Reactive Counterfire

Why?

By CW2 Ryan Saltzgaber

Article published on: May 27, 2026 in the Field Artillery 2026 Edition

Read Time: < 7 mins

Historically, reactive counterfire has been a key component of field-artillery employment, enabling it to identify and attack enemy firing systems after they have fired at friendly forces. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has increased the challenge to this method of employment. Modern artillery units can move rapidly (in many cases in less than one minute) by using Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), Electronic Warfare (EW), and rapid movement into new positions, making them difficult to detect and target. The combination of rapid displacement by enemy artillery units and their use of these technologies greatly reduces the time that firing units remain stationary and often allows the enemy to remain viable long enough to preclude the use of traditional counterfire methods. The counterfire timelines of legacy doctrine no longer reflect the survivable window for modern artillery systems, creating a widening gap between doctrinal expectations and operational realities.¹

Doctrinal Foundations of Counterfire

According to ATP 3-09.12, counterfire is defined as the suppression or destruction of an enemy’s fire support system(s) by detecting, tracking, targeting, and engaging those systems. Historically, this approach was effective against enemies with longer time-to-displacement and limited ability to detect and track friendly forces. However, in large-scale combat operations (LSCO), where enemy artillery units can displace in less than one minute, these procedural steps often exceed the target’s survivability window.²

Lessons of the Russia-Ukraine War

Russian and Ukrainian artillery forces are accustomed to moving from their firing positions in less than two minutes to avoid being engaged. The key to survival is minimizing the time spent in the position from which one is firing and using previously surveyed positions to which one can move to avoid fire. In addition, EW effects interfere with digital-fire mission processing and target handoffs, further lengthening engagement times. Furthermore, both parties are employing artillery at rates significantly higher than expected in peacetime, rendering reactive fires operationally unsustainable.³

Historically, the traditional counterfire sequence (detection, identification, clearance, processing, transmission, weapon lay and time of flight) often exceeds the time available for an enemy to displace. When rounds hit, the firing unit has already moved, resulting in either decoy sites or vacant positions.⁴

Custody-Based Targeting

Commanders must shift away from assessing the responsiveness of their artillery solely in terms of the speed of fire and begin to assess whether they continue to maintain custody of a target until the moment of effect, shifting their thought process from “Why aren’t we shooting?” to “Do we still have custody of the target?” Custody implies persistent surveillance, predictive targeting and pre-planned authority to engage the target. This approach emphasizes continued sensor coverage, pattern-of-life analysis and engagement of the firing unit at a predetermined location.⁵

Proactive counterfire aims to target artillery before it fires, target resupply routes, target assembly areas, and target command nodes while employing UAS to continuously monitor the target. Fires conducted on likely firing positions prior to the initiation of hostilities are more effective than post-hostilities reactive responses.⁶

Drivers of Technological Change

While UAS provides persistent surveillance, they simultaneously decrease the survivability windows of artillery systems. While precision munitions increase lethality, they require timely, accurate target information. While automation and sensor fusion may reduce timelines, they require decentralized authorities to be put in place.⁷

Clearance processes conducted through centralized authorities are incompatible with LSCO’s timelines. Decentralized authorities, preplanned fire zones and mission command are required. Commanders must acknowledge that not all detections result in fire missions and that custody, probability of effects, ammunition expenditure and the potential for counter-detection must all be considered.⁸ Ammunition is a finite resource during LSCO.

Fires conducted without custody diminish combat power and increase logistical exposure. Fires conducted based on custody increase lethality by assuring that rounds are delivered against confirmed, present targets.⁹ Legacy metrics—such as rounds fired, response time, and so forth—are inadequate in LSCO. Metrics should reflect the targets destroyed, enemy fires suppressed and the survivability of friendly artillery. Custody-based engagement establishes a framework for reporting effectiveness.¹⁰ Mobility, survivability and sensor integration should be the top priorities in designing a force. More mobile systems with rapid-displacement capabilities are more survivable than static systems. Organic UAS, integrated at lower levels of command, enhance custody and minimize dependence on external sensors.¹¹

Training Leaders for Custody, Discipline and Survivability

Leader development must emphasize custody-based decision making. Fire support officers and targeting officers must be trained to recommend withholding fires when custody is lost. This represents a cultural shift that requires commanders to reward disciplined fires rather than volume of fires.¹² Every fire mission carries a signature risk: Radar emissions, digital communications and firing signatures expose friendly units to enemy counterfire. Commanders must balance the desire to engage with the risk of detection.

Emissions control and displacement drills are as important as gunnery proficiency in LSCO.¹³ Persistent UAS coverage is essential to maintaining custody of enemy artillery. Counter-UAS capabilities should also be incorporated to deny the enemy the same advantage. In the absence of airspace control on the small-UAS level, artillery units can be detected and targeted. Custody depends on both surveillance and denial.¹⁴ Rather than focusing solely on firing units, proactive counterfire must target the entire artillery system, including ammunition supply points, command posts, survey elements and logistics nodes. The degradation of these components reduces the enemy’s ability to generate fires more effectively than attempting to destroy individual tubes after they fire.

Targeting Enemy Artillery Systems as a System

In LSCO, the only viable method to achieve effective counterfire is to compress the sensor-to-shooter timeline through decentralization and preplanned authorities. Units must train to execute fires based on templated target areas, named areas of interest and high-payoff target lists without requiring extensive clearance procedures. This approach aligns with mission command and enables engagement within the enemy’s displacement window. Field artillery culture has historically emphasized responsiveness as a primary measure of effectiveness. However, LSCO against a peer adversary requires a recalibration of priorities. Responsiveness without survivability results in wasted combat power. The war in Russia-Ukraine shows that artillery units that prioritize rapid displacement and deception can last longer than those that focus on prolonged firing. This creates a doctrinal tension between traditional counterfire expectations and modern survivability requirements.

Conclusion

Traditional reactive-counterfire methods will no longer be enough for LSCO to respond to the technologically advanced enemy. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict has shown that an enemy’s artillery units can move quickly, employ deception tactics and exploit the electromagnetic spectrum in ways that consistently outpace current counterfire timelines. Simply being able to shoot quickly does not equate to being responsive to the enemy; it often results in wasted ammunition and the exposure of your own troops.

Field artillery to be effective in LSCO must evolve from reactive, traditional counterfire into a custody-based, proactive-targeting methodology that emphasizes persistent surveillance, delegated authority and effect-based fires. As opposed to firing rapidly but at the wrong time, maintaining custody of a target at the point of impact is now more important than wasting munitions on an already displaced enemy. To achieve this, commanders must embrace disciplined restraint, delegate decision making and measure success as the survivability of their troops and the confirmed effects. The most successful counterfire in LSCO will depend upon a definitive cultural and doctrinal change in how fires are planned, authorized and evaluated. Commanders must replace the question “Why aren’t we shooting?” with “Do we still have custody of the target?” This will preserve the combat power of field artillery, increase its lethality, and align it with the reality of modern, contested battlefield environments.

Notes