The Russian Ministry of Defense released a statement on Monday saying that its new Koalitsiya-SV howitzer, which Moscow claims shoots farther than any western gun, will be ready for service by 2020.
While Russia is well known for making outlandish claims about its military hardware, the new 2S35 Koalitsiya-SV, by all accounts, may live up to the hype.
First unveiled in 2015, the Koalitsiya-SV, also known as “Coalition-SV,” is a 152mm self-propelled gun that can reportedly fire up to 15-20 rounds a minute, according to The National Interest.
This range of automation is far superior to western guns, like the US M109 Paladin, which fires 6 rounds a minute.
The Coalition-SVs high level of automation also allows it to be operated by a two or three-man crew, while the Paladin requires six.
The Koalitsiya-SV can reportedly fire rounds up to 43 miles, much farther than the Paladin at 18 miles and Great Britain’s AS90 Braveheart at 24 miles.
It’s also capable of firing a variety of rounds, like standard and rocket-assisted high-explosive fragmentation projectiles, cluster projectiles and jammer projectiles, according to military-today.com. These projectiles, however, unlike Russia’s new long-range precision-guided shell, have firing ranges of less than 43 miles.
Given Moscow’s budgetary problems, we’ll have to wait and see if the Coalition-SV is mass produced.
In any event, the “introduction of … the Koalitsiya-SV [is] a significant boost to the Russian Ground Forces’ artillery forces,” Dave Majumdar wrote in The National Interest in June.
Check out the Coalition-SV in action below:
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