The Americans Plugged a Howitzer Onto a Humvee, And Gave It To Ukraine
The Hawkeye fires fast and moves quickly. But it's not clear the Ukrainians will need it to do so.
The United States has given Ukraine a unique “soft recoil” self-propelled 105-millimeter howitzer, according to Mike Evans, an official with U.S. defense contractor AM General.
Evans almost certainly was referring to AM General’s Hawkeye system—a new low-recoil howitzer mounted to the back of a Humvee truck. A second truck carries ammunition. The whole gun is crewed by four people—three fewer than an M-119 towed 105-millimeter howitzer—and weighs just seven tons.
“We recently put a 105-millimeter system into Ukraine,” Evans said at U.S. Army symposium. “We shipped it on the 26th of April. It was received in Ukraine on [May] 2nd. We trained it for two weeks. They immediately went into testing. And that system is destined to be one of the first soft-recoil systems in combat.”
“It’s moving very quickly,” Evans said of the developmental howitzer. “It's going right into combat for testing on live targets.”
In one video demonstration, a Hawkeye crew fired their gun after just two minutes of setup. The crew of the M-119 needed more than four minutes to get ready. But it’s not clear that speed advantage will matter much in Ukraine, where artillery crews tend to fight from prepared and carefully fortified positions.
Ukrainian gunners survive by masking their guns and screening themselves from explosive drones—not by keeping on the move. In fact, moving can make guns and their crews more vulnerable by exposing them to drone surveillance—and drone strikes.
But any artillery is better than no artillery—and the Ukrainians could benefit from a gun with a smaller crew, even if they don’t do much with its high mobility. A Hawkeye fires a standard 105-millimeter shell as far as seven miles at a rate of three rounds per minute.
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