A Forensic Examination of GIS Arta

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have undergone a rapid and extraordinary transformation. Central to Ukraine’s modern military renaissance has been the adoption and innovation of digital tools for battlefield coordination and situational awareness. Among these, GIS Arta has emerged as a revolutionary system for artillery fire coordination, working in tandem with its more publicly discussed companion, Delta. Together these platforms underpin Ukraine’s ability to conduct precision strikes with high efficiency and minimal latency (time from inputting strike data to the strike taking place), even when outnumbered in traditional materiel.

This essay offers a forensic analysis of GIS Arta, tracing its origins, functionality, operational strengths, and limitations, while examining its synergy with Delta and the wider implications for modern military doctrine.

Origins and Context: The Rise of GIS Arta

GIS Arta (Geographic Information System for Artillery) was conceived in the shadow of Ukraine’s experience with hybrid warfare in the Donbas since 2014. Early failures in command-and-control, combined with antiquated Soviet doctrine, prompted a new generation of Ukrainian officers and civilian technologists to collaborate on software solutions that could provide real-time battlefield awareness and decentralised command capabilities.

Initially developed by Ukrainian software engineers—some of whom were volunteers—GIS Arta became a confidential project aligned closely with the General Staff’s evolving needs. While its full architecture remains classified, its development received indirect support from NATO allies and the diaspora technology community. It represents a Ukrainian adaptation of modern command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) concepts, with a particular focus on artillery coordination.

Functional Architecture of GIS Arta

At its core, GIS Arta is a digital fire control network designed to manage artillery and drone strikes in a fast, decentralised, and highly responsive manner. It draws upon multiple data sources and feeds them into an encrypted, cloud-based system that operates across a distributed network. The system performs the following principal functions:

1. Sensor-to-Shooter Integration

GIS Arta links various battlefield sensors—spotters, UAVs, radars and satellite imagery—to artillery batteries and missile systems. As soon as a target is identified (e.g. a Russian armoured column or logistics depot), its coordinates can be uploaded and verified in seconds.

The system prioritises targets based on pre-set mission parameters (such as high-value units or moving targets), calculates optimal firing solutions using terrain modelling, and then relays firing data directly to artillery units.

2. Real-Time Geolocation and Blue Force Tracking

Unlike Soviet-era fire coordination, GIS Arta ensures that Ukrainian artillery units know the location of friendly units (blue forces) and avoid fratricide. It uses GPS, GLONASS (the Russian version of GPS that covers all Russia) and commercial satellite data, and where GPS is jammed, compensates using radio triangulation and fallback digital maps.

3. Fire Mission Automation

Battery commanders receive tablet-based or laptop interfaces that display tasking orders with calculated azimuths (directions using degrees on the compass), distances, fuse settings and expected time-on-target. GIS Arta also manages deconfliction of simultaneous missions (i.e. preventing the same target being shot at twice) and integrates shoot-and-scoot doctrine by suggesting immediate post-strike repositioning to avoid Russian counter-battery fire.

The Delta Connection: Operational Synergy

Delta is the broader situational awareness system employed by Ukraine—a NATO-compatible battlefield command platform offering a common operational picture. Developed in partnership with Ukrainian defence technology companies and international backers, Delta is designed for a much wider range of functions: from troop movement and enemy tracking to logistics and civil defence coordination.

While Delta serves as the high-level theatre command and C2 (command and control) interface, GIS Arta specialises in tactical precision. Their integration is seamless:

• Delta provides the strategic view, aggregating satellite imagery, SIGINT, drone footage, and human intelligence (HUMINT).

• GIS Arta acts as the execution layer, translating Delta’s intelligence into real-time fires.

For example when Delta receives drone footage of a Russian S-300 system in the Zaporizhzhia region, GIS Arta can assign and calculate a fire mission for a HIMARS battery in minutes—often before the target can reposition.

This symbiosis gives Ukraine a significant "OODA" loop advantage: the ability to observe, orient, decide and act faster than the adversary.

Operational Effectiveness: Field Case Studies

1. Battle of Kherson (2022)

GIS Arta played a key role in the Ukrainian counteroffensive by coordinating rapid artillery fire across the Dnipro river, striking pontoon crossings and Russian logistics routes with extraordinary precision. Ukrainian gunners could receive target coordinates from local partisans via Delta, verify them using drones, and deliver precision fire within minutes.

2. Bakhmut and Avdiivka (2023–2024)

As Russian forces concentrated massed infantry attacks on fortified positions, GIS Arta allowed Ukrainian units to interdict rear resupply columns, hit troop concentrations, and target artillery positions with surgical efficiency—offsetting Russia’s numerical advantage.

Security and Cyber Resilience

GIS Arta operates on encrypted civilian infrastructure using commercial Starlink satellites and redundant fibre links (i.e. back-up fibre links not being used for normal civilian purposes). To combat jamming, it employs frequency-hopping radio protocols, mesh networks (networks of inter-connected computers, allowing for multiple directions of transmission of information) and adaptive signal routing (constant adjustment of signal paths in a network).

The system’s architecture is built to be decentralised. Even if one command node is compromised, local units can continue to operate with cached data and fallback procedures. Importantly GIS Arta is modular, allowing updates and new integrations (e.g. AI targeting algorithms or drone swarms) to be tested and deployed as ad hoc add-ons and then integrated permanently if they prove to work.

Russian forces have tried repeatedly to compromise GIS Arta through cyberattacks and electronic warfare, but without lasting success—due to both hardened encryption and the agility of Ukraine’s IT Army in countering threats.

Strategic Implications: A New Doctrine of Digital War

GIS Arta exemplifies a new paradigm of algorithmic artillery, where humans supervise decisions made by distributed data systems. It enables:

• Faster decision-making at the battalion and brigade level.

• Resource conservation, striking high-value targets with minimal munitions.

• Deterrence of massed assaults, as GIS Arta can call in immediate saturation fire in real time.

This challenges traditional Russian doctrine reliant on slow, centralised command structures. It also sets the tone for 21st-century warfare, where software—not tanks—may prove decisive.

Limitations and the Future of GIS Arta

Despite its strengths, GIS Arta is not omnipotent:

• It relies on digital literacy at the platoon level, which requires ongoing training.

• It is vulnerable to communication disruptions, particularly in deep-fought terrain or under intense jamming.

• It depends on the availability of accurate sensor data, making its effectiveness proportional to drone and satellite coverage.

Looking ahead, Ukraine plans to integrate machine learning, predictive strike modelling and autonomous drone feedback loops into GIS Arta and Delta. These evolutions may give rise to a fully networked "kill chain" capable of reacting to battlefield developments with almost zero human delay (latency).

GIS Arta is not just a fire coordination platform. It is a symbol of how Ukraine’s ingenuity and integration of civilian technology into military applications have levelled the playing field against a numerically superior enemy. By working hand-in-hand with Delta, it empowers Ukrainian forces with a digital nervous system—a dynamic, intelligent and adaptive set of systems that transform intelligence into firepower in real time.

In doing so, GIS Arta offers a model for future militaries: where battlefield dominance lies not only in steel and gunpowder, but in code, data and connectivity.