Posted on 05/16/2022 5:40:59 AM PDT by GonzoII
Ukraine's armed forces released a video on Sunday (May 15) saying it said showed servicemen firing new U.S. M-777 howitzers at the front line in the east of the country.The video showed its soldiers firing an artillery gun. Reuters could not independently verify the video.
The U.S. embassy in Kyiv said on Sunday that Washington has delivered all but one of the 90 artillery pieces they were due to send.
The M-777 howitzer consignment is part of a huge outlay of weapons from Washington to help Ukraine fend off Russia's invasion, which began on Feb. 24.
The M-777 is seen as particularly significant because of its long range and accuracy….
(Excerpt) Read more at youtu.be ...
The trouble with this war is the Russian attack has done nothing to affect the rampant corruption of the Uke ruling class. If anything they will emerge stronger from this.
Acknowledged - you can see the laser ring gyro aiming system on its mount above the tube. Doesn't make their procedure for seating the trails any better. Their commander should have made them dig them in themselves.
"Got over 40 years in artillery!"
I'm amazed that Ukrainians are able to get direct hits on tanks and APCs etc. with artillery. Can they be that good without some type of guidance support?. …….
....very good point....! another article about this M777 on another website points out this gun needs an 8-man crew, while previous howitzers needed 5-man crews...
I am no artillery expert, and don’t pretend to be one...this is a link to an article that is rather critical of this new weapon...just posting it for info....I have no axe to grind....
https://www.herald.co.zw/us-sends-arms-to-ukraine-it-cannot-operate-effectively/
The CEP of ordinary artillery shells would seem to preclude an expectation of direct hits. They could be using guided munitions at least sometimes.
However “close” is not “no cigar” in many cases. Lightly armored vehicles can be penetrated by larger pieces of shrapnel .
The CEP of ordinary artillery shells would seem to preclude an expectation of direct hits. They could be using guided munitions at least sometimes.
However “close” is not “no cigar” in many cases. Lightly armored vehicles can be penetrated by larger pieces of shrapnel .
I agree that precision guided rounds would be the best answer for attacking individual vehicles - but if they have pre-registered targets on a road and the vehicles are bunched together, they have a better than even chance of nailing a vehicle or two.
I have seen a cluster of M-198 155mm craters out in the desert that didn't measure more that 10 meters across, fired by a single howitzer, same data (and well-seated trails) fired at 11,000 meters range and it astounded me with that great precision. That's less than one mil in deviation for range and deflection dispersion!
Artillery can be very precise indeed.
Thanks
"but if they have pre-registered targets, on a road and the vehicles are bunched together they have a better than even chance of nailing a vehicle or two."
That's what the deal was at the pontoon bridge crossing I heard, they had the probable crossings on the river already pre-targeted and the Russians lost at least 73 vehicles! Thanks for the input…
Balderdash
I wonder what kind of Fire Direction Control they are using? FDC is what makes artillery extremely deadly.
Russians used to use Target Reference Points on their maps, indicated by plus (+) signs. Some of their maps were just covered by plus signs.
Well said.
The Ukraine is losing up to 15,000 men per month to the war. The total Ukrainian casualties, dead and wounded, are likely already at 50,000. The weapons the U.S. and others provide, are not sufficient to sustain the war. The Ukraine has only 3 days reserves of diesel and gasoline left. The main parts of its forces are immobile and are getting surrounded by Russian forces. Their situation is hopeless.
https://thedreizinreport.com/2022/05/15/russia-helps-the-ukraine-meet-its-emissions-reduction-targets/
Although barely any U.S. or European media mentioned this at all, the past week saw the destruction of the Kremenchug oil refinery, which the Associated Press—citing a Ukrainian official—conveyed was “not operational anyway”…..
…..So, no big deal! Right?
The oil tanks at Kremenchug had been damaged previously, but the facility—as one of the Ukraine’s only three functioning refineries at the start of the war, and one of only two large ones—has just lost its production section thanks to at least six Russian cruise missiles.
This size of refinery would take years and hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild.
Regional authorities say the gas will run out completely in a few days.
