Poor Training, Improper Use Blamed for High Failure Rate Among Ukraine’s NATO Heavy Weapons

US and NATO officials started emerging from the woodwork in July and August to explain why the Ukrainian military’s much-touted counteroffensive was failing to achieve results, blaming Kiev’s “tactics” and assuring the problem had nothing to do with weapons. Now, arms manufacturers seem to have found a new excuse.

Ukrainian grunts’ limited training time using advanced NATO heavy weapons, and improper use of some of the hardware is responsible for high breakdown rates, a report in US business media citing defense officials and representatives of major Western arms makers has suggested.

Citing the example of the Panzerhaubitze 2000, a 155 mm German-made self-propelled howitzer, the outlet pointed out that Ukrainian artillerymen get just five weeks of training to use the heavy gun, compared to four months Bundeswehr soldiers get.

Lack of maintenance is another problem, with weapons systems’ makers assuring that the systems would work fine if maintained properly and on time.

“If they take care of the electronics, it works,” Armin Papperger, CEO of Panzerhaubitze 2000-maker Rheinmetall, assured, commenting on reports of his company's howitzers catching fire or needing to be loaded manually after the failure of their automatic systems.

Overusing of equipment to its breaking point is another problem, according to the report, with one Ukrainian soldier operating a AHS Krab, a Polish-made 155 mm self-propelled tracked howitzer, saying his Crab was used so much that its barrel tore off.

Major Western weapons giants including Rheinmetall, Lockheed Martin, and BAE Systems have enjoyed skyrocketing profits and record production feeding deliveries of weapons systems to Ukraine, admitting that they see Ukraine as a testing ground for their products.

A Ukrainian commander in charge of artillery said the more sophisticated Western howitzers in service with Ukraine’s military are capricious when it comes to repairs, with over 30 percent out of action and in the shop at any one time, compared to about 15 percent for the older, simpler systems like the M777, a British-made towed howitzer, with the tradeoff being that the latter is slower to deploy and more vulnerable to Russian strikes.

Limited territorial gains and horrific losses in personnel and equipment suffered by Ukraine’s military during its summer counteroffensive have prompted Western officials to think up a variety of explanations for the failure, with some officials blaming Ukraine’s tactics and assuring that if Kiev only used its tens of billions of dollars’ worth of NATO weapons as intended, its military would achieve successes.

What most Western observers have failed to mention is Russia’s artillery, air and intelligence superiority, factors which were obvious to frontline troops long before the counteroffensive began.