The artillery pieces we sent to Ukraine
are breaking down
Hot Air,
by
Jazz Shaw
Original Article
Posted By: Dreadnought,
11/28/2022 12:16:08 AM
The look and feel of the war in Ukraine has been changing in recent weeks. There are fewer pitched ground battles of “army versus army” and a lot more Russian shelling and Ukrainian air defense missiles being fired in response. We’ve already seen evidence that Russia is probably running out of missiles, but that doesn’t mean that Ukraine is in much better shape. The artillery shelling in both directions is running nearly 24/7 and all of that action eventually takes a toll on the equipment. It’s now being reported that of the roughly 350 howitzers that have been donated to Ukraine by western allies, fully one-third of them
Surely, Poland isn't repairing all those artillery pieces for nothing. Wonder who's paying for that?
10 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
mifla 11/28/2022 4:55:58 AM (No. 1343809)
Arms dealers throughout the world are anticipating a really great Christmas.
9 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
anniebc 11/28/2022 6:10:45 AM (No. 1343847)
They shouldn't complain since others are providing and paying for those failed artillery pieces and their repair.
4 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
5 handicap 11/28/2022 6:43:24 AM (No. 1343877)
D'ya suppose a little daily maintenance would help? How STUPID are these people? Stupid enough to hire Hunter? Surely not, no one is that stupid!
9 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
TCloud 11/28/2022 7:08:09 AM (No. 1343901)
*That which is simple is useful! That which is complicated is useless!* M. Kalashnikov
6 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Ashley Brenton 11/28/2022 7:38:38 AM (No. 1343919)
If our donated pieces are getting worn out, just imagine how badly off Russia's artillery pieces must be. Ukraine essentially received new stuff. Russian guns had already fired MANY rounds during peacetime training.
5 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Clinger 11/28/2022 7:54:43 AM (No. 1343928)
FTA: "The howitzers are being fired so often that the barrels are wearing out..." Of course they are. What would be newsworthy would be if the mean time between failure didn't meet expectations. If that's the case, that's the story. If that's not the case then the story is that we sent artillery without consumable support hardware like going to race at NASCAR race without bringing a change of tires.
11 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
LC Chihuahua 11/28/2022 8:54:35 AM (No. 1343971)
Quick! Send another 50 billion to Ukraine (minus ten percent for the Big Guy) so they can maintain their weapons.
Maybe both sides will reach a point where all they can lob are insults, and their face slapping contest will be over.
2 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
MickTurn 11/28/2022 9:38:01 AM (No. 1344042)
Remember your parachute is made and packed by the LOW BIDDER...same for everything else.
3 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
MDConservative 11/28/2022 10:58:27 AM (No. 1344119)
We sent used equipment to Ukraine, paid for with the money Biden and Congress sent, which ended up buying new stuff for American forces, plus paid off the middlemen. I bet we have more used stuff, and more money to pay ourselves for its transfer. Keep those shells flying!! We're defending FREEDOM!!!
1 person likes this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
DVC 11/28/2022 11:12:27 AM (No. 1344129)
These M777 howitzers were a new model, developed to lighten the gun a lot. The M777 weighs about 9,000 lbs where the earlier model weighed almost 16,000 lbs. Lots of titanium used in this system. And, this war is a far, far more intensive artillery fight than most recent wars.
The Russians have been firing 40,000 to 50,000 artillery shells per day in certain areas, and they are running short on artillery shells, going to North Korea for more. The Ukrainians have been reported to be firing 6,00 to 7,000 shells a day.
Here's the factor that most people have no idea of.......artillery barrels (know as "tubes") have a relatively short lifetime before accuracy degrades. And the rate of barrel wear depends very much on what range the artillery is firing at. If they are firing at maximum range, maximum powder charges are required, which wears the barrels much faster than short range fires. In the Ukrainian war, it seems that maximum range is necessary most of the time.
The US Marines have been reported to have "burned out" barrels on these same howitzers when they had intense fighting in Afghanistan, it is just what happens.
And ANY military weapon system has a finite service life, and requires periodic depot maintenance. This is nothing new or unusual.
The US Army manual requires an internal bore inspection at 1500 full charge equivalent firings, and if OK, it can go 500 more rounds, then requires a depot maintenance, likely a tube replacement.
A high intensity artillery campaign like this is very difficult to sustain. US industry is running now at nearly full production rates for artillery shells and is producing about 15,000 shells PER MONTH. Note that Ukraine is firing about 1/3 to 1/2 of a month's production IN A SINGLE DAY. Clearly unsustainable.
And the Russians have the same problem. They had "unlimited" artillery ammunition stockpiles at the war's start. With many large ammo dumps (thousands and thousands of shells) hit and blown up, and firing 40-50K shells per day over some periods has burned up a huge portion of their ammunition supply, and they are just like us.....do not have the industrial capacity to manufacture shells at even 10% of the rate that they are using them up.
Artillery use will necessarily be falling, Russian tubes wear out, too, and while they have a lot of howitzers in their storage....if they are in as good condition as their other vehicles were, many will be in bad shape when they are pulled out of storage and quickly fail. Corruption is extremely corrosive to an army, and 'pencil maintenance' allows the money for maintenance to be spent on vodka, women and dachas.
In WW 2 we had dozens of factories turning out artillery shells and rifle and machine gun ammunition in IMMENSE quantities, but we only have one small arms ammunition factory, here in KC metro area. I don't know how many artillery shell factories we have, but the production number reported is 15,000 rounds per month. That's 500 rounds per day, so eventually artillery will either fire much less frequently, or someone will be opening a bunch of new factories, both in the west and in Russia.
5 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
Nimby 11/28/2022 1:35:12 PM (No. 1344238)
They are probably selling the real ones to Russia
0 people like this.
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