The M777 Howitzer looks outdated in a war dominated by drones, UAVs, and high-tech weapons. Heavy, unarmored, and towed into battle, it should be an easy target for Russia’s deadly drone swarms. Yet Ukraine has transformed this artillery system into one of the most effective weapons on the battlefield through clever tactics, rapid movement, decoys, and constant adaptation. Here’s how the “Triple Seven” continues devastating Russian forces and proving that innovation can keep even old-school artillery deadly in modern warfare.
I recently saw a video posted by some fool that put the M777 at a “D tier” in terms of Ukrainian military equipment. It truly shows how distorted and degraded the public’s knowledge of warfare has become from the media pumping “warfare is NEW now!” narratives about drones.
The M777 is one of the most effective tools ever made to stop a ground offensive from a large, mechanized military, if you don’t understand how drones don’t negate that you fundamentally don’t understand the dynamics at play here. The M777 will be used for decades to come and probably even longer than that.
The reason Ukraine has the operational space and time to conduct the extensive reconnaissance, planning and coordination necessary to accomplish midrange targeted drone strikes on crucial russian military equipment and personnel is because Ukraine now has sufficient 155mm artillery to decisively smash russian concentrated armored maneuvers allowing Ukrainian personnel to devote more time to striking out at the horizon and less time stopping russia from developing a fatal momentum in their rare armored pushes.
Yes, drones are highly effective at taking out armor, but they are limited and they take an immense amount of time to get into place and deploy compared to when a high flying fixed wing reconnaissance drone spotting a target from 1km away, relaying coordinates to a howitzer that fires after the message is conveyed with the shell landing after traveling for ~30 seconds to 1 minute in the air. If the firing calculations are done by a computer and transmitted efficiently and the howitzer crew is ready, a howitzer shell will be able to be placed on target as quickly if not quicker than a long/medium range missile fired from a standoff distance. It will be certainly quicker than getting drone crews into position and deploying drones in a tactical manner.
Artillery also doesn’t stop firing when it is raining, or when it is windy, artillery simply does not stop firing, that is what makes it artillery.
There are not combat drones that cost $1000 to make. Even with free materials and labor, Ukraine’s cheapest drone was at $500. And again, because it bears repeating that is the price for a drone with donated manufactured materials, donated electronics, donated consumer 3d printer casings, and volunteers assembling them.
$20k is your cheapest mass produced combat drones.