NV Radio interviewed artillery platoon commander in Ukraine’s 30th Mechanized Brigade, known by her callsign Aistra, on the dynamics between FPV drones and barreled artillery.
She acknowledged that drones are now a more agile and often more accurate way to attack the enemy but noted that artillery is unaffected by electronic warfare.
“Artillery’s single advantage is that it is hard to suppress. To fight artillery, you have to deal directly with the weapon: destroy the gun,” Aistra said.
“You can’t suppress a shell; you can’t physically affect it.”
She spoke about how the use of barreled artillery has changed during the four years of the Russo–Ukrainian war.
“Since 2022 the war has changed artillery work a lot, even just with the appearance of FPV drones,” Aistra said.
“In 2022 the guns were mobile. They could stop in a field, fire, and immediately pull back into concealment. They moved from one position to another, or simply drove out, fired and drove back. Now, that is much harder.”
She said Polish Krab self-propelled howitzers and some other foreign systems can still drive out of cover, fire and return because of how they are designed, but most artillery no longer operates that way.
“In most cases they work from fixed positions. They build
dug-in positions, protective emplacements and put a frame over the gun for
protection and concealment. Those frames are covered with nets and branches. If
well built, they provide some protection against FPV drones,” Aistra said.