Ukraine's Ammunition Depot Destruction Campaign: Deep Strikes Against Russian Artillery Logistics

Strategic Logic: Why Depots Are Priority Targets

Russian artillery dominance has been one of the defining features of the Ukraine war. Russian forces have maintained a significant advantage in artillery shell consumption rate throughout most of the conflict — estimates of Russian superiority in shell expenditure range from 3:1 to 10:1 against Ukraine in active periods, depending on sector and time period. This firepower advantage has compensated for Russian tactical and operational inferior performance in multiple sectors.

The strategic logic of targeting ammunition depots follows directly from this reality: if Ukraine cannot match Russian shell expenditure at the production or delivery level, it can attempt to negate Russian advantages by destroying stockpiled ammunition before it reaches front-line guns. Every ton of shells destroyed in a depot represents multiple tons that will never fire at Ukrainian positions.

Ammunition depots offer several targeting advantages:

• Fixed or semi-fixed locations: Depots require storage infrastructure — buildings, earthworks, rail access — that limits their mobility and creates observable signatures for intelligence collection.
• Vulnerability to secondary explosions: When struck effectively, ammunition depots produce massive secondary explosions that amplify the initial weapon's destructive effect far beyond the direct blast. A single well-placed strike can detonate thousands of shells stored in proximity.
• Strategic multiplier: Destroying a depot eliminates not just currently stored ammunition but the logistical work to move it forward, the infrastructure investment in the storage facility, and the operational tempo of units dependent on that supply node.
• Morale effect: Visible depot explosions — frequently captured on satellite imagery and circulated internationally — serve as a demonstration of Ukrainian strike capability and degrade Russian defensive morale in logistics units.

Early Strikes 2022: HIMARS and the First Campaign

The ammunition depot targeting campaign effectively began when the United States delivered M142 HIMARS rocket artillery systems to Ukraine in June 2022. HIMARS, firing M31 GMLRS rockets with a 70km range and CEP (circular error probable) of approximately 5–10 meters, provided Ukraine with its first precision-guided capability able to reliably reach and destroy high-value targets behind the front lines.

The summer of 2022 saw an intensive campaign of depot strikes that military analysts credit with substantially impairing Russian logistics capability in the Kherson region — contributing materially to conditions that enabled the Ukrainian Kherson Liberation offensive in autumn 2022. Within weeks of HIMARS deployment, Ukrainian forces had struck multiple documented depots, each producing the characteristic massive secondary explosions visible on satellite imagery.

The early HIMARS strikes demonstrated several things: the weapon's accuracy was sufficient to penetrate depot areas reliably; Russian air defenses were unable to intercept GMLRS consistently; and Russian depots were often stocked to capacity in ways that maximized damage from secondary explosions. Russia was forced into an immediate adaptation — withdrawing depots beyond 70km from the front line.

This adaptation itself had strategic consequences: moving depots beyond HIMARS reach extended Russian supply lines, increased the logistics effort required to move ammunition forward, and created road and rail bottlenecks that became new targeting opportunities.

Weapons Systems Used in the Campaign

The progressive expansion of Ukraine's long-range strike arsenal has been central to the depot destruction campaign's evolution. Each new system introduced extended the range at which depots could be targeted, forcing Russian logistics to adapt accordingly.

Major Documented Strikes (Chronological)

The following represents a selection of major confirmed strikes on Russian ammunition storage from 2022 through 2025, based on satellite imagery, official statements, and OSINT analysis:

• July 2022 — Kadiivka (Bryanka), Luhansk Oblast: Major HIMARS strikes on Russian ammunition storage, with extensive secondary explosions documented by Planet Labs satellite imagery. One of the most significant early depot strikes.
• August 2022 — Chaplynka, Kherson Oblast: HIMARS strikes on Russian supply infrastructure near Chaplynka airfield area, damaging ammunition supply to the Kherson garrison.
• September 2022 — Multiple Kherson region depots: Systematic HIMARS strikes on Russian supply nodes as Ukraine prepared its Kherson liberation offensive, contributing to Russian ammunition shortfalls.
• November 2022 — Nova Kakhovka area: Strikes on Russian logistics infrastructure, documented via satellite imagery showing large fires consistent with ammunition secondaries.
• 2023 — Crimea base strikes: Multiple strikes on Russian military storage and logistics in Crimea, some attributed to Storm Shadow/SCALP after their introduction in May/September 2023 respectively.
• October 2023 — Luhansk city area: Large explosions consistent with ammunition depot detonation, likely HIMARS or drone strikes, documented via satellite.
• October 2024 — Confirmed ATACMS deep strikes: Ukrainian forces confirmed use of ATACMS in strikes on Kursk Oblast targets, including logistics infrastructure; follow-on ATACMS employment against depot targets in Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts documented subsequently.
• 2024–2025 — Long-range drone campaign: Ukrainian indigenous long-range drones (Lyuty, UJ-22 Airborne, and successive designs) striking ammunition storage and oil/fuel infrastructure. Documented strikes reached Saratov, Tatarstan, Ryazan, and other deep-rear Russian regions.

