Armies all over the world have observed Russia’s wider war on Ukraine and have come to the same conclusion: modern war is mostly an artillery war – or as Stalin put it, artillery is the “God of War”. Armies need more howitzers and more rocket launchers and plenty of ammunition for both.
The German army might be the best example of this determination to add artillery firepower. The Bundeswehr has an ambitious plan to more than double its artillery inventory from 121 self-propelled howitzers and 36 rocket launchers today to 289 self-propelled howitzers and 76 rocket launchers in 2035.
But for all its ambition, the German artillery plan illustrates the relative paucity of artillery in the armies of the biggest Western powers. Sure, a force of 365 artillery pieces is better than a force of just 157 artillery pieces. But 365 is still too few when Germany’s biggest potential foe, Russia, deploys thousands of howitzers and launchers.
Yes, Germany is unlikely to wage a land war on its own. It almost certainly would fight as part of the wider Nato alliance. But almost all Nato countries have too little artillery. And most of them are scrambling to grow their artillery holdings as fast as they can – just to match Russia’s current firepower.
The Russian army deployed around 4,000 howitzers – both towed and self-propelled – and rocket launchers as Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022. The Ukrainian army deployed around a thousand towed and self-propelled howitzers and launchers.
These guns and launchers blasted away with shocking ferocity – both sides firing millions of shells and hundreds of thousands of rockets a year. In 28 months of hard fighting, the Russians have lost no fewer than 1,350 artillery pieces. The Ukrainians have lost at least 500.
Both sides have made good these losses through new production, by restoring old guns and launchers from storage and, in Ukraine’s case, by acquiring them from abroad. Both sides supply their artillery with ammunition they make themselves, plus additional rounds they source from foreign allies.
The awesome scale of these “fires,” to borrow a military term, startled the moribund Bundeswehr into action. Since the end of the Cold War, the German army had cut its artillery to the bone as a cost-saving measure. By 2022, the Germans could deploy at most 121 Pzh 2000 self-propelled howitzers and 36 MARS II rocket launchers, down from a Cold War peak strength of a thousand or so big guns and launchers.
Against the obvious demands of a modern mechanised war, the Bundeswehr’s 157 current artillery pieces are laughably inadequate. The Russian army loses, in six months, as many howitzers and rocket launchers as today’s German army has in its entire arsenal.
The planned expansion mitigates but doesn’t totally solve this problem. The Germans intend to restore to active service a couple of dozen stored Pzh 2000 tracked howitzers and complement them with dozens more brand-new RCH-155 wheeled howitzers. They plan to supplement their 33 MARS II tracked launchers with new wheeled launchers – seemingly the same Israeli-designed PULS models that Denmark and The Netherlands are buying to bolster their own armies.
If Berlin sticks to the plan, its army should claw back – by the mid-2030s – roughly half the artillery firepower it had at the end of the Cold War. It’s worth noting that Germany is balancing competing artillery initiatives: growing its own artillery corps while also sending used or newly-built howitzers and launchers – around 90, so far – to Ukraine.
Whether the Germans can stockpile enough ammo to keep their growing arsenal of big guns and launchers firing through a potentially long conflict is a separate problem.
German arms-maker Rheinmetall is expanding its ammunition production in order to meet growing domestic demand, and also to feed Ukraine’s insatiable hunger for ammo. But the goal, by 2027, is for Rheinmetall to produce just 1.1 million of the most important 155-millimeter shells every year.
That’s only slightly more shells than Ukraine fired, at an annualised rate, at the lowest point in its own ammunition supply between the fall of 2023 and this spring.
The Germans are building up their artillery. But can they build up their ammo stockpile, too?
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