“The current approach by which each country donates a battery of guns in a piecemeal way is rapidly turning into a logistical nightmare for Ukrainian forces with each battery requiring a separate training, maintenance and logistics pipeline,” said the Royal United Services Institute, a London defense and security think tank, earlier this month.
The Western artillery being absorbed by the Ukrainian military include M777 towed howitzers from the U.S., Australia and Canada, and self-propelled howitzers such as the Caesar from France and the Panzerhaubitze 2000, or PzH 2000, from Germany—as well as the U.S. M109 and the AHS Krab from Poland.
“None of these systems have that much commonality…Ammunition should be interchangeable, etc. But that’s not the case,” said Jack Watling, a co-author of the report, based in part on interviews with Ukrainian military and intelligence officials.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has attempted to standardize equipment such as ammunition—under standardization agreements known as Stanags—so that it becomes interchangeable between nations and benefits from economies of scale. But these efforts at standardization have had limited effect.
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