Russian Adaptation: Dispersal and Relocation

Russia's response to the depot destruction campaign has involved multiple adaptations:

Geographic dispersal: Moving from large centralized depots to dispersed storage in smaller facilities, reducing the value of any single strike but increasing logistics complexity. The adaptation reduced the spectacular secondary explosions of 2022 but also increased the number of individual targets Ukraine must service.

Distance relocation: Pushing ammunition storage progressively further from the front line as Ukraine's strike range extended. After HIMARS moved depots beyond 70km, ATACMS deployment pushed them to 300km+, and long-range drones have struck beyond 1,000km. Russia is now managing ammunition forward supply chains of extraordinary length.

Hardening and concealment: Some storage has been placed in underground facilities, tunnels, and Soviet-era bunker complexes. These provide protection against most munitions but require significant investment and are not universally available.

Air defense deployment around depots: Russian air defense assets have been redeployed to protect key logistics nodes, creating a tradeoff between protecting depots and maintaining front-line air defense coverage.

Rail logistics adaptation: Shifting from road-based forward supply to expanded rail movement, exploiting Russia's extensive rail network to move ammunition rapidly while it remains in relative safety at distance.

ATACMS Integration and Extended Range

The introduction of Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) munitions to Ukraine, delayed by US policy debate through most of 2023, represented a step change in Ukraine's counter-depot capability. ATACMS provides a ballistic missile trajectory with terminal speeds that make interception extremely difficult for Russian air defense — unlike cruise missiles and drones, which can be engaged throughout their flight path.

The two key ATACMS variants delivered to Ukraine:

• M39 (MGM-140A): Range approximately 165km, disperses 950 M74 anti-personnel/anti-materiel submunitions over target area — effective against dispersed outdoor storage but limited against hardened facilities.
• M48 (MGM-140B): Range approximately 300km, single 227kg unitary warhead — capable of penetrating lighter hardening and more precise against point targets like specific depot structures.

The October 2024 confirmation of ATACMS strikes deep into Russian territory — initially into Kursk Oblast — opened the door for subsequent use against ammunition infrastructure targets at ranges previously unattainable for Ukraine. Documented strikes on ammunition and fuel storage in Luhansk Oblast and across the contact line using ATACMS have been among the most strategically significant operations of 2024.

Storm Shadow / SCALP-EG Operations Against Depots

The UK-supplied Storm Shadow and French-supplied SCALP-EG cruise missiles — effectively the same weapon system with different national designations — gave Ukraine a capability distinct from ATACMS. Their BROACH (Bomb Royal Ordnance Augmented Charge) warhead is specifically designed for penetrating hardened concrete structures before detonating, making Storm Shadow/SCALP particularly effective against reinforced bunkers and underground storage facilities that resist surface-burst warheads.

Storm Shadow/SCALP strikes against Crimean targets in 2023 demonstrated the weapon's ability to penetrate hardened Russian military infrastructure, with documented impacts against the Saky airbase in Crimea and subsequent strikes against naval and logistics targets in Sevastopol. These capabilities have been applied selectively against particularly hardened or high-value ammunition storage facilities beyond HIMARS and ATACMS reach or hardening tolerance.

The combination of ATACMS for area effects and Storm Shadow/SCALP for hardened penetration gives Ukraine a complementary strike capability against the full range of Russian ammunition storage types.

