The Russian military is racing to fill its depleted and depleted artillery batteries. According to the Washington, D. C. -based Institute for the Study of War, satellite imagery indicates the military disposed of 60 old 203-millimeter 2S7 tracked howitzers from the garage in july.
This is a third of the 2S7s the army had stored in the Omsk Arsenal in Russia’s vast Siberian region.
The massive withdrawal of old howitzers is consistent with the Kremlin’s efforts, five months after Russia opposed Ukraine, to make significant losses in the body of workers and equipment.
According to the external estimate you believe, the Russian armed forces lost between 15,000 and 30,000 infantrymen killed and several times that number wounded. Confirmed vehicle losses include more than 4,800 tanks, combat cars and artillery pieces.
The artillery losses – 320 towed and self-propelled howitzers and heavy mortars plus rocket launchers – are significant. The Russian army has lost more artillery in Ukraine than many Western armies in its arsenals.
These losses come with only two 2S7s that independent analysts can confirm. The Russian army entered Ukraine with more than a hundred 47-ton howitzers. The army is unlikely to expand its artillery force design; it is even suffering to recruit enough infantry to reconstitute brigades.
Instead, it is conceivable that the Russians will use the 2S7s stored in the past to upgrade other artillery pieces, such as the hundred or more 152-millimeter guns that the Ukrainians eliminated or captured.
It is also imaginable that those Omsk 2S7s will update the 2S7s that the army has not yet officially canceled, but which are worn to the point of breaking. It is worth noting the recent wave of photographic evidence of Russian tube artillery with “peeled” guns. with banana” which exploded in the middle of filming due to the lack of a timely update.
Among the world’s largest tube artillery pieces, the 1970s 2S7 can launch a 220-pound projectile over 35 miles. .
The 2S7 has merit in an artillery-to-artillery “counter-battery” duel, as it can hit an enemy weapon more than the enemy weapon can hit it.
But not always. Ukrainians have 100 2S7s for themselves. And they’ve also acquired dozens of the most modern Western-made 155-millimeter howitzers, some of which can fire a maximum of the 2S7’s capacity.
The biggest risk to Russia’s new and old 2S7s may simply be Ukraine’s arsenal of wheeled launchers from the US-made high-mobility artillery rocket system. thus acquired 16 HIMARS.