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The Russian military has destroyed or damaged four more American-made M777 towed 155 mm howitzers of Kiev forces.
Between April 25 and 27, videos documenting Russian strikes on the four Ukrainian howitzers surfaced online. Two of the howitzers were targeted with Lancet loitering munitions, while the remaining two were hit by what appears to be artillery fire.
The M777 howitzer has a maximum rate of fire of seven rounds per minute with a range of up to 40 kilometers when firing M982 Excalibur precision-guided rounds. Kiev forces have received 152 howitzers of this type after the beginning of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. The United States provided 142, while Canada provided four and Australia six.
The newly documented losses and previous ones tracked by Lostarmour.info indicate that the Russian military has destroyed, damaged or captured nearly half of Ukraine’s new M777 howitzers.
46 M777 howitzers were completely destroyed, 28 others were lightly or severely damaged. At least one more howitzer was captured in an operational condition.
The vast majority of these losses were caused by Lancet loitering munitions, which were developed by the ZALA Aero Group.
The company produces two versions of the loitering munition, the Izdeliye-52 with an endurance of 30 minutes and a one-kilogram warhead and the larger Izdeliye-51 that has an endurance of 40 minutes and is armed with a warhead weighting three kilograms. Both versions are equipped with an electro-optical targeting system that can detect, track and lock on static and moving targets.
Ukraine received more than 800 artillery systems from the United States and other allies. Despite this, its forces are still outgunned by the Russian military. The M777 and other newly-supplied systems are being depleted. Recently it became known that Kiev forces have lost most of their first Polish-made Krab self-propelled 155 mm howitzers.
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