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18 June 2024

Artillery goes trucking to survive drones swarming the battlefield

Rudy Ruitenberg

French artillery engineers had a simple idea: Take a big gun, mount it on a truck, and you’ve got self-propelled artillery at relatively little cost. The wheeled guns have proved so effective on the Ukrainian battlefield that Western armies are taking a fresh look at the concept.

The war in Ukraine has put long-range fires front and center at the Eurosatory defense show that kicks off in Paris, France, on June 17, said Charles Beaudouin, the retired French general who heads the event. As drones and rapid counter-battery fire have put a premium on artillery mobility for survival, he expects KNDS France’s truck-mounted Caesar howitzer to be one of the stars of the show.

“The audacity of the wheeled cannon is the maximum efficiency,” Beaudouin told Defense News. “You sacrifice nothing in terms of firepower, rate of fire, precision and range, and you’ve got a truck, armored all the same, but which is able to be nimble, which is very stealthy.”

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