SETERMOEN, Norway — NATO artillery units operating in the freezing Arctic are learning how to use drones to help with targeting, drawing on lessons from one of the biggest technological developments to emerge out of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
NATO commanders believe attack drones can’t replace old-fashioned artillery — still the king in battle — but what uncrewed aerial systems can do is help gun crews find targets and direct fire. Getting drones to work as intended in the harsh, unforgiving Arctic, though, is a challenge.
Maj. Robin McArthur, a battery commander with a unit in the British Army’s 29th Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, told Business Insider at a firing range in northern Norway last month that the Russian invasion has demonstrated the crucial need to integrate drones with area fires, such as artillery.
Cheap, expendable drones are increasingly available for battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance, and McArthur’s troops have been training to use these tools to collect targeting data and relay that information to the firing team — a tactic proven in Ukraine.
However, McArthur said, the drones his unit has been using are often designed for more temperate climates and are easily affected by the brutal Arctic environment, where technology tends to struggle in the cold.
That’s part of the appeal, actually, of traditional artillery over the attack drones, he said.
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“What’s not affected by weather and the environment is a great big chunk of metal coming toward your face that’s fired out of one of these guns,” McArthur said, referencing his 105mm light howitzer and the high-explosive shells it fires.
The British commandos fired artillery in Setermoen alongside Norwegian soldiers and US Marines as part of Cold Response 26, a military exercise led by Oslo that trains NATO forces for Arctic warfare.
NATO is investing more in Arctic defense and readiness as alliance officials grow increasingly concerned about Russian and Chinese activity across the High North.
In training to fight on frozen battlefields, NATO forces are incorporating lessons about modern combat that they’ve learned from watching Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a mix of high-tech and industrial warfare.
Maj. Kay-Arne Schjetne, a Norwegian artillery battalion operations officer, said that the war in Ukraine has pushed Oslo to equip its army’s subunits with an increasing number of drones so they can learn to use them in combat.
Schjetne said that his artillery forces are practicing using drones to collect targeting data. Like MacArthur, he believes nothing can fully replace artillery in a war, not even cheap strike drones that can deliver the same, if not greater, precision as shells — possibly for a fraction of the cost.
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Artillery is important in any sort of conventional warfare, he said. “It is a brutal weapon, and that is why it’s important, because it does the job.”
Artillery shells strike at speed; they’re harder to intercept; they generally can’t be jammed; they support area denial, suppression, and the breaking of enemy lines; they’re not overly complex; and they work in just about any kind of weather or climate.
The US Marines training in Setermoen leaned on their M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), and like the Norwegian and British soldiers, they are also taking the evolutions in drone warfare into account.
Col. William Soucie, the 10th Marine Regiment commanding officer, said that Russia’s war in Ukraine is a display of how cutting-edge military capabilities like drones are blending with vintage tactics like trench warfare, a staple of the First World War.
One consideration for the Marines is learning how to be less visible to the drones constantly watching the battlefield from above. They are also thinking about how to use uncrewed platforms to their advantage.
“On the flip side,” explained First Lt. Landon Foster, the HIMARS platoon commander, “drones are a useful asset for us as well in order to be able to scout out new positions that we can potentially move to.” Artillery doctrine still emphasizes shoot-and-scoot tactics, though drones are driving change there as well.
