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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of trying to destroy the Donbas and all who live there. “The constant brutal bombardments, the constant Russian strikes on infrastructure and residential areas show that Russia wants to empty this territory of all people. Therefore, the defence of our land, the defence of our people, is literally a fight for life,” he said late Friday in his nightly video address to the nation.

The Australian government has responded to appeals by the Ukrainian Ambassador to Australia for providing heavy artillery weapons to the Ukrainian Armed Forces as the war intensifies in Donbas. “We need some heavy weaponry – we need jets, we need tanks, we need productive vehicles, we need heavy artillery, we need offensive weapons. We need some real stuff,” said the Ukrainian Ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, during an event hosted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) on April 26. “We are there in the trenches for your people basically – because if we fall, the consequences we’re going...

"More than half" of the howitzers the United States has designated to go to Ukraine have arrived as of Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. The U.S.'s military assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded Feb. 24 includes 90 155 mm howitzers, large artillery guns that are operated by a team of about 10 people; 72 tactical vehicles to tow the howitzers; and 183,000 155 mm artillery rounds. “Without giving whole numbers, more than half of those howitzers are in Ukraine,” Kirby said during Wednesday’s briefing. He also said the first group of Ukrainian officers to be trained on the howitzers,...

When will the guerilla war against Russian occupation start? Will the Ukrainian Govt retreat to Lviv? Will Russia invade western Ukraine too? Two weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, and still no ‘decapitation’ of the Ukrainian government, no city captured except Kherson (which no non-Ukrainian had ever heard of before the war), and maybe 2,000 military dead on each side. It’s not exactly a stalemate, since the Russians have more tanks, more artillery and more air power, and they have not yet used them as aggressively as they might. So, we can use this (relative) pause in the fighting to examine...

The bomb squad was called to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital on Thursday (December 2), after a patient was admitted with a mortar shell stuck in his rectum. Troops from 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment rushed to the Gloucester hospital after being notified by police "that a patient had presented with a munition in his rectum."

The US Army fired its atomic cannon for the first and last time 68 years ago. The cannon, initially named "Able Annie," was later renamed "Atomic Annie." During the May 25, 1953 test, the cannon fired a nuclear shell that unleashed a 15-kiloton blast. The US Army successfully test-fired an atomic cannon exactly 68 years ago Tuesday. It was the first and only time the US military ever fired a nuclear weapon from a conventional cannon, according to the Army.

VICTORIA -- A Canadian army gunner is facing more than a dozen charges after she allegedly served cannabis-laced cupcakes to her unsuspecting artillery unit during a live-fire exercise. Court documents allege a sudden onset of paranoia, fatigue and confusion among the troops who ate the cupcakes, unaware of their psychoactive contents. "Several affected members were allegedly unable to properly execute safe weapons and explosive handling drills," according to a military judge’s summary of the charges. The incident marks the first time that a Canadian Armed Forces member has been charged with administering marijuana to colleagues without their consent, according to...

An outsized and upgraded cannon spat shells a distance of 40 miles over the Arizona desert Friday, reaching almost three times as far as its previous incarnation. The army is scrambling to boost the range of its missiles and artillery as the number one modernization priority.That program includes an upgrade to a tank-like howitzer, the Extended Range Cannon Artillery, with three times the range and an autoloader, able to launch one round every 6-10 seconds.On March 6, the prototype, with its unwieldy-looking gun, successfully fired two different types of artillery 40 miles during a demonstration at the Yuma testing range...

Leaked images of the U.S. Army’s new super gun have emerged on social media, showing for the first time the mysterious new weapon with a claimed range of over 1,000 miles. The Strategic Long Range Cannon (SLRC) is designed to be transported by truck, handled by a crew of eight, and rain shells down on enemy positions across continents and oceans.

U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground conducts developmental testing of multiple facets of the Extended Range Cannon Artillery project, from artillery shells to the longer cannon tube and larger firing chamber the improved howitzer will need to accommodate them on November 18, 2018 (U.S. Army photo)The future of Army long-range precision officially has a name. The Army confirmed on Monday that it plan on designating the Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) program's brand new 155mm self-propelled howitzer as the M1299, Army Recognition reports. Developed in response to increasing concerns of near-peer adversaries like Russia and China, the ERCA gun nailed targets...

The U.S. Army Field artillery going back again to manual methods of fire direction and gunnery after lessons of Russian intervention in Ukraine. The U.S. Army has not had to contend with electronic warfare during the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the conflict in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region showed an increase of electronic attack threat levels. With the growing threat of cyberattacks, the U.S. Army Field Artillery School has placed a renewed emphasis on learning manual methods. “Bringing back the charts is a big deal,” said Staff Sgt. Chad Payne, an instructor for the 13J fire control specialist...

