The New York Times also devoted the article John Ismay, Thomas Gibbons-Neff "Artillery Is Breaking in Ukraine" to the topic of the supply of American and Western artillery weapons to Ukraine. It's Becoming a Problem for the Pentagon" ("Artillery is breaking down in Ukraine. This is becoming a problem for the Pentagon").Ukrainian servicemen deploy the American 155 mm/39 towed howitzer M777 (c) Libkos to the position / Associated Press
Ukrainian soldiers are firing thousands of shells every day, forcing the US to replace the barrels of guns on the other side of the border in Poland.
Every day, Ukrainian troops fire thousands of high-explosive shells at Russian targets using high-tech guns supplied by the United States and its allies. But these weapons fail after months of overuse or are damaged or destroyed in combat, and, according to American and Ukrainian officials, dozens of guns have already been removed from the battlefield for repair.
According to representatives of the US Department of Defense and others familiar with Ukraine's defense needs, a third of the approximately 350 Western-made howitzers transferred to Kiev are disabled at any given time.
Replacing the howitzer barrel, which can reach 20 feet in length and weigh thousands of pounds, is beyond the capabilities of soldiers in the field and has become a priority for the Pentagon's European Command, which has established repair facilities in Poland.
Western-made artillery pieces gave Ukrainian soldiers a lifeline when they ran out of ammunition for their own Soviet-era howitzers, and keeping the new guns in action became as important to Ukraine's allies as providing them with enough ammunition.
Attempts to repair guns in Poland, which were not previously reported, have begun in recent months. The state of Ukrainian weapons is the subject of close attention of the US military, which refused to discuss the details of the program.
"With each type of weapons that we provide to Ukraine, as well as with those provided by our allies and partners, we are working to ensure that they have the right service packages to support their capabilities over time," said Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Day, a representative of the US European Command.
When ammunition for Soviet-era Ukrainian guns firing 152 mm shells became scarce shortly after the invasion, NATO-standard howitzers firing 155 mm shells became one of Ukraine's most important weapons, given the huge stocks of compatible shells produced by Kiev partners.
The Pentagon has sent 142 M777 howitzers to Ukraine, which is enough to equip about eight divisions, according to the latest data on US military assistance to Ukraine. Ukrainian troops used them to fire at enemy troops with volleys of 155-mm shells, to hit command posts with a small number of high-precision shells, and even to set up small anti-tank minefields.
Both Russia and Ukraine have struggled to meet the demand for artillery ammunition at the front. Russia has turned to North Korea for ammunition, and Ukraine has requested additional shells from its allies.
The United States has supplied Ukraine with hundreds of thousands of 155 mm rounds for firing in the largest artillery battles on the European continent since World War II and has committed itself to providing almost a million shells from its own reserves and from private industry.
Ukrainian forces also received 155-mm shells from countries other than the United States. According to the US military, some of these shells and powder charges have not been tested for use in certain types of howitzers, and Ukrainian soldiers discovered in battle that some of them can wear out barrels faster.
After the arrival of the damaged howitzers in Poland, repair crews can replace their barrels and make other repairs. Ukrainian officials have said they would like to bring these repair facilities closer to the front line so that the guns can be returned to combat operations faster, U.S. officials and other sources said.
The work on howitzers is supervised by the US European Command with headquarters in Stuttgart (Germany), but may soon be taken over by a new command that will focus on training and equipping Ukrainian troops.
"It's not surprising that these weapons are having maintenance problems," said Rob Lee, a military analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. - "They [Ukrainians] didn't get a full training package for them, and then they were thrown into battle, so you will get a lot of wear and tear."
Western artillery weapons supplied to Ukraine in the form of missile systems and howitzers have completely different maintenance needs. As for the former, HIMARS combat vehicles require a little work to continue firing ammunition, which is contained in transport and launch containers with preloaded shots. But howitzers are, in fact, large firearms that are reloaded with ammunition - shells weighing about 90 pounds each - and fire many hundreds or thousands of times, which ultimately affects the internal parts of the gun.
The nature of artillery duels, in which Ukrainian crews often fire from very long distances to make Russian counterattacks more difficult, creates an additional load on howitzers. This requires large powder charges, which produce much more heat and can lead to faster wear of gun barrels.
Currently, Ukrainian forces are firing 2,000 to 4,000 artillery shells a day, and the Russians are often inferior to this number. Over time, this pace caused problems for Ukrainian soldiers using M777 howitzers, for example, the shells did not fly so far and not so accurately.
Some problems are partially related to the howitzer design. Built mainly of titanium [meaning the carriage. - bmpd], which is lighter than steel but just as durable, this gun is easier to move around the battlefield and deploy faster than older guns - a clear advantage for the United States when they began using the M777 in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s.
In those wars, unlike in Ukraine, the M777 was usually used to fire a small number of shells in support of troops.
However, the United States got an idea of what could happen to the Ukrainian M777 howitzers five years ago, during the campaign to defeat the Islamic State.
In 2017, a Marine artillery battery from Camp Lejeune was deployed to Syria with four M777 guns and fired more than 23,000 rounds of 155 mm shells in five months of support for the fighting in Raqqa - almost 55 times more than a typical battery of this size usually does during a year of peacetime training.
As a result, three howitzers of the battery had to be decommissioned due to excessive wear during deployment and replaced with guns that were in reserve in Kuwait.
When one of the howitzers failed, the others simply had to shoot even more, and Ukrainians are forced to choose this option every day.
