American corporation AM General delivered to Ukraine its new development without any prior announcements, the 105-mm self-propelled gun 2-CT Hawkeye which is currently only undergoing tests in the U.S. Army.
The delivery took place in April 2024 and remained a secret until officially announced by Mike Evans, Program Director at AM General, as noticed by Defense Blog.
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"We recently put a 105 mm system into . We shipped it in April..We trained it for two weeks..That system is destined to be one of the first soft recoil systems in combat.. It's going into combat to test on live targets" Mike Evans AM General (US FA Association) #HAWKEYE pic.twitter.com/eIkYAuoSqd— AirPower 2.0 (MIL_STD) (@AirPowerNEW1) June 22, 2024
Defense Express adds that the 2-CT Hawkeye is a lightweight artillery systems that was created in 2019 as a result of cooperation between AM General and Mandus Group. In 2021, the U.S. Army issued a contract for the production of two units for testing.
Although at first glance, the idea to install the 105-millimeter M20 gun on the HMMWV chassis is fairly simple, a rather important detail remains hidden from the eye: the use of soft recoil technology (SRT), which allows the vehicle not to fall apart after several shots.
Ontop of that, we must mention the modern digital fire control system and the quick emplacement of the system: the system can fire the first shot 1.5 minutes after arriving on the spot and leave the position in under 3 minutes. The rate of fire is also naturally high due to the 105mm artillery system's unitary shots: 8 rounds per minute for the first 3 minutes of firing. The M20 gun range for ordinary projectiles is 11.6 km.
That is, the whole point of the 2-CT Hawkeye 105mm self-propelled gun is to launch a rapid-fire bombardment of the enemy with shells and leave the position quickly, constantly being on the move. This kind of manuevering is the only effective way to avoid return fire in the conditions of intense counter-battery warfare. This artillery system objectively takes the niche usually held by self-propelled 120mm mortars, but is simpler to operate because of convenient chassis.
Though it does come with drawbacks. Particularly, the crew remains without protection. From this pont of view, the 2-CT Hawkeye is closer to a 105mm iteration of such 155mm artillery systems as the CAESAR or 2S22 Bohdana. Anyway, it provides much more mobility than conventional towed 105mm howitzers.
The very fact that such systems are sent to Ukraine to receive a real combat evaluation is the best example how sending the latest samples of modern weapon developments to the Ukrainian Armed Forces is a unique opportunity for the manufacturers and foreign armies to receive a reliable conclusion on system effectiveness and get for their products a prestigious label saying: "effectiveness proven in combat."
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