Ukraine’s biggest guns are firing American shells. That’s good news for Ukraine’s war effort—in particular, its three-week old southern counteroffensive. The outcome could hinge on whether Ukrainian artillery can fire without pause.
Photos that circulated online last week depict the crew of a Ukrainian army 2S7 Pion self-propelled howitzer handling 203-millimeter shells sporting American markings. It’s a big deal—literally. The 1970s-vintage 2S7 is the largest-caliber howitzer on either side of Russia’s 16-month-old wider war on Ukraine.
But a gun, even a really big one, is only as good as its ammunition. With a steady supply of American-made rounds, Ukrainian gunners can fire faster, farther and more accurately than they could do with old Soviet-made rounds.
The 2S7 is a dinosaur, but one whose era has come back around. Soviet industry developed the 50-ton tracked gun in the early 1970s. It entered service at a time when 203-millimeter howitzers, inspired by classic British guns of the same caliber, were falling out of favor with many armies.
The U.S. Army retired its last 203-millimeter artillery pieces in 1994 and replaced them with more reliable 155-millimeter guns and rocket-launchers.
The Ukrainian army inherited around a hundred 2S7s from the Soviet army when the USSR collapsed in 1991. Kyiv sold around 20 of them. The rest of the big guns went into storage as the Ukrainian army standardized on 122-millimeter and 152-millimeter howitzers.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 changed all that. The Ukrainians opened up dusty warehouses all over the country and dragged out a lot of old weapons. That process accelerated when Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022.
The Ukrainian army initially recovered just a dozen or so 2S7s. These howitzers, cued by forward observers and even the occasional phone call from a patriotic civilian glimpsing passing Russian troops, helped to defend Kyiv in the first six weeks of the wider war.
Technicians meanwhile were restoring many, or all, of the 70 or so 2S7s that still were in storage before the wider war. Today the Ukrainian army’s powerful 43rd Artillery Brigade operates all of Ukraine’s old Pions—and cues them with drones.
A 2S7 fires a 220-pound shell as far as 23 miles under ideal conditions. It doesn’t fire fast, however—just one or two rounds per minute as the 14-person crew hauls shells from a support vehicle and loads them four at a time via a hydraulic arm.
Still, the relentless demand for fire support from front-line battalions means a 2S7 battery might shoot for hours at a time, pausing only to relocate the guns in order to dodge counterbattery fire. According to the Ukrainian defense industry, each 2S7 that defended Kyiv in early 2022 fired around 50 shells per day.
Over the next year of hard fighting, the Ukrainians lost at least four 2S7s and captured one 2S7 from the Russians. Today the 43rd Artillery Brigade might have as many as 75 2S7s. It’s not inconceivable they’ve fired tens of thousands of shells.
Ukrainian industry produces 122-millimeter and 152-millimeter shells but it apparently doesn’t produce 203-millimeter shells. Luckily for Ukraine, U.S.-made ammunition works just fine with a 2S7 owing to the common British roots of both American and Soviet 203-millimeter howitzers.
The United States so far has pledged to Ukraine 10,000 203-millimeter rounds. They not only keep the 2s7s in action, they might also boost the guns’ accuracy and range. That’s because American-made shells tend to have cleaner, more potent black-powder charges than Soviet-made shells do.
Ukraine needs every gun and shell it can get right now. Ukrainian brigades are attacking along several axes in southern and eastern Ukraine—and the pace of their advances often depends on the intensity and consistency of their fire support.
It’s a happy accident that Ukraine has so many ex-Soviet 2S7s. But it’s a matter of U.S. policy that it also has access to potentially large stocks of American-made rounds for the big guns.
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