Reports are coming in that the Ukrainians are already using the M777 155 howitzers on the battlefield to great success. They are seeing accuracy of 1 or 2 meters at 15 miles out. (The 152's currently in use only have a range of 10 miles.) Pretty impressive accuracy. The rounds they are using furnished by the allies have built in GPS.
"The Excalibur projectile uses a jam-resistant internal GPS receiver to update the inertial navigation system, providing precision in-flight guidance and dramatically improving accuracy to less than two meters miss distance regardless of range," ASC's website says.
Other news sources are saying that the Ukrainians are about to or already have driven the Russians out of artillery range of Kharkiv.
The accuracy and range of the M777 Howitzers combined with the i[mproved 155-millimeter rounds could be of major advantage to Ukrainian forces, who are already reportedly making territorial gains in the area around Kharkiv.
How Allied supplied drones are helping target Ukrainian artillery...
Targeting Data Has Seamless Journey to the Big Guns
Operators can both create a pre-programmed flight or change the flight maneuvers manually. It has anti-spin technology and anti-icing for those cold Ukrainian days. The internal hard drive stores coordinate that locate enemy targets. This data is piped down to the ground control stations, which in turn passes the information along to the artillery batteries. The remote video terminal handles all the imagery and footage. The craft is good for 300-missions before maintenance on the unmanned system is needed.
The success of FlyEye is another example of the Russians suffering at the hands of combat tools that are provided by NATO members. The Poles have a winner on their hands and have not been shy about sharing it with the Ukrainian military. The drone video, documenting when artillery fire hits paydirt, also works well to boost Ukrainian morale as they see Russian targets explode into fiery balls of wreckage.
So a drone pilot sees a target, sends the data directly to the 155, where it is instantly uploaded to the round, boom and the flyer is off, a few seconds later and 15 miles away, a Russian target is destroyed. We've come a long way since I was in back in the early 80's.