With the Lisichansk refinery also destroyed, and the Odessa refinery’s fuel tanks all well blown…..
…..the one avenue now for supplying the Ukraine (and its army) with ready fuel, is via tanker trains coming from Moldova.
As I’ve written before, these trains are loaded at the port of Giurgiulești, then moved over Soviet-gauge Moldovan track into the Ukraine.
Poland and Slovakia don’t use the same track, so sourcing from that direction is not an option, unless you want to transfer the fuel to a new train at the border—ridiculously time-consuming.
Russia has hit and possibly disabled one of two Odessa-region bridges used by these fuel trains.
In short, the “fuel line” into the Ukraine, is hanging on a thread, and fully at Russia’s mercy.
Send more Javelins!
The Ukraine is losing up to 15,000 men per month to the war. The total Ukrainian casualties, dead and wounded, are likely already at 50,000. The weapons the U.S. and others provide, are not sufficient to sustain the war. The Ukraine has only 3 days reserves of diesel and gasoline left. The main parts of its forces are immobile and are getting surrounded by Russian forces. Their situation is hopeless.
If you want to surrender all on your lonesome, go ahead...
“Linda Graham will volunteer.”
That’s what I am concerned about.
Of course, he’ll be volunteering our kids to go to war.
All to satisfy the bureaucratic state’s desire to effect regime change in Russia.
It would FAR better for Ukraine if I was President. I would have negotiated an end to the war the spared thousands of Ukrainian lives and left Ukraine access to the Black Sea.
Zelensky is leading Ukraine absolutely destruction because he's letting the Biden regime pull his puppet strings.
Would have worked great for us back when we were fighting the Germans and the Japanese - as long as you don’t mind a little slavery and maybe extermination.
Sure glad you never tried to get into the Marines.
1. The M777 howitzer is not the maintenance nightmare he describes. Any new weapon has a sorting out period where not-perfectly-designed parts break/wear out and they are reengineered and issued with the new mods. The M777 has proven itself in Iraq and if does have an 8-man crew, it's a slight reduction in the gun crew compared to its predecessor.
2. The M198 had an 11 man gun crew (counting the truck driver for the howitzer) and we needed ever darn one of those cannoneers. It weighed 7 1/2 tons and "hipshoots" were both tragic and funny at the same time: the crews would race around getting that beast emplaced and laid to be ready to fire and it took all of them to do it in less than 12 minutes. 12 minutes to fire the first round! As compared to our M101A1 105mm howitzer we could have off the truck and firing in 30 seconds!
3. There's more than the M777 and its employment in the training: US and NATO sighting systems use a 6400 mil circle and the Russians (and the Ukrainians) use a 6000 mil circle - so they have to learn a whole new fire control system to use it. I was once asked by a Russian artillery officer if "we could use the Russian systems if we got them" - and it was a trick questions to see if I really was an artillery officer or I was a spy - and I knew about their 6000 mil orienting system and told him so.. Passed that test and I was given a tour of the Artillery School in Perm as a reward - and I was present during their class graduation and I am in about a hundred photographs with a graduate on one side of me and his proud mother on the other side.
I think of those Russian kids and their moms and wish all to beat hell that Putin hadn't ordered them into Ukraine. It's a stupid, unnecessary war and a waste of Russian and Ukrainian lives.
I had a tour of the Bastogne battlefield in 1995 and the guide from the US Embassy remarked to me that it was "sad to see all those German graves at the cemetery". I told him that "if they all stayed in Germany, they'd have lived long lives".
It's moronic analogy. Those nations invaded other nations against their will.
The Russians are working with the people of Donbass, specifically of the armies of Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republic, to liberate Donbass of eight years of war, persecution and genocide at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis that have a burning hatred for ethnically Russian people in what used to be Ukraine.
The Azovs and Ukrainian nationalist have been using civilians as human shields in Donbass and killing them if they try to escape.
All that is why the Russian flag is going up in city after city in Donbass and local currency is being converted to rubles. This all happening with approval of the overwhelming majority.
The narrative you believe is a lie.
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