It was Napoleon who called artillery “the god of war” back in his time. Indeed, despite the fact that new wars require new equipment, classic armaments are still important. Artillery systems of a caliber over 100 millimeters have been pulled back from the line of contact, as provided in the Minsk Accords. Nevertheless, Ukrainian troops continue conducting exercises involving artillery pieces. For instance, an artillery brigade of the anti-terrorist operation forces conducted a practical exercise on moving to the area of deployment and directing a battery’s fire.
The main objective of the exercise was to train soldiers in deploying artillery systems from march order to combat order and back, as well in aiming for different types of targets. First Lieutenant Roman D., a battery commander, remarked: “In order to learn to do it within the assigned time and reach the specified area in time, to deploy artillery pieces to combat order as quickly as possible and hit the assigned targets, our crews must repeat these actions a few dozen times.” How important fast deployment of active forces is, one can see, in particular, from recent developments in Mariinka, when the speedy maneuver saw heavy weapons returned to the frontlines, thus repelling the attack, liberating the city and saving the day.
The servicemen on the exercise include experienced soldiers as well as fresh recruits. Some of them, relying on their engineering knowledge, are even proposing to improve maintenance procedures for their Hyacinth self-propelled guns.
