Is this the end of conventional artillery warfare?

Counter-battery technology has been evolving since the First World War, writes Steven Cutts. Now this hi-tech weaponry is playing a key role in slowing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

France’s Caesar howitzer has proved a game changer in Ukraine (AFP/Getty)

During the current Ukraine conflict, a number of hi-tech weapons have been given to the Ukrainian military by American and European governments. Nato intelligence services are having a field day, testing one state-of-the-art weapons system after another in the only arena that really matters: the battlefield. Among the systems now under scrutiny are counter-battery fire, a tactic and technology that has been in a process of continuous evolution since the beginning of the First World War. As I write these words, it is one of the few factors holding back Vladimir Putin’s advance from the east.

It has its origins in the dark days of the Western Front where rival armies were trying to destroy one another using industrialised warfare on a massive scale. Aerial photographs from that era show a battlefield crated like the Moon. At this stage, most artillery fire was zonal with the crews firing shell after shell from a static position, hoping to destroy their enemies by attrition.

Then something else happened. A series of new technologies evolved that enabled the army to calculate the exact position of the enemy batteries. At first sight, when an enemy cannon fires a shell at you, it’s time to take cover. Most likely, this is merely the first of a whole series of shells and if the first shot doesn’t kill you, one or two of the following 100 shells might do more damage.