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It is sad, and there are certainly areas where injuries and deaths will continue for decades to come. However I feel the need to point out that the First World

It is sad, and there are certainly areas where injuries and deaths will continue for decades to come. However I feel the need to point out that the First World War is on a whole other level of scale than the Ukraine War. As per the article , approximately 60 million shells were fired at the battle of Verdun. That's just one spot on the front over the course of about one year. In Ukraine, Russia's recent ramp-up of shell production is allowing for about 10,000 shells per day ( 3.65 million per year) across the entire front. Assuming that pace is maintained, that's about 16x less than was fired at a single spot on the front in WW1. I write this comment not to diminish the very real suffering caused by the current war, but as reminder of the destructive capacity of a full-scale industrial war, where the entire state is devoted to producing the means of war.

jsheard 2y ago
I would also assume that modern munitions are much more likely to either immediately explode or fail (relatively) safe rather than lingering as highly volatile UXO. According to the OP about a quarter of the shells fired back then didn't detonate on impact, and those certainly weren't designed to fail-safe.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  That's true, but there is a big cave-at: Soviet shells and North Korean shells can hardly be called modern and there seems to be a lot of duds fired. Not to mention that Russia has littered whole landscapes with anti-personnel mines, something which didn't really exist in WWI. Small, plastic mines, very hard to detect.
  - dralley 2y ago
    And cluster munitions, used extensively by both sides.
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      Yep. Forgot about those. All of that stuff is going to be a sad surprise for a farmer one day, just like in France. :-/
      - lostlogin 2y ago
        It’s one of the most productive bits of farmland on earth due to its soil type. Presumably one of the reasons Putin decided to take it.
- davidw 2y ago
  Sure, but there's still going to be a lot of wreckage and blown up stuff and ... maybe modern munitions aren't chemical weapons ala WWI, but I don't think the ingredients are like "organic, artisanally produced, biodegradable" stuff either. The US was using depleted uranium for a while, no?
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
    Isn't DU still used? Uranium pierces armor terrifyingly efficiently.
  - dralley 2y ago
    Both the Ukrainians and Russians have been using DU shells, but honestly tanks aren't killing tanks very much, so it's basically irrelevant. Even in the best case the DU is still hitting a 40 ton tank which is full of plenty of heavy metals itself.
tazu 2y ago
Thanks for this, I didn't realize the true scale of WW1. That's horrifying. Imagine the industrial capacity of total war today...
- dylan604 2y ago
  to me, total war today would include all nuclear weapons, which would alter that horrifying scale.
baybal2 2y ago
[dead]
JimTheMan 2y ago
A question I don't know the answer to. Is the scale of the conflict simply significantly less, or is artillery more accurate(and has a greater range?) and therefore less shells tend to get used in a modern day context?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- throwup238 2y ago
  It's both scale and the nature of combat changing - in great part due to the horrors of WWI. There was a huge front stretching across Western Europe of mostly static defensive installations like the infamous network of trenches, all of which could easily be targeted by artillery but couldn't be held by enemy troops for very long. Artillery units would sit in the same spot for months firing at each other without the battle lines changing more than a hundred meters back and forth. Once tanks were invented, this stalemate broke and trench warfare with static installations as far as the eye can see became untenable. While artillery is still useful today as a cheap way to hit static targets with tons of explosives, modern combat has many more mobile units like tanks and armored infantry that are impractical to hit when they're moving around. Artillery is a big part of Russian military doctrine but no one uses it at the scale it was used in WWI.
  - dgoldstein0 2y ago
    > Once tanks were invented, this stalemate broke and trench warfare with static installations as far as the eye can see became untenable. Not sure what timescale you mean by "once" - if you mean immediately during WWI - well the story is a bit more complicated than that. The first tanks were tested in the battlefield in WWI, but they were few, rare, and slow. Some versions were effective at anti-trench warfare, but they didn't fundamentally change they war, because there weren't enough of them and they weren't that good. WWII tanks were a whole different ball game, travelling at automotive speeds - easily 40mph - over most terrains, with much more effective armor from all sides, and both sides figured out how to use them effectively together with infantry and air power. The WWI stalemate really got broken because the Allies - US, UK, and France - had a lot more in them, whereas the Central Powers - Germany, Austria, etc - ran out of manpower and supplies to keep up. They still made it hell on the Allies to gain ground, but they effectively had lost their ability to manage a counteroffensive through attrition. Tons of tactics were tried before that point to avoid an attritional war, but planes and tanks to make fast high powered strikes didn't exist (WWI planes couldn't carry much weight, so were ineffective as bombers, and had shorter range; they were mainly used as recon), and artillery was so destructive it hindered it's own slow advance. Best source I've seen on these subjects is https://acoup.blog/2021/09/17/collections-no-mans-land-part-i-the-trench-stalemate/ https://acoup.blog/2021/09/17/collections-no-mans-land-part-... and his followup article.

