Ukrainian Artillery Is About To Get A Lot More Accurate

Aerospace & Defense Ukrainian Artillery Is About To Get A Lot More Accurate David Axe Forbes Staff I write about ships, planes, tanks, drones, missiles and satellites. New! Follow this author to improve your content experience. Got it! Jun 28, 2022, 08:00am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Ukrainian defense ministry photo It’s official.

The United States has provided, or soon will provide, laser-guided artillery shells to the Ukrainian army. The 155-millimeter-diameter Excalibur shells, which home in on a spot of laser light and can strike enemy vehicles in forests, revetments and alleyways, could help the Ukrainians to chip away at the Russian army’s firepower advantage in Ukraine. An unnamed U.

S. Defense Department official confirmed the Excalibur provision in comments to reporters on Monday. “So as you know, we’re conducting training out of Ukraine and Germany and England,” the official said .

“And so, we’ve got everything from maintenance courses that we’re running, continuing to train on the employment of artillery systems, both HIMARS [rocket launchers] and howitzers. We’re working on Excalibur employment, and that’s our big stuff. ” Despite its high cost—$100,000 per shell—Excalibur is a natural fit for the Ukrainian army as it transitions to Western-style artillery.

The Ukrainians already are adept at using locally-made laser-guided shells with their existing, ex-Soviet guns. The Ukrainian army possesses at least one type of laser-guided shell: the 152-millimeter-diameter Kvitnyk, which is compatible with the army’s 2S3 self-propelled howitzers and D-20 towed guns. A Ukrainian firm also has developed a laser-guided 122-millimeter shell called Karasuk that works with the army’s D-30 towed guns and 2S1 tracked howitzers.

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A Bizarre Mix Of Local Jets Rose To Meet It. Any drone or spotter on the ground with a laser-designator can sparkle a target. Videos of Ukrainian artillery strikes on Russian forces clearly illustrate the effectiveness of the precision shells.

Standard practice for unguided artillery is to fire a few inaccurate ranging shots then “walk” your fire toward the target as a spotter on the ground or in the air corrects your coordinates. Whenever you see a single shell strike a small target without any correction, however, there’s a good chance the shell was guided by a laser. In some videos of the fighting in Ukraine, the laser sparkle actually is visible in the seconds before a shell explodes.

The Ukrainian army steadily is inducting hundreds of new artillery pieces that its foreign allies have donated. Most of the new guns, including the 126 M-777 howitzers the United States has pledged, fire 155-millimeter shells. M-777s with the right equipment are compatible with Excalibur.

The combination of new guns and new shells could help the Ukrainians to mitigate the 10-to-one artillery advantage the Russians possess in eastern Ukraine. The Russian army has its own guided shells, but most of the time the Russians simply lob lots of rounds inaccurately—and count on raw rate-of-fire to compensate for a lack of power and precision. The Ukrainian army doesn’t have enough guns or ammunition to match the Russian army shell for shell.

But the Ukrainians in theory could achieve the same, or better, results by directing a small number of more powerful—or more accurate—shells to achieve hits at the same, or better, rate that the Russians can do with their own, less individually-potent artillery. “New shells are more effective than their Soviet equivalents, and hence their consumption is lower,” Ukrainian defense minister Oleksii Reznikov explained. New guided shells are even more effective.

The Russians might be able to fire 10 shells for every one the Ukrainians fire. But they’re not necessarily likely to get more hits once the Ukrainians have Excaliburs. Follow me on Twitter .

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