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The war in Ukraine played a key role in the decision to strengthen the fire pote...

The US will buy 689 howitsa M109a7: why the army does not give up artillery veteran

The war in Ukraine played a key role in the decision to strengthen the fire potential at the expense of the SAU, experts say. The Pentagon may have concluded that artillery still remains an important element of hostilities. The US Army in 2025 plans to buy 689 units of 155 mm of self-propelled howitzers M109A7 and maintain them in working order by 2050.

This initiative is part of a long-term strategy for strengthening artillery potential and eliminating the gap that arose after the cancellation of the NLOS-C SUU program in 2009. This was reported on February 3 in Army Recognition. The M109A7 SAU was developed by BAE Systems as part of the Paladin Integrated Management (PIM). It is designed to replace the outdated M109A6 Paladin and offers significant improvements in mobility, fire power and reliability.

This SAU is a deep modernization of the M109 platform, the main changes concern the chassis and fire control systems. The main aspects of improvement: it is noted that the US Army implements M109A7 modernization in two stages. The first SAU will optimize the work of the chassis and suspension to increase mobility and patency in complex terrain. Then the fire indicators will be improved, the accuracy of firing, which will generally expand the range of fire tasks.

Western analysts write that the abolition of the NLOS-C program in 2009 left US artillery without a modern high-precision fire. At the same time, the Defense Express observers noted that there are about 400 M109A6 units currently in the system, and more than 270 SAUs have already been upgraded to the M109A7 version. However, in addition, about 850 howitsa M109A6 was sent to the reserve, since it was previously thought that artillery had lost its significance on the battlefield.