INSIDE A BUILDING in the Curragh Camp in Kildare, a team of Irish Army artillery experts are rewriting manuals and syllabuses as they learn lessons from the war in Ukraine.
Captain Brian Clarke and his team are studying closely how hundreds of years of artillery expertise is being cast aside by the hard lessons learned inside the teams firing the big guns on the eastern reaches of Europe.
The artillery corps was formed in 1924, soon after the foundation of the State. It uses artillery – huge guns which can be moved from one place to another for land battles – to support Irish infantry operations and air defence. It also provides an artillery capability to soldiers serving in Lebanon.
The corps’ training school is on the upper floors of an old redbrick former British Army building in the sprawling Kildare camp. There are lecture theatres and offices, stores and canteen facilities.
Other nearby buildings hold the 105mm guns used by the artillery corps and a large stockpile of ammunition. The range of the weaponry is a massive 17.2 kilometres – roughly the equivalent of the distance between Dublin city centre and Terminal One at Dublin Airport.
On the day The Journal visited, training was taking place in a simulator in which soldiers from the Cavalry Corps were being taught how to call in fire support missions. This is the military method of forward observers calling for help from the artillery and hitting targets that are endangering troops on the frontline
While it had been mooted in the past that the Irish Army’s need for artillery may have waned, the Ukraine War has put it front and centre again.
Clarke said that the war has descended, for the most part, into World War I trench-style engagements with duelling artillery fire from either side, but with unexpected and modern twists.
He explained that the Russian military are heavily artillery focused – meaning much of their tactics are around the deployment and use of massive batteries of guns firing into areas they wish to conquer.
This has been shown in how they take Ukrainian cities, levelling urban areas such as Mariupol and Bakhmut. Clarke said that tactic has changed little from how Russia has fought past wars for well over a century.
It is similar to medieval style sieges of cities and towns that lead to a trench war stalemate to be established along the frontline, the captain said.
Wars are often fought and won in an arms race as better and more advanced technology is developed, but in this instance, Clarke believes, a race to change tactics across the battlefield is having a profound impact.
“It’s all changing constantly and it will continue to do so, because the Ukrainian War has devolved now into basically a dueling battle of artillery on either side with the infantry, who are trying to take and hold the ground in between.
“It is two artillery-focused armies outdoing each other every day. And they’re coming up with new stuff every day that hasn’t been done in one hundred years of artillery tactics.
“So we’re learning a lot. We’re rewriting manuals and rewriting syllabus on courses; everything about how we train is changing because of this new way of fighting,” he said.
Clarke said the normal use of artillery in the Irish army would be to include it alongside troops who do the fighting to take ground.
The artillery soldiers would accompany them and then set up six guns to support the infantry as they move forward. Now developments in Ukraine are starting to cause doubts about the effectiveness or safety of that tactic.
The use of so-called “counter batteries” and radar that can identify where the shots come from mean that lives are being lost in gun crews because the Russians or the Ukrainians are able to pinpoint the location of the artillery.
Clarke said that this has meant that the Ukrainians particularly have started using a tactic of “shoot and scoot”. No longer are artillery guns grouped together in fields; they are having to fire and run to avoid the returning explosions that can arrive before the shots land at their target.
“That has nullified the conventional tactics – they know where you are,” he said.
The Ukrainians are using low cost drones to act as spotters and new netting and other tactics to hide their positions. In the past, and in the Irish method, the infantry and artillery units in concealed observation posts or on the frontline would work together to call the shots and adjusting the accuracy but that is changing with the advent of technology.
Clarke said that his examination of the Ukrainian model has found that artillery guns are now firing a round, leaving that location and going elsewhere immediately to fire the second round.
Another tactic adopted by the Ukrainians is to place artillery and other equipment in predesignated secret locations across the battlefield. They then use those locations to work quickly, fire the gun and leave.
Clarke said the Russians are marking each location with GPS coordinates which means that the Ukrainians will not use that for several days but the areas are so numerous that the teams can avoid the identified place for several days.
The third tactic is to move in a way that as one gun team retreats another continues to fire. This is known as leapfrogging or bounding and is similar to a tactic used by infantry as they move through a dangerous location but this time it is done with guns.
As one gun team evacuates another continues its firing, they stop and move while the crew that have left then begin firing. Clarke has said other militaries have already begun to adopt this approach.
The Russians, he said, are using huge stocks of artillery ammunition – the new Ukrainian tactics expend far less than their enemy but still require massive amounts of logistical support.
“For every one round the Ukrainians are firing, there’s something like nine or 10 rounds that the Russians are firing. So they still have that artillery dominance,” he added.
Clarke said small inexpensive drones are filling the battle space which has also necessitated a new way of looking at how to bring them down.
While huge leaps have been made in technological counter measures focused on jamming the signal from the operator, the captain said that more desperate measures like old fashioned shotgun pellets used by hunters hunting birds are being used in the trenches to take down the drones.
One aspect of those radar systems designed to identify locations for incoming artillery fire is that they can also be used to protect soldiers from drone attack.
Clarke added: “We’re in the process of army force design and restructuring the Defence Forces, we’re now talking about ideas of how we’ll incorporate that with the artillery.”
Clarke is keen to push that the fact that the army is engaged in deployments to risky locations such the Middle East it is critical that artillery is still a critical part of a military employed on peacekeeping missions.
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