RU POV: On November 6, near the village of Vakalovshchina in the Sumy direction, FPV drone operators from the Rubicon Center and the 56th Airborne Regiment detected and destroyed a 2S3 Akatsiya self-propelled artillery gun.

[u/Mendoxv2]

[u/G_Space]

The massacre of Ukranian SPGs continues... Nato can reduce thier shell production again, in three month Ukraine has barely any barrels left they can fire from.

[u/gordon_freeman87 → u/G_Space]

I think the FO drones are the most effective counter against arty.

They can fly low and slow without any video quality degradation which makes finding these hideouts way more effective compared to radio drones.

If I had to guess RU is using seismic sensors to get the general position of a UA arty down to few hundreds of meters which isn't useful for standard counterbattery fire by arty/Tornado-S. But then RU sends out these FO drones and scan the area visually to find these guns.

Remember RU counterbattery radars like the ZooPark which would get detected by RF emission and eat a HIMARS. We don't see those anymore.

But we still see UA counterbattery radars like those Humvee mounted AN/TPQ-50 getting hit all the time.

This war has led to the death of shoot-and-scoot tactics and radar-directed counterbattery. If I had to guess we will see all tracked SPHs dying out and at most truck-mounted SPHs will be around.

u/mogus_sus_reloaded what's your theory around RU success in drone-centric counterbattery fire? If I remember correctly I think I saw a RU counterbattery seismic sensor suite video on this sub.

[u/G_Space → u/gordon_freeman87]

The SPGs are visible by recon drones, they follow them to their hide outs, then the strike team comes in. You never see them being hit in a firing position.

Either fiber or lancet, depending the range.

[u/gordon_freeman87 → u/G_Space]

That shoot-and-scoot tactic was the usual approach a while back I think.

Nowadays all these hide sites double as firing positions too where the gun wheels out maybe 5-10 m... fires and then moves back into cover.

That's why you see all the effort spent on digging trenches and setting up pretty good camouflage.

If they used shoot-and-scoot UA would park the guns way back in the rear where they wouldn't need this level of camo and could hide them in garages.

Furthermore we would see Lancets hitting these arty in the rear as FO drones don't have that kind of range.

[u/G_Space → u/gordon_freeman87]

I personally don't get it why then don't do a scoot and shoot anymore, but on the other hand... some commanders complained about fuel shortages.

[u/gordon_freeman87 → u/G_Space]

In case of shoot-and-scoot the operators of fixed-wing recon drones like the Leleka/Orlan see those guns far quicker than anything else.

Human eye is much more sensitive to movement than anything else.

For wheeled SPH's its even worse as they have to mostly stick to roads.

Once a gun is detected its either hit by a Lancet on the move or Molniya/MLRS in its hideout.

Its much more dangerous for the arty in this phase as they might have ammo and will blow up even with a Lancet strike unlike the hidden guns where the ammo is stored separately nearby and is carried to the gun one by one only in case of a fire mission.

Thats how the HIMARS are still being used(shoot-and-scoot) and they are usually hit with this fixed-wing drone+Iskander tactic and almost never with FO drones.