Drone Supplement to Missile Strikes

Ukraine has developed and deployed indigenous long-range attack drones that supplement missile strikes against ammunition infrastructure. Key aspects:

• Cost-exchange ratio: Long-range drones cost a fraction of ATACMS or Storm Shadow, enabling Ukraine to strike more targets, saturate Russian air defenses, and force defensive resource allocation across a much wider area.
• Geographic reach: Ukrainian drones have struck targets thousands of kilometers into Russian territory — oil refineries in Saratov, Nizhny Novgorod, and Tatarstan, military airfields hosting strategic bombers, and ammunition and fuel storage across Russia's military-industrial depth.
• Strategic ambiguity: Drone attacks on Russian territory maintain a level of strategic ambiguity absent from declared missile strikes, complicating Russian domestic narrative management.
• Compounding effect: Oil refinery strikes, while not directly targeting ammunition depots, reduce fuel available for the logistics chain that moves ammunition forward. The campaign against Russian energy infrastructure has a cascading effect on overall military logistics capacity.

The drone campaign has been a Ukrainian indigenous success story — developed from minimal initial capability to a systematic deep-strike capacity using domestically produced systems with progressive range and payload improvements.

Measured Strategic Effect

Assessing the campaign's effectiveness requires looking beyond individual strikes to systemic effects:

Positive effects confirmed by evidence:

• Contributed materially to Russian shell shortage during Kherson liberation period (summer–autumn 2022)
• Forced significant Russian logistics adaptation, increasing the cost and complexity of ammunition forward supply
• Extended effective Russian logistics supply line from ~70km to 300km+, with associated delays and vulnerabilities
• Destroyed documented significant quantities of ammunition in high-yield secondary explosions
• Imposed opportunity costs on Russia's air defense, forcing redeployment of assets from front-line coverage to depot protection
• Created tactical windows where Russian artillery is temporarily constrained in active sectors adjacent to struck supply nodes

Limitations in assessment:

• Precise quantities of ammunition destroyed cannot be externally verified
• Russia has compensated with increased domestic production, reduced quality control, and North Korean and Iranian supplies
• Russian shell expenditure rates, while constrained in some periods, have recovered toward previous levels by 2024–2025 through production increases
• The campaign has not achieved the strategic effect of eliminating Russian artillery superiority — it has degraded and complicated it without ending it

Limitations and Russian Countermeasures

The campaign faces structural limitations imposed by Ukraine's available missile numbers, Russian adaptation, and geopolitical constraints on target set:

Inventory constraints: Western precision missile deliveries, while sustained, have not provided sufficient inventory for a continuous campaign against all meaningful targets. Ukraine must prioritize strikes based on current operational priorities, meaning some targets remain unserviced.

Russian production increase: Russia has dramatically expanded domestic ammunition production since 2022, with production now estimated at 3–4 million artillery shells per year in 2024–2025, supplemented by North Korean deliveries estimated at 2–3 million shells annually. This production increase partially offsets depot destruction.

Underground and dispersed storage: Russian adaptation toward underground and dispersed storage reduces the value of individual strikes and requires more weapons per target to achieve equivalent destruction.

Geopolitical constraints: US and UK policy restrictions have at various points limited Ukrainian latitude to strike certain categories of targets in Russia proper, limiting the depth of the campaign even when Ukrainian systems had the range to strike deeper.

2025–2026 Evolution

The ammunition depot destruction campaign has continued to evolve through 2025 and into 2026:

• Expanded target set: Strikes increasingly target the full logistics chain — not only ammunition depots but rail infrastructure, fuel storage, and logistics hub facilities that enable forward supply.
• Improved targeting intelligence: Cooperation with NATO intelligence assets and expanded Ukrainian space reconnaissance capability has improved target identification and battle damage assessment.
• Drone range extension: Ukrainian long-range drones now routinely operate at 1,000-1,500km from launch points, enabling strikes on Russian strategic rear logistics infrastructure unprecedentedly far from the front.
• Alliance contributions: Germany's Taurus cruise missile — if delivered — would add penetration capability against hardened targets comparable to Storm Shadow/SCALP. Political deliberations over delivery have continued into 2025–2026.
• Effect assessment: By early 2026, the consensus military assessment is that the depot destruction campaign has been a meaningful strategic asset for Ukraine, imposing real costs on Russian logistics without resolving the fundamental ammunition imbalance — but remaining one of Ukraine's most effective asymmetric tools.

Frequently Asked Questions