Russia Replaces Soviet Howitzers With North Korean Clones as Ukraine Builds a Drone Wall to Stop Them
Russia is losing 2S7 howitzers and replacing them with North Korean M1989s, as Ukrainian drones work to locate and destroy both.
The 2S7 tracked howitzer is one of the biggest artillery pieces in Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. Both sides use them. And both sides prize them. Firing a 100-kg shell as far as 32 km, the 14-person 2S7s can avoid most retaliatory fire.
But that’s changing as Ukraine’s drones range deeper and deeper behind Russian lines. On or just before Thursday, a surveillance drone belonging to the Ukrainian army’s 15th Artillery Reconnaissance Brigade—perhaps one of the unit’s Shark drones—spotted a Russian 2S7 and its ammunition truck somewhere along the 700-mile front line.
“The adjacent units turned the self-propelled artillery system with a powerful 203-mm cannon into scrap metal with a well-aimed shot,” the brigade boasted.
It’s unclear which adjacent unit struck the 2S7, and with what, but it’s worth pointing out that the 15th Artillery Reconnaissance Brigade is equipped with BM-30 Smerch rocket launchers that lob 800-kg rockets as far as 120 km.
Sure, there are plenty of munitions that can range farther than the 2S7’s shells. It’s not for no reason that Ukraine has lost around half a dozen of its 100 pre-war 2S7s—and the Russians have written off around three dozen of their own stock of several hundred 2S7s.
But the 2S7s and their North Korean-made equivalents, the M1989s, tend to operate far enough from enemy positions to avoid the densest concentrations of surveillance and attack drones that represent the biggest threats to forces on both sides.