The declaration matters because industrial capacity is now the decisive variable in an artillery-centric war. Europe’s Act in Support of Ammunition Production is pushing shell capacity toward two million rounds per year by the end of 2025, while the United States has opened new automated “Universal Artillery Projectile Lines” in Mesquite, Texas, and added a 155 mm load-assemble-pack facility in Camden, Arkansas. Washington admits the 100,000-per-month target will slip into 2026, but the trajectory is unmistakable. The effect is to ease Ukrainian rationing, narrow Russia’s daily fires advantage, and restore deterrence by signaling that NATO magazines will refill faster than the Kremlin can deplete them.
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Precision missiles remain scarce by design, but parity in shell output restores the sustained fires that make precision count. Ukrainian batteries can pin Russian units with 155 mm barrages, then layer GMLRS salvos and ATACMS raids that attrit air defenses, fuel depots, and rail junctions inside 300 km. With Storm Shadow shaping depth targets, NATO’s advantage in guidance, seekers, and networked targeting converts into more kills per shot and tighter logistics. This is a battlefield math problem that starts in factories, not on maps.
Russia has officially crossed into the Find Out stage of the FAFO loop.
Whoops!
This article fails to mention the elephant in the room of 155mm artillery shell evolution, the LRMP.
A controlled artillery round that can hit targets from 120 kilometers away in GPS-denied environments was successfully tested at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona.
General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems’ Long Range Maneuvering Projectile, or LRMP, was fired from an M777 howitzer platform using M231 powder charges during an August test, the company announced Monday.
^ This is a longe range guided munition delivery platform, the world really hasn’t gotten that through its head yet, but the cost efficiency, survivability and ease of surrounding with plausible decoys vs. using fighter-bombers or equivalent rocket artillery makes systems like the Bohdana 155mm SPG very powerful as long range force projection platforms.
why this is strategic for Ukraine
In particular, the decisive advantage of using 155mm artillery as a long range guided munition delivery system is that battery fire can be coordinated very easily to create a VERY high degree of obscurability for Russia. Even if Russia knows that there is a weapons system with an expensive, scarce long range munition in the area, even if they are tailing what they think is the weapons system with that extremely high value munition, even if they witness it fire… well ok Ukraine can just have a formation of Bodhanas all fire traditional artillery at valid targets with another Bodhana interspersed in the group firing a projectile out to 100km+.
In otherwords from the perspective of a Russian target being hit out of nowhere by a precision guided 155mm shell from 80kms+ trying to back deduce where that shell came from and hit back at that system becomes a complete joke even if you have surveillance interspersed throughout the Ukraine’s back line. How do they even know which truck fired the guided long range shell vs which truck fired a normal 155mm shell? Russia must use fighter-bombers to deliver equivalent capability with glide bombs and rocket assisted glide bombs… and tracking where an extremely distinctive looking fighter jet lives and all of that associated logistics to continually field and maintain those jets is far easier than figuring out which truck is the danger truck you need to keep an eye on.
Ukraine doesn’t have these shells at the moment… I don’t think? The future is clear though.
This is why the military came up with the idea of force multiplication. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_multiplication
In short, it’s something you can give a soldier or a weapon so that they become more effective. A gun in the knife fight is one example.
Ruzzian war doctrine, if I understand it correctly, was “shoot artillery until the area is flat, advance with meat”. So artillery is their force multiplier and matching and countering that is essential.
Add to that better training, cross-unit communication and cohesion, better weapons and you don’t need to match soldier per soldier. Especially if you are in defence - the attacking side usually takes greater losses.
So while staffing is a major issue for Ukraine, luckily it doesn’t automatically translate into their loss.