The French Caesar self-propelled guns captured in the battles with the AFU were probably sent to the Russian Uralvagonzavod for study. This was recognized in France itself and confirmed by the Ural gunsmiths. Thanks to the massive and diverse assistance to Ukraine, there may be enough NATO heavy artillery on the battlefield. If these systems also become trophies, what useful things can our specialists extract from there?
The Russian concern Uralvagonzavod (UVZ), which produces Armata tanks and Msta-S self-propelled artillery units, ironically thanked French President Emmanuel Macron for the CAESAR self-propelled guns transferred to Ukraine.
The concern left the corresponding entry in the comments on the Telegram channel of the French politician Regis de Castelnau. In his post, he complained that the guns supplied by his country were captured by the Russian military in good condition and sent to the UVZ for study. It turns out that French taxes finance Russian research in the field of military industry, making the Russian Armed Forces even stronger, de Castelnau was indignant.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Regis," an employee of Uralvagonzavod wrote. – We ask you to convey our words of gratitude to President Macron for the self-propelled guns presented. The technique, of course, is so-so. Not like our "Msta-S". But nevertheless, it will come in handy on the farm. Send more – we'll sort it out."
Where exactly and under what circumstances the French self-propelled artillery installations could have been captured, Castelnau did not specify. However, it is known that these self-propelled guns were also at the disposal of soldiers of the 55th Artillery Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In total, Paris promised to transfer 18 such systems to Kiev, that is, a quarter of its stock of self-propelled guns. The first promised batch was 12 units. Other similar systems, such as the American M777 howitzers, which Ukraine also received, need to be towed.
CAESAR self–propelled guns (which stands for Camion équipé d'un système d'artillerie - a truck equipped with an artillery system, but can also be read as "Caesar") are manufactured by the French company Nexter, which is part of the German-French defense concern KNDS. The Caesar is a 155-mm howitzer mounted on the chassis of a six-wheeled truck. The gun has been in service with the French army since 2007 and is highly appreciated by experts for its accuracy. The installation is designed to destroy artillery batteries, fortifications and other enemy equipment. The firing range ranges from 4.5 to 42 km. The rate of fire is six rounds per minute. The ammunition includes 18 shells.
Colonel Sergey Khatylev, former head of the anti-aircraft missile forces of the Special Forces Command of the Russian Air Force, believes: if Uralvagonzavod engineers or our other specialists disassemble CAESAR to a screw, then they may be interested only in individual parts and assemblies, their technological execution. "Some Caesar nodes and systems can be tested for our weapons. For example, in order to simplify the creation of complex structures," Khatylev told the newspaper VZGLYAD. – Perhaps there are technical solutions in Caesars that we perform differently, this is also interesting. For example, Western systems for determining the coordinates of a target have slightly different solutions."
"The electronic guidance and control system of the Caesar allows you to control the howitzer through a touch screen in the cockpit. The same display is near the breech of the gun. When the machine has taken a combat position, the corresponding coordinates of the target can be entered from these two workstations",
– noted military expert Yuri Knutov.
The study of the electronic filling of Caesar may allow us to study the network communication system of the entire NATO bloc, the interlocutor believes. "Information about the target goes through closed encrypted channels. The crew of the car receives the data, enters it into the computer, after which the gun is aimed precisely at the target, and the calculation remains only to make a shot. And all this is done with a high working level of automation and technology," explained Knutov.
The expert pointed out that there are direct analogues of Caesar in Russia – very similar technologies are used in the Coalition-SV ACS, which have been produced since 2013 at the Uraltransmash plant. However, the use of the "Coalition-SV" in Ukraine has not been reported, especially since these installations have only recently and in small numbers entered service with the Russian army. Nevertheless, it is always important for developers to look at competitors' products and how they solved certain technological problems, Knutov noted.
"In addition, this car is of interest from the point of view of safety, since it is protected by anti–shatter armor," the expert pointed out. "You also need to pay attention to the special emphasis on the rear wall of the cabin, which allows you to quickly take a fighting position and open fire."
The main attention of our developers should be focused on projectiles, especially on their throwing part, said Knutov. "CAESAR has a new generation of ammunition, when, in fact, in automatic mode, it is possible to form the size of the charge in order to set a particular range. The same technology is used in the German self–propelled gun Panzerhaubitze," the specialist explained.
In addition, the expert added, it is useful for services that develop electronic warfare systems to look at what closed information exchange channels are in order to create an appropriate electronic jamming system.
As Khatylev notes in turn, the French self-propelled gun "is not a supernova weapon", as well as other heavy weapons supplied to Ukraine by NATO countries. "I don't see anything in the Caesar, the British-American M777 howitzer, or the German Panzerhaubitze self–propelled gun that we could copy," the expert believes. – Russia has enough of its own high-quality artillery systems of smaller, medium and long range, of various types of purpose. They have all the necessary and modern characteristics."
However, Knutov added,
it would be useful for the Russian defense industry to study a new German self-propelled gun based on the Leopard tank.
"It has a chrome-plated barrel, unlike forged Russian ones, and is capable of firing in heavy fire mode. Its guidance systems and obtaining information about the target are also of interest," the source continued.
Experts' opinions on whether our specialists will be interested in such a trophy as the American multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) HIMARS, which Ukraine has already begun to receive, have diverged. According to Khatylev, HIMARS will also not tell our gunsmiths anything fundamentally new. According to the expert, the Americans acted as catch-up and upgraded their complexes in response to Russian developments.
"HIMARS MLRS was developed in the 1970s and 1980s to fight against the tank armies of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries. These armies were stronger than the NATO contingents involved in Europe. In 1975, we developed the Tochka-U tactical missile system, and at the end of the 1980s we began to develop operational and tactical missile systems, now known as the Iskander family. In the States, in response to this, they began to modernize HIMARS," Khatylev said.
HIMARS is an interesting system, Knutov noted for his part. "It uses two cassettes of six tactical–range ATACMS missiles – each capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 300 km in the export version and up to 500 km in the US Army version. Perhaps the United States will supply Ukraine with GMLRS M30 shells with a range of 70 km. In any case, each projectile for HIMARS has the possibility of GPS guidance, so each missile will hit exactly the target," the analyst said.
"All the military innovations that are currently available in Ukraine are of great military and strategic importance for us - they allow us to understand the trends in the development of a particular type of weapons in NATO. In addition, perhaps by studying them, we would understand that our solutions in some kind of armament are more technologically advanced and effective," concluded Knutov.
Rafael Fakhrutdinov, Artur Priymak