Russia Pounds Ukraine With ‘World’s Most Powerful’ 2S7M Malka Artillery Guns As War Enters Critical Stage
As Russia’s Ukraine offensive completes a month, the war has not only remained inconclusive but also deadlier with each passing day. In the face of stiff resistance from Ukrainian troops and civilians, the Russian Army has resorted to the use of artillery shelling on key cities, which according to reports, include civilian areas.
As both sides make extensive use of artillery to suppress the enemy position, the most lethal gun in either side’s arsenal is the Soviet-era 203 mm self-propelled 2S7 howitzer, which is purportedly also the most powerful gun in the world.
The 2S7 howitzer combines a 203 mm 2A44 gun with a tracked chassis featuring all-welded steel armor. The design came from the Kirov Factory in the 1960s and it entered service with the Soviet army in 1976.
It was initially known as the ‘Pion’ (Russia for peony, a kind of flower), but following the upgrades to the chassis, engine, ammunition loading system, and fire control in 1983 the gun was renamed as 2S7M ‘Malka’.
The first combat deployment of the 2S7 was during the Soviet-Afghan War and later Russian forces used it in the first and second Chechen wars. The Georgian army also fielded a battery of six 2S7 guns during its conflict with Russia in 2008, but those were all captured by Russian troops who destroyed five of them retaining one.
Some of the main munitions fired
include high-explosive fragmentation and rocket-assisted projectiles. The former weighs 110 kg and contains 17.8 kg of projectiles while the latter projectile weighs 103 kg and contains 13.8 kg of explosives.
Without any type of rocket assistance, the 2A44 gun can hit targets at a
range of 37.5 km (roughly 23 miles) while rocket-assisted projectiles can reach a range of 47.5 km (roughly 29 miles).
The Russians eventually put a lot of their roughly 300 2S7s in storage. The Ukrainians who inherited 100 or so 2S7s from the Soviet Union also did the same.
Ukraine was compelled to
re-activate its 2S7s in 2014 after its forces were hammered by artillery fire from Russian separatists in the Donbass region. Reports suggest that the army took out at least 13 2S7s from the storage and sent them to the Shepetivka Repair Plant in Rivne for overhaul.
Meanwhile, the Russian forces also appear to have
fielded their own 2S7s in Russia’s Belgorod region possibly operated by the
45th Artillery Brigade near the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine as well as in Crimea
Today those 2S7 self-propelled howitzers with their gaping, 203-millimeter-diameter barrels by far are the most powerful guns in Ukrainian service. They can shoot as far as 30 miles, outdistancing most other tube artillery in and around Donbas.
But there’s a problem for
Ukraine’s gunners as a huge Russian force—100,000 troops and 1,200 tanks—assembles right across the Russia-Ukraine border. The Russian army has its own 2S7s. They’re more modern than Ukraine’s own 2S7s are, and they’re plugged into a faster fire-control system.
The main types of ammunition include high-explosive, high-explosive/rocket-assisted (30-mile range), concrete-piercing, and tactical nuclear rounds.
The ammunition handling system can provide a rate of fire of two rounds per minute, increased to 2.5 per minute in the 2S7M.
2S19 Msta-S
Developed during the 1980s, the Msta was intended to replace the Soviets’ earlier 152mm 2S3 and
2S5 self-propelled artillery pieces and retained the same caliber of ammunition. The new system was fielded just before the demise of the Soviet Union, with each battery normally having six guns. A total of three batteries would normally be found in each regiment.
By 2020, around 600 examples of the self-propelled Msta-S were thought to have been completed, these using a chassis derived from that of main battle tanks, including the suspension and running gear of the
T-80 and the diesel power pack from the
T-72.
The vehicle consists of a driver’s compartment at the front, a turret in the center, and a power pack at the rear. There are five crew members. Defensive armament consists of a 12.7 mm heavy machine gun on the roof.
The main gun is the 2A64 that fires a high-explosive/fragmentation round to a distance of 15 miles. Other ammunition includes a base-bleed type that extends the range to 18 miles, a sub-munitions round with high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) bomblets, an electronic warfare jamming round, smoke, and
the Krasnopol laser-guided projectile. The latter is guided onto the target in the terminal phase using a tripod-mounted laser designator. The rate of fire is between seven and eight rounds per minute. In total, 50 rounds of ammunition are carried, and the gun can be reloaded while firing, using a conveyor system at the back of the turret.
We keep hearing about Russia's huge artillery force that could devastate Ukraine's cities. Here is a breakdown of the weapons that make up that force.
www.thedrive.com
More to the list of what the Russians have on the page.