Canada is expected to send four of its relatively new M-777 howitzers to Ukraine to help it cope with the renewed Russian offensive from the east, CBC News has learned.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a plan to send “heavy artillery” earlier this week, but did not provide details on what the Canadian military will donate.
“Their last request was for this, for heavy artillery, for operational security reasons,” Trudeau said on Wednesday. “At this point, I can’t go into detail about how and what exactly we get to them.
Three defense sources – who spoke to CBC News on condition that they were not identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the file – said four of the 37 howitzers purchased from Canada during the war in Afghanistan were were intended for delivery.
They will come out of the inventory of the 1st Regiment, Royal Canadian Cavalry Artillery, based in Shiloh, Manitoba, said two confidential sources.
The shipment is expected to include an unspecified amount of ammunition, including precision-guided Excalibur cartridges left over from the war in Afghanistan, a third source said. GPS-guided projectiles cost about $ 112,000 per round.
Canada recently sent some of its obsolete stockpiles of Carl Gustaf anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, and the Liberal government has not yet announced a plan to replenish that stockpile with modern weapons.
Ukrainian servicemen study Swedish Carl Gustaf M4 shot from the shoulder during training on the outskirts of Kharkov in Ukraine on Thursday, April 7, 2022 (Andrew Marienko / Associated Press)
Canada is under pressure to provide heavy weapons as other allies continue to deliver more lethal aid, both openly and quietly.
The United States announced this week that it is donating 90,155-millimeter howitzers as part of a recent $ 800 million US military aid package to Ukraine.
These weapons have begun to arrive in Europe, and U.S. troops have begun training Ukrainian forces to use them, a senior U.S. defense official told several U.S. publications this week.
A U.S. official quoted by the military publication Stars and Stripes declined to say whether the United States was sending its 155-millimeter M-777 or M-198 howitzers. Both American guns have a different caliber than the Ukrainian 152 mm Msta-B howitzers.
Popular gun
The M-777 is a 155 mm towed howitzer. Although it fired large projectiles, it was designed as an ultralight pistol by BAE Land Systems, Inc., a British arms manufacturer, in the late 1990s.
The pistol quickly became popular with the US Army and Marine Corps and was sold worldwide in a number of countries, most recently in India.
Western armies like it because it is ideal for the kind of light mobile war that was fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. The pistol can be easily and quickly transported by air – either under a helicopter and moved around the battlefield, or packed in a large transport aircraft for rapid deployment in other countries.
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