Compass Points - Artillery Alive
Drones have not replaced artillery.
Compass Points - Artillery Alive
Drones have not replaced artillery.
June 3. 2026
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Like the patient declared dead who sits up on the operating table, cannon artillery has been declared dead again and again, and yet it is still very much alive. Will the Marine Corps learn the lesson?
Yesterday, an article in Forbes magazine admitted that, “Drones Have Not Replaced Artillery, But They Make It Harder To Fire.”
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Drones currently account for 70 to 80 percent of losses on the Russia-Ukraine battlefield, supplanting artillery as the “King of Battle.” At first glance, this shift suggests that both Russia and Ukraine have transitioned away from traditional artillery in favor of cutting-edge drones as a means of delivering fires. The reality is that drones cannot replicate the firepower of artillery, which remains central to Russian and Ukrainian combat operations. This shift has occurred not because drones are superior to artillery, but because drones have made artillery far more difficult to employ. Both sides use drones extensively to locate and target enemy guns, forcing artillery units to adapt their tactics in order to survive and continue delivering limited firepower on an increasingly transparent battlefield.
The Importance of Artillery to the Modern Battlefield
Despite their growing use, drones still face several limitations. There is an inherent trade-off between payload capacity, battery life, maneuverability, and flight speed. As a result, many drones lack the payload necessary to reliably destroy armored vehicles, fortified positions, and other hardened targets. Drones are also vulnerable to weather, terrain effects, and electronic warfare. In addition, most drone operations still rely on one operator controlling one drone, making it difficult to coordinate large-scale attacks involving multiple systems.
As a result, drones and artillery are often employed together rather than as substitutes for one another. Many of the drone-related effects are still caused by artillery, with a drone identifying a target followed by artillery delivering the destructive effects. The Russian Ministry of Defense posts videos daily showcasing artillery units engaging Ukrainian positions identified by reconnaissance drones. A number of Ukrainian units have posted similar videos on their social media showing this interplay between drones and artillery.
-- Forbes
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Last year, the Small War Journal conducted a comprehensive study of drones and artillery and came to the conclusion, “Beyond the Hype: Why Drones Cannot Replace Artillery.”
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A careful and historically informed examination of the conflict in Ukraine, coupled with an understanding of the fundamental principles of warfare, reveals a fundamental truth: unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can enhance fire support, improve situational awareness, and provide tactical advantages, but they are not, and won’t be in the foreseeable future, a replacement for the range, volume, destructive power, and all-weather operability of traditional artillery. The focus should be on integrating drones into a comprehensive fires network, not on attempting to substitute them for a proven and essential capability.
Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have demonstrated remarkable adaptability, rapidly fielding large numbers of drones, both short and long-range, commercial and military-grade, to address resource constraints, a largely static front, and the evolving demands of the conflict. However, this isn’t a strategic shift based on superior capability or a harbinger of a new era of warfare, but rather a pragmatic response to circumstance. As many reports open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysts, and other respected military analysts indicate, the proliferation of FPV drones largely compensates for critical shortages of artillery shells, particularly on the Ukrainian side, filling a gap rather than offering a fundamentally better solution. While FPV drones have proven effective against armored vehicles and in close-quarters combat, at best, they deliver tactical-level precision comparable to battalion mortars, a far cry from the comprehensive impact of artillery fire. They are a tactical tool, not a strategic game-changer. Furthermore, the reliance on drones has created new vulnerabilities, as both sides have developed increasingly sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities to counter them.
-- Small Wars Journal, “Beyond the Hype: Why Drones Cannot Replace Artillery.”
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Back in 2020, one author wrote an admiring article about how the Marine Corps was removing all tanks and most howitzers.
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The U.S. Marine Corps has an ambitious 10-year transformation plan that could see the service eliminate its entire tank force, dramatically scale back howitzer batteries . . .
-- Joseph Trevithick, TMZ.com, 03/23/2020, “Marines To Radically Remodel Force, Cutting Tanks, Howitzers In Favor Of Drones, Missiles.”
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More than a half-dozen years ago, the Marine Corps commandant, General David Berger said because China was the pacing threat, that, “I have come to the conclusion that we need to contract the size of the Marine Corps . . . ”
Instead, all the misguided plan has done is strip the Marine Corps of too much of its combined arms units, equipment, and capabilities including artillery, infantry, air, armor, engineering, snipers, and more.
