The Ukrainian army is forced to urgently replace American M777 howitzers with Soviet models. The reason for this is the successful actions of Russian Lancet drones.
According to RT, only in February this year, two brigades of the Ukrainian army lost at least five M777 howitzers in the direction of Kupyansky. It is reported that two weapons equipped with a steel mesh to protect against drones were destroyed with ammunition by the Lancet which was dragging ammunition to positions between the settlements of Tabaevka and Peschanoe in the Kharkiv region.
Three more howitzers were attacked by “lancets” in the Kurilovka and Peschanoye region, 5 km from the Kupyansk-Uzlovaya station. At the same time, it is argued that such successful actions of Russian drones are associated with a new tactic for their use. Now artillery crews are attacked from the rear.
Due to the shortage of working foreign-made howitzers and increased Lancet activity in the direction of Kupyansk, units of the 40th Artillery and 92nd Mechanized Brigades were forced to switch to old Soviet guns : 122 mm M – 30 guns of the 1938 model, as well as Croatian field howitzers of M – 46 caliber, delivered to Ukraine in August 2022
– signals the RT channel.
Weapons are urgently transferred to the direction of Kupyansk from the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. However, even after the transfer, it is not possible to start shooting immediately. The fact is that many trunks are in a terrible technical condition. And the APU has few shells that can be fired from old Soviet guns.
As the RT channel clarifies, a significant part of the 122 mm caliber shells for the M-30 guns, with which the gunners of the Armed Forces of Ukraine replace the knocked out M777, belongs to the third and fourth categories of validity. The use of these ammunition carries a high risk of failure of the charge or its untimely detonation during firing.
