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Ukraine forces demonstrate to England the AS90 self propelled howitizers they retired because they were "obsolete" are in fact clearly NOT obsolete (www.thetimes.com)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz to c/ukraine@sopuli.xyz

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In May the British Army retired its 89 AS90s, handing them all over to Ukraine. The Third Assault Brigade received at least 12, replacing their Soviet-era 2S19 Msta-S. They are pleased with their new weapon.

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“When the enemy begins pushing toward our infantry, we engage to stop them from even getting close,” Skrypa said. “I had a situation where about 30 [Russians] started gathering in a tree line, preparing to attack our guys — storm troopers. But they didn’t make it. We fired several shells, and that was it, none of them wanted to come back.”

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Initially the UK planned to send only 30 [AS90] howitzers, which were transferred in January 2023. Yet the Ukrainian crews have proved so capable they were gifted all of them. The artillery systems, designed in the 1990s, were retired by the British Army because of their age and their lumbering lack of mobility for the modern battlefield. But they are still proving their worth in Ukraine and have become a high priority target for Russian drones designed in 2025.

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[-] Carrolade@lemmy.world 44 points 4 days ago

More that "obsolete" doesn't mean useless. It just means its unable to adequately fulfill all the roles in all of the potential situations that the British may want for their arty. It can still perform a lot though.

Plenty of obsolete things can still be very useful.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I don't understand how you can be in charge of one of the most powerful expeditionary militaries in the world and conclude you don't need an armored, tracked self-propelled 155mm howitizer from what you see happening in Ukraine. They are either misguided or they are quietly figuring out how to procure more 155mm self propelled tracked howitzers medium term (either way I am happy for Ukraine). There is no third option of "they have correctly realized they don't need them anymore" it makes no sense honestly. Wheeled artillery is superior in many cases but it is also predictable in ways tracked artillery isn't (vice versa too).

Edit it looks like they are looking to procure more 155mm cannon self propelled artillery such as the Archer and RCH 155 so nvm, they still realize the value of them, at least wheeled cannon artillery but I think now more then ever you need tracked AND wheeled 155mm artillery working together to keep enemy counter artillery assets guessing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCH_155

A lot of use of tracked, armored cannon artillery like the M109 paladin in Ukraine is in entrenched firing positions, and in this role tracked armored artillery has vital advantages over wheeled artillery (tracks beat tires for mud) and towed artillery (a m109 is a towed howitizer surrounded with protective mobile armor from chemical weapons, shrapnel, fpv drones and small arms fire).

[-] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I don't understand how you can be in charge of one of the most powerful expeditionary militaries in the world and conclude you don't need an armored, tracked self-propelled 155mm howitizer from what you see happening in Ukraine.

You got it the wrong way around. The UK didn't scrap them and then give them away.

The AS90 was supposed to stick around till the 2030s, and when the Ukraine war kicked off, the UK donated their active materiel to Ukraine. They did it specifically because that's the kind of equipment that's needed.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

The tone of the article makes it seem like they were retired because they weren't considered useful, if that was an intentional medium term procurement decision by the UK great that is genuinely awesome and very smart I just don't understand why this information was presented with such a warped framework then by the article. From the perspective you are arguing for the UK is giving Ukraine some of their most powerful artillery with the intention of using the knowledge gained in the Ukraine war and elsewhere to build a next generation weapons system that builds on the success of systems like the AS90. Presumably Ukraine will be involved with that next generation self propelled howitzer development as well at least to some capacity.

The RCH 155 being an obvious touchstone here though I would reiterate that I think threats to artillery are so thorough and deadly on the modern battlefield that tracked and wheeled self propelled artillery are necessary to deploy in tandem to reduce predictability for enemy assets hunting friendly artillery.

I am not trying to nitpick, I appreciate your input I am just trying to explain how backwards the spin is on everything around this, it is disorienting. The article devolves into a fear of drone attacks, which is obviously very deadly, very real and very common but ultimately I think from an editorial perspective these narratives about artillery are strangely ignorant about how much force is exchanged with artillery fire on the frontlines and how the vigorousness with which drones are hunting the artillery are a reflection of how much the enemy desperately needs to destroy them.

[-] Carrolade@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago

Prior to the recent decade, peer on peer warfare was considered pretty unlikely overall, where COIN was the big thing everyone was worried about.

Here in the US anyway. I'm not sure what priorities the British have and how much budget they have to throw at them.

[-] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

The only reason these weapon systems weren't thrown in the dumpster by the US during that era was the military-industrial complex/professional military apparatus of the US military understood that this was a distraction and that one could learn very much the wrong lessons from fighting a series of counter-insurgency wars and become utterly unprepared for a near-peer conflict.

Essentially during the entire Iraq and Afghanistan wars this justification was constantly used as a bludgeon to justify more and more military spending for extremely advanced weapon systems that had no actual use against guerrila fighters with ak47s, rpgs and IEDs which was infuriating watching happen as a leftist.

My point is the US was in a similar position and chose to retain the M109 paladin as an essential part of its landwar system (to be replaced by something similar eventually) and I think that was a wise choice, Britain made a mistake here and they will eventually backtrack shrugs but whatever there will be plenty of M109s in WW3 and WW4 probably...

I am not arguing for increased military spending, I am just talking about what you practically need to stop a landwar in a modern near-peer conflict.

[-] bluGill@fedia.io 3 points 4 days ago

The us has enough airplanes that we think we can use bombs to do most of what artillary does for russia. the us does have artillary but not much because it is thought the role is limited.

ukraine doesn't have as many airplanes as the us does and so is useing artillary for things the us would use a bomb. either will do the job for most tasks.

if you are any country other than the us you don't have enough airplanes - but nato can probably count on the us should they need them. The rest need to learn the artillary lesson.