that 70% of all Ukrainian combat casualties had been caused by Russian artillery.”
Casualties from artillery “often suffered severe wounds, including polytrauma to multiple organ systems, which, if not fatal, would likely prevent them from returning to service,” according to the report. “Russian artillery has also inflicted widespread concussion among Ukrainian troops subjected to barrage, with multiple concussions over time leading to personnel having to be withdrawn from the front,” the report said.
With an active frontline of approximately 745 miles, “Ukraine must maintain enough combat-capable personnel to both hold defensive positions across this area and have enough reserves to rotate its units. The rate of rotation is increased in those sectors where units are under pressure. The accumulation of killed and wounded, with artillery injuries,” the report said, ”is a strategic threat to Ukraine’s ability to sustain the war effort.”
In terms of the broader course of the war, the report stated that as of August 2024, “the Russian theory of victory does not center on major breakthroughs, but rather on the destruction of the Armed Forces of Ukraine [AFU] as a force capable of defending the breadth of front through attrition, and it is artillery that is primarily inflicting the constant attrition of Ukrainian troops. The Russian leadership likely believes it can kill its way out of the war, and artillery will be key to doing that.”
As a result, “The continued disparity in [artillery] fire is one reason why the Kremlin believes it can still win the war,” the report said.
However, the report points out, “The longer the war continues, the more Russia’s dependencies on foreign suppliers will become a weakness when it comes to…raw materials and components that must be sourced from abroad to maintain the artillery supply chain.”
The raw materials of war
The report specifically focuses on chromite, cotton cellulose and computer numerical control (CNC) machine tool machines, the latter involving tools such as drills, lathes, mills, grinders, routers and 3D printers.
Russia requires substantial imports of chromium ore to produce pure chromium, which is used for chrome-plating artillery barrels. The interior of the artillery barrel is coated with a very thin layer of chrome to protect against the corrosive effects of multiple firing. The report said Russia imports around 55 percent of its annual need for chrome ore (chromite).
Here the report had a recommendation: Strict sanctions against the supply of chrome ore to Russia, it said, “would impact the barrel production process and likely other military outputs…most resources are imported from countries or companies in jurisdictions that are Western partners or receptive to their concerns.”
Since it is more difficult to secretly transfer thousands of tons of chromium ore into a country than to smuggle in a few thousand microchips, the report said, “It therefore appears have a better chance of successfully disrupting the chromium supply to Russia than sanctions on microchips have had of disrupting that supply chain.”
The propellant for an artillery shell is produced from cotton cellulose or cotton pulp and nitric acid, as well as some alcohols. The resultant material is dried and formed into bales for transport.
Russian propellant plants are critically dependent on imports of cotton cellulose – with the raw materials often imported, leaving them open to Western interventions to disrupt Russia’s access. However, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have been the main exporters of the base material for cotton cellulose.
According to the report, “There is some evidence that sanctions and diplomatic pressure have successfully disrupted” the cellulose supply chain, as Kazakhstan has decreased dramatically its exports of cotton cellulose.
However, the report noted that customs records show a Russian company, Syassky Pulp & Paper Mill, “imported a range of industrial machinery totaling almost $5 million over 2022 and 2023 from Chinese, Turkish, German and Italian companies. It is likely that Syassky PPM is procuring this machinery for its own use to produce cellulose which can then be sold to the [propellant-making] Kazan Plant to mitigate Russia’s reliance on foreign importers of cotton cellulose.”
When it comes to CNC machine tools, the report said, “Russia relies on metalworking machine tools, including CNC machines, offering higher degree of automation and precision that support many parts of the artillery supply chain…in shaping the shell casings of artillery ammunition, in barrel production and in the production of many other weapons.”
The report also noted that from the start of 2023 to the end of the first quarter of 2024, two Chinese companies, newly established in 2022, “exported $75 million worth of U.S. and Taiwanese machines, including with CNC, to Russia, and both supplied machines to importers close to the Russian defense industry.”
In another recommendation, the report suggested that “diplomatic pressure, such as encouraging Taiwan to examine companies exporting CNC machines to Russia and China” was one way to make more difficult the transfer of artillery-helpful equipment.
Overall, the report said, “Disrupting the artillery supply chain should be a priority, and if the vulnerabilities identified in this report can be successfully disrupted for prolonged periods, Russia will struggle to meet its needs for artillery ammunition and barrels – this will be vital if Ukraine is to survive.”
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