When the ground is frozen and you have to complete that fire support mission: Ukrainian soldiers fire their M777 155mm howitzer without being able to properly emplace it.

17 comments

1. When you take your artillery for a walk..

2. M777 being a little fidgety… “*I’m scooting outta here – not sticking around for counter-arty!*”

3. wouldn’t that affect the distance/accuracy by redistributing some of the kinetic energy?

4. Damn, would this be an issue with accuracy?

5. Is there no solution for this?

6. Taking “shoot and scoot” to heart.

7. Holy recoil

8. Reminds me of a dog with a dingleberry.

9. Dig. It’s your job private

10. Pour diesel or gasoline where you want to entrench the spades, light the flammable liquid and thaw the ground.

11. You would think they would have devise a solution for frozen ground, like, fire a shot that puts pegs into the ground or screws or something.

12. Pick axe and shovel should do the trick.

13. mobile artillery ???

14. So apparently these things have a mass of 4,100kg.

    For that much mass to go skidding backwards like that really gives a good visual of just how much ass is behind those shells.

15. This is from last year as I remember seeing this then.

    There is no excuse to fire that piece without securing it properly. It all comes down to training and tools. The finnish field artillery is trained to dig into frozen ground in relatively rapid pacing.

    Picks, mattocks, jackhammers etc. Whatever it takes to get it into position. And as it clearly is in the open, start a fire on top of the spots. You are already exposed as hell so there’s no downside.

    This kinda action is an example of not understanding that there’s never such a hurry where you risk your equipment and men’s safety. They got lucky it didn’t decide to flip itself on the side, or break anything on it.

    Also there should never be a situation where your stationary guns fire a hasty ONE ROUND (most of the time it’s a zeroing round in a new firing position).

    This is just poor performance and I would be ashamed to have put this on a video and share it out. I do hope the guncrews this year won’t do this stupidity again and realize to do it good instead of haphazardly risking crew and equipment.

    Regards, a finnish reservist that hopes all the best for the artillerymean of Ukraine.

16. Accuracy straight out of the window. That probably puts the round landing somewhere within 1sq km of the target.

17. “Perfect, send one more, no change” .. 🧐