You need both. See Ukraine needing mountains of artillery despite the pre war consensus being that the artillery era is over
The drones make the news but can’t be the only weapon you bring
The drones make the news but can’t be the only weapon you bring
It’s my opinion that artillery is out of date and by the end of the Ukraine war they will be even more out of date. It’s hard to make artillery more cost effective than it already is yet still many more opportunities to increase drone effectiveness.
But once your artillery positions can't be protected from drones then its game over for sure.
We can also look at present wars to view where the trend is going. I'd estimate that during the latest conflict between Israel/Iran/US + gulf states, approximately zero artillery shells were fired*.
During a hypothetical US/China/Taiwan + Korean/Japan conflict, I'd expect this number to be similar.
*excluding rocket artillery such as HIMARS
That has nothing to do with the merits of artillery and everything with the type of war. Air campaigns with no front line obviously don’t use artillery…
Once you’re in a positional static fight artillery is still the cheapest way to deliver heavy ordinance. US isn’t likely to end up in a fight like that but that doesn’t invalidate artillery in general. Rheinmetal from the article is arming countries that are worried about a land invasion by Russia
> HIMARS
Very much hoping the US learned the lesson on relying on expensive tools like that. The shock and awe strategy didn’t work against Iran and it sure as hell won’t work against an adversary like China that has a much higher ability to backfill