Someeks

The war in Ukraine continues, and the Ukrainian soldiers use a new tactic at the front amid a lack of ammunition - they strike with artillery, and then destroy the remnants of the enemy forces with the help of FPV-drones. Such drones cannot become a literal replacement for shells, but they can supplement traditional artillery and alleviate the reducing but constant shortage of ammunition among the defenders of the Ukrainian state, Forbes writes. "One of the Ukrainian tactics that we observe is that accurate artillery fire strikes a large Russian assault group and scatters its troops and hardware. Disorganised survivors taking cover beyond the protection of their radio jammers and air defence equipment become easy targets for FPVs which attack isolated soldiers and hardware," the article says. The publication notes that while previously a battery of Ukrainians could fire 10 shells to hit a Russian assault group, now it can use only five shells and coordinate its actions with FPV drone operators to eliminate the enemies. The journalists added that the Ukrainian army's "shell famine" deepened at the end of 2023, and a network of hundreds of small workshops across our country began producing more combat drones. According to the publication, they can now make more than 50,000 drones, "which apparently far exceeds Russia's own production of effective drones". In the worst days of Ukraine’s artillery crisis, last month, Kyiv’s batteries were firing just 2,000 shells a day—a fifth as many shells as Russian batteries were firing. That ammo gap is one reason why the Ukrainian garrison in Avdiivka, in eastern Ukraine, ultimately had no choice but to retreat in mid-February, delivering to the Russians their only major battlefield win of the winter. But the ammo gap now is shrinking, and Ukrainian brigades are holding the line all along the front while inflicting devastating—and unsustainable—losses on attacking Russian regiments. Lately it hasn’t been unusual for the Russians to lose a thousand people and dozens of armored vehicles in a single day.