The use of M864 cluster artillery munitions by the Armed Forces of Ukraine is becoming widespread, and after the first videos of their use, photos of these projectiles at the positions of Ukrainian gunners also appeared.
The Ukraine Weapons Tracker community published the corresponding photo with projectiles marked D864, which corresponds to the M864 projectile. We will remind that Washington officially announced the transfer of cluster munitions on July 7 of this year.
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The projectile is capable of delivering 24 M46 and 48 M42 dual-purpose anti-materiel/anti-personnel sub-munitions at ranges out to 29 kilometers. The capabilities of the cumulative M46, which hits targets from above, allow it to penetrate about 70 mm of armor, which is generally enough to defeat even tanks, not to mention lighter armored vehicles.
The M864 is equipped with a gas generator to increase the range of fire, and the ballistics of the projectile is considered identical to the high-explosive M549. When firing from the 52-caliber artillery system, its flight range is 40 km.
It is believed that the effectiveness of one cluster artillery ammunition corresponds to 7-15 high-explosive fragmentation shells. In practice, this means a significant reduction in the consumption of ammunition, a reduction in the time to complete the firing task and a reduction in the number of artillery systems that must be used for this.
In practice, this is of decisive importance in the conditions of the obvious shortage of high-explosive fragmentation ammunition in the West, the smaller number of artillery in the Armed Forces than in the russian federation, as well as the conditions of counter-battery combat.
At the same time, the failure rate of subelements declared in the USA at the level of 2.34%, in comparison with the fact that Ukraine is already the country most littered with explosive devices in the world, can hardly be considered critical.
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