My pleasure.

Re. M777 and M142: point about such weapons is not entirely easy to explain.

My pleasure.

Re. M777 and M142: point about such weapons is not entirely easy to explain.

Essence is this: in wars as big as this one, the essence of victory is 'tonnage of ammo delivered precisely on target'.

In other words: the side that unleashes more high explosives upon the other, and that with better precision - wins.

Artillery can deliver far more high explosives with at least similar, if not better precision than air strikes (including those with PGMs). Unsurprisingly, it's considered the 'queen of battlefield'.

Now, the M142 HIMARS is a light-weight (truck-mounted) version of the M270 multiple rocket launcher. It's firing 6 rockets calibre 227mm over a range up to 300km (for MGM-140 ATACMS rockets), or 500km for PSM. Between others, this means it can blast away at Russian BM-27s and BM-30s from well outside their range (indeed: it has more range that the Su-25 fighter-bomber, but is far more precise).

M777 is a towed howitzer calibre 155mm. It has a digital fire-control system and can fire rocket-assisted shells over 40km.

Both HIMARS and the M777 are incredibly precise. For example, when using Excalibur rounds, the M777 was proven in combat of having a CEP of less than 5m over a range of 24km, and a well-trained crew can maintain a rate of fire of 2-3 shells a minute 'for quite long'.

With other words: this is the kind of weapons Ukraine needs to knock out entire artillery batteries, hardened positions, or bigger concentrations of the RFA - and that from such a range, that there is next to no danger of the Russians managing to hit back.