Cersei Lannister needs some anti-dragon air defenses, so the twisted mind of Qyburn has dreamed up a double-bowed monstrosity. In season 7, he tests it on an ancient dragon skull (which would be like firing an AR-15 through King Tut's sarcophagus), and in season 8—it appears he's made a few more. But Cersei's high powered anti-dragon weapon is much more than just fantasy. In human history, this old-school Godzilla-sized crossbow goes by a different name—a ballista. This kind of catapult uses a pair of bent bow springs to store and release energy. Sure, it works well enough to put a...

The emerging security environment, marked by an intensifying technological competition among the major powers as well as the proliferation of advanced of military hardware, is leading to future battlefields that will be faster paced and highly lethal. Units that stay in one place too long are toast. The Army Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, has observed that “if you stay in one place for longer than two or three hours, you will be dead.” General Milley was an optimist. The Russian Army has developed a sophisticated indirect fires capability that employs electronic warfare and unmanned aircraft systems for reconnaissance...

An image out of an arms manufacturer’s corporate calendar, posted earlier this week, offers a first glimpse at the finalized design of the Russian Air Force's new 2S42 “Lotos” self-propelled artillery gun. The depiction comes from the official “Central Scientific - Research Institute for Precision Machine Engineering” (TsNIITochMash) Instagram profile, accompanied by a descriptive quote from its head artillery engineer Dmitry Melikhov. Lotos is shown on the August page, likely in recognition of August 2 as being national “Airborne Forces Day” and August 12 as national “Air Force Day” in Russia. The design closely resembles a previous scale model displayed...

South Korea proposed that North Korea move its long-range artillery away from the heavily fortified border in an effort to reduce tensions during last week's rare cross-border military talks, government sources here said Sunday. "We conveyed our position to the North that in light of consultations between the North and the United States over the denuclearization issue, we have to craft measures to drastically reduce military tensions by removing practical threats,"............. "I understand that (the South) suggested moving the North's artillery that threatens the Seoul metropolitan area to rear areas so as to actively implement the Panmunjom Declaration," the source...

The Army is fast-tracking an emerging program to engineer a longer-range artillery cannon able to out range enemy ground forces by hitting targets at more than twice the distance of existing artillery. The service is now prototyping an Extended Range Cannon Artillery weapons with a larger caliber tube and new grooves to hang weights for gravity adjustments to the weapon – which is a modified M777A2 mobile howitzer. Existing 155m artillery rounds, fired with precision from mobile and self-propelled howitzer platforms, have a maximum range of about 30km; the new ERCA weapon is designed to hit ranges greater than 70km,...

Israeli Military Industries Systems, or IMI Systems, in cooperation with Israel Aerospace Industries, abbreviated IAI, is close to finishing development of a new air-launched, precision-guided, high-speed weapon called Rampage that can hit targets more than 90 miles away. The announcement comes as Israel steps up its cross-border campaign against Iran and its interests in neighboring Syria, which has seen an increasing emphasis on stand-off capabilities given the complex air defense environment in that country, but the weapon could also be especially attractive to a number of foreign military forces. The two Israeli state-run companies officially unveiled the new weapon in...

Konstrukta photos When the DANA began rolling off Czechoslovakian assembly lines in the late 1970s, there wasn’t much else like it. The enormous, 152-millimeter self-propelled howitzer had eight road wheels instead of tracks. Most mobile artillery pieces at that time were tracked, like tanks, and the DANA was the first gun its of its size to roll on wheels — while carrying an innovative auto-reloading mechanism for the cannon. The Czechoslovak People’s Army wanted the DANA so it wouldn’t have to rely as much on the Soviet industry for its needs — and the wheels made for a speedy and...

The Russian Ground Forces have taken delivery of the first batch of modernized 2C4 Tulip self-propelled 240-millimeter mortars. The 1960s-era weapons were upgraded with new datalinks, communications gear and fire control systems. Russia eventually hopes to modernize all 500 of the vehicles it has in storage. “In the course of deep modernization, modern control and communication facilities are installed in the combat vehicles,” reads a Russian Ministry of Defense statement.

The U.S. Army is rushing ahead with its project to develop a new light tank to give infantry brigades extra firepower, especially against a near-peer opponent such as Russia. In the past, though, developing a vehicle that is both lighter than a traditional main battle tank and still survivable and useful on a modern battlefield has proven to be a difficult proposition. The Army plans to send out a final, formal request for proposals for the program, known as Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF), to interested defense contractors in November 2017. The service then hopes to power through the contracting process...