Posted on 05/29/2022 7:36:30 AM PDT by blam
POKROVSK, Ukraine — Camouflaged in a heap of branches cut from nearby trees, the weapon that Ukraine hopes will make a critical difference in its war with Russia is all but invisible from more than a few feet away.
Soon, a single round shoots out with a boom and a howling, metallic shriek as it sails toward Russian positions.
It is the American-made M777 howitzer. It shoots farther, moves faster and is hidden more easily, and it’s what the Ukrainian military has been waiting for.
Three months into the war in Ukraine, the first M777s — the most lethal weapons the West has provided so far — are now deployed in combat in Ukraine’s east. Their arrival has buoyed Ukraine’s hopes of achieving artillery superiority at least in some frontline areas, a key step toward military victories in a war now fought mostly on flat, open steppe at long ranges.
The American howitzers are chunky machines of steel and titanium swathed in hydraulic hoses and perched on four braces that fold up and down. They have already fired hundreds of rounds since arriving around May 8, destroying armored vehicles and killing Russian soldiers, Ukrainian commanders say.
“This weapon brings us closer to victory,” Col. Roman Kachur, commander of the 55th Artillery Brigade, whose unit was the first unit to deploy the weapon, said in an interview. Mixing confidence with an implicit plea for more weapons, he added: “With every modern weapon, every precise weapon, we get closer to victory.”
How close remains unclear, Western military analysts say. The arrival of the new weapons is no guarantee of success, as the Russians continue to engage in fierce fighting in the eastern Donbas region. Much depends on numbers.
“Artillery is very much the business of quantity,” Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in Arlington, Va., said in a telephone interview. “The Russians are one of the largest artillery armies you can face.”
The United States said weeks ago it would provide the howitzers, but their use in combat has so far been mostly hinted at in online videos posted, mostly anonymously, by soldiers. On Sunday, the military provided The New York Times a tour of a gun line in eastern Ukraine, the first independent confirmation by international media that the guns are in use.
Military analysts say the full effect won’t be felt for at least another two weeks, because Ukraine has yet to train enough soldiers to fire all 90 such howitzers pledged by the United States and other allies. Only about a dozen guns are now at the front.
Arming Ukraine with more powerful weapons is a politically sensitive issue. The United States, France, Slovakia and other Western nations have been rushing in artillery and support systems — such as drones, counter-battery radar and armored vehicles for towing guns — even as Russia accuses the West of fighting a proxy war in Ukraine, and threatens unspecified consequences if weapons shipments continue.
Disagreements over how aggressively to confront Russia have cropped up in the Western coalition. France, Italy and Germany have suggested that Ukraine use the leverage of more powerful weapons to push for a cease-fire that might lead to a negotiated withdrawal of Russian forces.
Ukrainian officials have pushed back. They insist that momentum is on their side and that talks should come only after battlefield wins and recapturing territory — once an almost inconceivable idea that became more tenable after Ukraine’s military inflicted multiple setbacks on Russia even before the arrival of Western heavy weaponry.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an interview on Ukrainian television over the weekend, said a diplomatic solution would come only after additional military victories for Ukraine, along with an influx of weapons. The Ukrainian military has repelled Russian troops from Kyiv and from positions near the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, but is under intense pressure now in a more limited battle for control of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
“It’s like an automobile, not a gas-powered, or electric, but a hybrid,” he said of ending the war with a mix of military gains and talks. “And that is how war is: complicated.”
“Victory will be bloody,” Mr. Zelensky said.
In any case, diplomatic talks halted about a week ago, both sides said, throwing the outcome back to the battlefields. And not all has gone Ukraine’s way. Russian forces are now close to surrounding the city of Sievierodonetsk, threatening an encirclement of Ukrainian troops.
“I’m surprised people believe Ukrainian forces can absorb this level of losses and then be ready to go on the offensive right afterward,” Mr. Kofman, the analyst, said.
Still, the new, longer-ranged Western artillery are the most powerful and destructive of the many types now being provided by NATO countries. They fire three miles farther than the most common artillery system used by the Russian army in the Ukraine war, the Msta-S self-propelled howitzer — and 10 miles farther if shooting a precision, GPS-guided projectile.
Out on the open plains of the east, a long drive over potholed roads and dirt tracks ends with jeeps pivoting quickly into a tree line.
Secrecy is paramount in the cat-and-mouse artillery duels that have defined the war in recent weeks. Soldiers waste no time piling fresh-cut branches onto the vehicles, as camouflage against enemy drones.
In the artillery duels, soldiers value not just range but the ability to quickly hide and move guns and supporting vehicles.
Since their deployment two weeks ago, the dozen or so howitzers operating in two artillery batteries had by Sunday fired 1,876 rounds, according to Ukrainian officers.
With a mix of airburst, anti-personnel fragmentation rounds and other types of projectiles, the Ukrainian gunners have destroyed at least three Russian armored vehicles, and by Colonel Kachur’s estimate killed at least several dozen Russian soldiers.
At the firing line in the trees, empty ammunition boxes and spent cartridges were scattered amid foxholes. Kalashnikov rifles leaned against tree trunks.
The officers didn’t say what they were targeting.
The purpose of the guns will be to grind down Russian positions and military infrastructure, such as ammunition depots and command posts, Colonel Kachur said. Ukrainian soldiers say the howitzers will also save civilian lives by striking Russian artillery firing on their towns.
