Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

The U.S. and other countries are sending M777 155mm howitzers to Ukraine.

American M777 howitzers could prove a major factor in turning the tide against Russian forces in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine thanks to their precision and power.

The howitzers are field artillery pieces that Ukrainian forces are already using to shell the Russians and represent an improvement on the equipment that the country’s military previously had.

The U.S. has begun sending 90 M777 Howitzers, while Australia is sending six and Canada is providing four. The M777s are the towed howitzers currently used by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. They have a maximum range of 15 miles and require a crew of eight to 10 people.

Illia Ponomarenko, a defense reporter with The Kyiv Independent, tweeted on Tuesday: “M777s are already in Donbas, engaging Russian lines – confirmed!”

Snip.

The M777 Howitzers generally fire precision-guided Excalibur rounds that use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to home in on targets and it is expected that Ukraine will have been provided with these rounds. Canada was reportedly providing Excalibur shells, according to an AFP report on April 25.

Here’s more background on the M777:

A few brief takeaways:

Using aluminum and titanium, they weigh half what the M198 they’re replacing weighed. This means they’re fare more air-portable (at least for the U.S., slung from an Osprey).

Each costs about $4 million.

Contrary to the article above, the video asserts they only need a crew of five.

Fires seven rounds a minute.

Excalibur shells cost about $70,000 each. Pricey, but way cheaper than a Tomahawk cruise missile.

Here’s a “heavy on dramatic music but light on details” video of an Excalibur round hitting a target 65 klicks away.

Did Ukraine use their new American-gifted, GPS-guided howitzer shell to take out a Russian general? Peter Zeihan (yep, him again) makes this case in this short video:

Some of Zeihan’s analysis seems a little bit out there, but this one seems right on the cutting edge of plausibility, as we’re now able to do with artillery shells what once took guided missiles or smart bombs. But I don’t think Americans necessarily had to be involved in the targeting. It’s entirely possible that good signals intelligence pinpointed his location, or even just honed in a promising Russian communication cluster and hit General Valery Gerasimov as a stroke of good luck. Also, I should point out that Gerasimov’s death has not yet been confirmed.

But yes, it’s quite plausible that we and/or Ukraine can pinpoint the locations of Russian generals in theater and drop precision munitions on their heads from 25 miles away…

Tags: artillery, M777, M982 Excalibur, Military, Peter Zeihan, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukraine, Valery Gerasimov, video

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 11th, 2022 at 7:55 PM and is filed under Foreign Policy, Military, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.