More than six years have gone by and neither the new US National Security Strategy nor the National Defense Strategy call China the pacing threat or make it the primary focus of the US military. The Marine Corps today is smaller and less capable. The Nation needs three strong and large Marine Expeditionary Forces (MEFs) to source and support somewhere between three and six small Marine Expeditionary Units always on patrol on amphibious ships around the globe. But that is not reality today. A portion of reality is that the 22nd MEU has left the Caribbean after a long deployment and the Marines replacing them do not have the amphibious ships they need.
What needs to be done now?
What needs to be done now is what the Marine Corps has always done throughout the last several decades: build the force. Upgrade, enhance, and strengthen the combined arms, MAGTF Marine Corps. Adopt new technologies. Where there are gaps in capabilities, add what is missing.
For example, the Marine Corps has a dangerous gap in tubed artillery. There are no rockets, drones, missiles nor any other weapon system that can perform the missions artillery can at the cost and readiness only artillery can provide.
After more than a half dozen years, the death of artillery has been greatly exaggerated. The Marine Corps can begin to restore artillery by fully restoring the 12th Marine Regiment. Far from deceased, artillery is still crucial on the battlefield.
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Yahoo / Forbes - 06/02/2026
Drones Have Not Replaced Artillery, But They Make It Harder To Fire
By Vikram Mittal, Contributor
https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/drones-not-replaced-artillery-harder-094018643.html
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Small Wars Journal - 05/05/2025
Beyond the Hype: Why Drones Cannot Replace Artillery
by Bill Murray
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/05/beyond-the-hype-why-drones-cannot-replace-artillery/
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Force Design initially called for the divestment of 16 of the 21cannon artillery batteries in the active force. Subsequently, the plan was modified to divest 14 of the 21 batteries. This number has not been officially changed in any of the follow-on updates of Force Design.
However, according to a recent article in the Field Artillery Journal, the Marine Corps retains 14 cannon artillery batteries in the active force. Only 7 have been divested. See: https://www.fieldartillery.org/news/marine-artillery-in-transition-between-legacy-and-force-design
I don’t know if the current number is 7 or 14 or something in between. Transparency has never a cornerstone of the Force Design debacle. None of this is surprising. It’s what happens when a Service bypasses a unified and disciplined combat development process and opts for a cabal of officers operating in secrecy to design a concept that will fundamentally change the Marine Corps. The vacillation between artillery requirements is not the result of a “campaign of learning.” It is the result of a “keystone cops” approach to transformation.
Instead of divesting cannon artillery, the Marine Corps should have modernized it. It’s not too late. The Marine Corps has 21 infantry battalions. These battalions are naked on any battlefield without close, continuous, accurate and all-weather artillery support. If you don’t believe me, please read Major General James Livingston’s and Colonel Jay Vargas’s article on the Battle of Dai Do: https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Livingston-Vargas-Aug22-WEB-REVISED-for-posting.pdf
The RPV, airborne, ground or at sea, is a tactical asset. Simply one tool in the items available to commanders at the right place, time and circumstance. It is not a replacement for artillery, tanks, helicopters, aircraft, torpedoes or mines.
Amateurs, writers and “ visionaries” love nothing better than the “ this changes everything” story line.
I deployed with a MAU that had an airborne RPV unit in 1986. If there was a problem it was the lack of any sense of urgency of the RD&A establishment in developing a plan for their appropriate inclusion. Professionals add capabilities before they destroy others. When the Corps decided to depart from its missions to embrace shore based, ship sinking missile units it did not add them to Artillery Regiments. It destroyed tanks, artillery, infantry, combat engineers, snipers, squadrons etc to form them up. No rational professional would do that. The initial response from experienced professionals was a stunned paralysis. Surely no leader would be so irresponsible, violate the law and act relative to appropriations in such a reckless matter. There was no leadership echelon about the Corps that did their job. Innumerable federal regulations and laws were violated without a peep. I still wonder how it happened.
On top of all of that, gross incompetence resulted in no operational units seven years later. It has been a dystopian tale that defies imagination. Eventually the light will come on. This catastrophic journey to the abyss will find a special chapter in history with innumerable questions. Institutional suicide.