The types of Western artillery flowing into Ukraine now have several advantages over Soviet legacy systems, Ukrainian artillery officers said. Among the most important is their compatibility with NATO caliber shells, easing fears that Ukraine might soon run out of Soviet-standard ammunition now made mostly in Russia.
In addition to the weapons the United States is sending, the French have promised Caesar truck-mounted howitzers, which are capable of quickly driving away after firing in a maneuver known as “shoot and scoot.” Slovakia has also pledged howitzers.
But the American M777, known as the triple seven, is likely to have the greatest effect for the quantity of guns provided, providing accurate, long-range fire when sufficient crews are trained to use them, military analysts say.
The bottleneck is training. The United States has so far trained about 200 Ukrainian soldiers in six-day courses at bases in Germany. The Ukrainian military divided this group roughly in half, sending some to the front and others to train more Ukrainians. Training soldiers for all 90 guns — the amount that are scheduled to arrive — could take another several weeks, said Mykhailo Zhirokhov, the author of a book on artillery in Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists, “Gods of Hybrid War.’’
Smaller numbers of the computer-controlled, self-propelled Caesar guns from France will also help, Mr. Zhirokhov said, but learning to use them takes months. “Even the French think they are too complicated,” he said.
After the soldiers fired the M777, the gun was horizontal again, its barrel covered in camouflaging branches. “Move faster!” an officer yelled. The crew then ran, in case the Russians had fixed their location.
Now THIS! Is what the Ghost of Keeeeev was waiting for!
That is my take as well.
It is “now or never” for China—there is a good chance the US will never be this weak again for many decades.
They may choose “never” for their own reasons—but the current crop of DC clowns has significantly raised the probability that they choose “now”.
Army Replenishing Stinger Missiles In $687M Deal As Raytheon’s Ukraine Cash Bonanza Continues
Thanks blam.
.
Your sentence makes no sense / is jumbled.
Could you please rephrase that? I would like to understand what you are trying to say.
Regards,
Great. More expensive toys for the Russians to blow up or confiscate.
My typing skills need improvement and I need to proofread what I type.
They spent two hours talking about an attack on America, except the attack would not come from Russia, the attack would come from China.
Anybody who watched the entire 2 hours either comes away feeling the situation is very scary or Steve Bannon and the people on the show are full of BS.
Unless someone can present a coherent summarization of this two-hour discussion, including a bullet-list of, say, five plausible reasons why this might happen and a couple of semi-plausible scenarios as to how it might happen, I'm wagering that it is the usual BS.
Regards,
Watch the show for yourself, don’t wait for someone to give you a summary which you will probably have questions about, it’s a waste of time, watch the episode.
Either you will believe it or not, it’s up to you.
Hour 1 of the show.
Hour 2 of the show.
Who’s training the Ukies to use these weapons? And how long does it take for the Ukies to learn to use these weapons? So many of these news are propaganda for those who want to continue this war that will decimate Ukraine.
Who really benefits? That’s what we need to find out.
M-777 is designed to shoot and scoot. You’re nuts if you think the Russkies don’t have trajectory tracing radar.
Who really benefits? Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland, and the United States all benefit if Russia can be defeated in the Ukraine. The Ukraine itself more than benefits. It would survive as an intact country. And the Donbas would be saved from the Russian savages who illegally occupy my wife’s hometown.
I think you misspelled "willingness to give them whatever they demand."
Both nations have imperial ambitions, and are not willing to be simply talked out of it. But they'd certainly like the rest of the world to play the Chamberlain card and wrongly believe that talk is enough.
“I have a suspicion that it is not being replenished.”
From many peoples point of view, that is a good thought.
Here is a text from congress with the spending thoughts applied to procurement for the military for 2022:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4350/text
Not section 4101 about two thirds down the bill where it identifies spending for each branch under TITLE XLI—PROCUREMENT.
There is not a lot of other than “at best of” replacing most of what we are giving away. And that is determined by congress and not the military which has to make a silks purse out of a sows ear. And I do mean giving as the Ukraine has no defense commitments with us except what Biden has tossed into their mix.
All this is is funding the new Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and a number of little countries that don’t pertain to us that we got into. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t go meals on wheels for both countries going at it when it is over. And we will foot the bill to both countries repairing the damage done as we are like the gun companies when guns don’t kill people unless it is determined by liberals and chicken skit conservatives. That money is still not talked about. And that will stop payment on arms or social security cause with the financial problems we have, they’ve got to get it somewhere.
wy69
What is to stop Russians from targetting these positions from the air? How about the trains, trucks and boats of these weapons? It is a matter of time before the West is sending my grandsons and daughters to fight for ?????????? Tell me why they SHOULD fight for NATO?
Every time we go into a war/conflict/regime change situation, we end up creating a worse situation. If Russia fails, you can bet whomever takes charge there is going to be more anti-West, and full of righteous hatred. Can you blame them? Of course the people who disagree with Putin, will flee to our country...WIN/WIN for extremism.
Are you saying we are sending money to Vietnam?
This artillery will be in the hands of the Russians very soon. If the Taliban can get 85 billion of US military hardware, believe me the Russians will get everything we send to Ukraine.
Chimcom attacks on American State’s Soil are stuff of fiction movies except for possible small scale raids upon outliers like in Alaska and maybe Hawaii.
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