jsheard 2y ago

I would also assume that modern munitions are much more likely to either immediately explode or fail (relatively) safe rather than lingering as highly volatile UXO. According to the OP about a quarter of the shells fired back then didn't detonate on impact, and those certainly weren't designed to fail-safe.

actionfromafar 2y ago
That's true, but there is a big cave-at: Soviet shells and North Korean shells can hardly be called modern and there seems to be a lot of duds fired. Not to mention that Russia has littered whole landscapes with anti-personnel mines, something which didn't really exist in WWI. Small, plastic mines, very hard to detect.
- dralley 2y ago
  And cluster munitions, used extensively by both sides.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    Yep. Forgot about those. All of that stuff is going to be a sad surprise for a farmer one day, just like in France. :-/
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      It’s one of the most productive bits of farmland on earth due to its soil type. Presumably one of the reasons Putin decided to take it.
davidw 2y ago
Sure, but there's still going to be a lot of wreckage and blown up stuff and ... maybe modern munitions aren't chemical weapons ala WWI, but I don't think the ingredients are like "organic, artisanally produced, biodegradable" stuff either. The US was using depleted uranium for a while, no?
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  Isn't DU still used? Uranium pierces armor terrifyingly efficiently.
- dralley 2y ago
  Both the Ukrainians and Russians have been using DU shells, but honestly tanks aren't killing tanks very much, so it's basically irrelevant. Even in the best case the DU is still hitting a 40 ton tank which is full of plenty of heavy metals itself.

tazu 2y ago

Thanks for this, I didn't realize the true scale of WW1. That's horrifying. Imagine the industrial capacity of total war today...

dylan604 2y ago
to me, total war today would include all nuclear weapons, which would alter that horrifying scale.

baybal2 2y ago

[dead]

JimTheMan 2y ago

A question I don't know the answer to. Is the scale of the conflict simply significantly less, or is artillery more accurate(and has a greater range?) and therefore less shells tend to get used in a modern day context?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
throwup238 2y ago
It's both scale and the nature of combat changing - in great part due to the horrors of WWI. There was a huge front stretching across Western Europe of mostly static defensive installations like the infamous network of trenches, all of which could easily be targeted by artillery but couldn't be held by enemy troops for very long. Artillery units would sit in the same spot for months firing at each other without the battle lines changing more than a hundred meters back and forth. Once tanks were invented, this stalemate broke and trench warfare with static installations as far as the eye can see became untenable. While artillery is still useful today as a cheap way to hit static targets with tons of explosives, modern combat has many more mobile units like tanks and armored infantry that are impractical to hit when they're moving around. Artillery is a big part of Russian military doctrine but no one uses it at the scale it was used in WWI.
- dgoldstein0 2y ago
  > Once tanks were invented, this stalemate broke and trench warfare with static installations as far as the eye can see became untenable. Not sure what timescale you mean by "once" - if you mean immediately during WWI - well the story is a bit more complicated than that. The first tanks were tested in the battlefield in WWI, but they were few, rare, and slow. Some versions were effective at anti-trench warfare, but they didn't fundamentally change they war, because there weren't enough of them and they weren't that good. WWII tanks were a whole different ball game, travelling at automotive speeds - easily 40mph - over most terrains, with much more effective armor from all sides, and both sides figured out how to use them effectively together with infantry and air power. The WWI stalemate really got broken because the Allies - US, UK, and France - had a lot more in them, whereas the Central Powers - Germany, Austria, etc - ran out of manpower and supplies to keep up. They still made it hell on the Allies to gain ground, but they effectively had lost their ability to manage a counteroffensive through attrition. Tons of tactics were tried before that point to avoid an attritional war, but planes and tanks to make fast high powered strikes didn't exist (WWI planes couldn't carry much weight, so were ineffective as bombers, and had shorter range; they were mainly used as recon), and artillery was so destructive it hindered it's own slow advance. Best source I've seen on these subjects is https://acoup.blog/2021/09/17/collections-no-mans-land-part-i-the-trench-stalemate/ https://acoup.blog/2021/09/17/collections-no-mans-land-part-... and his followup article.