{"id":258479,"date":"2022-09-10T07:07:05","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T07:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=258479"},"modified":"2022-09-11T07:10:13","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T07:10:13","slug":"pentagon-quietly-deployed-deadliest-artillery-shell-in-uss-inventory-to-ukraine-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=258479","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon Quietly Deployed Deadliest Artillery Shell in US\u2019s Inventory to Ukraine: Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ilya Tsukanov \u2013 Sputnik News Sept 8, 2022<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Moscow, officials from the Donbass republics, and even the regional administrations of Ukrainian territories liberated by Russian forces have repeatedly charged Kiev with the use of its Western-sourced artillery systems to indiscriminately target civilian infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon has committed $92 million to replenish the US military\u2019s stocks of the M982 Excalibur, a 155mm artillery shell with an effective firing range of up to 57 km, Bloomberg has reported, citing<\/a> a DoD accounting document.<\/p>\n

The $92 million was spent \u201cfor the procurement of replacement M982 Excalibur munitions transferred to Ukraine in support of the international effort to counter Russian aggression,\u201d the document said.<\/p>\n

If Bloomberg\u2019s reporting is accurate, the document is the first direct confirmation that Washington is supplying the shells to Kiev, with US officials previously remaining tightlipped<\/a> or wriggling their way out<\/a> of direct answers to media questions on the matter.<\/p>\n

Apart from the US, Canada is the only other NATO power to have sent Excaliburs to Ukraine, with Ottawa announcing<\/a> in April that an unknown number of the shells would be gifted to Kiev alongside four pieces of field artillery.<\/p>\n

Manufactured by Raytheon and BAE Systems, the Excalibur is equipped with a GPS guidance system enabling it to hit within 2-4 meters of its intended target, and can be used by a variety of self-propelled and towed howitzers and field guns, including the M109, M198, M777, and the PzH2000 \u2013 all of which have been sent to Ukraine in recent months.<\/p>\n

The system was first tested in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan during the US and NATO-led occupations of those countries.<\/p>\n

The cash injection will enable the US military to buy roughly 900 Excaliburs during the current fiscal year.<\/p>\n

Along with the Excalibur replenishments, the Pentagon is spending $337 million to replace other artillery rounds sent to Ukraine, $260.6 million for GMLRS rockets, $745.5 million to stock up on Stingers, $471 million on 16 HIMARS, and $263 million to reimburse the US Air Force for lugging US equipment across the Atlantic to Europe.<\/p>\n

The new spending adds to the tens of billions of dollars\u2019 worth of military and economic aid made by Washington to Kiev over the past six months. On Thursday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced<\/a> that the White House had approved another $675 million in military assistance, including howitzers, shells, Humvees, armored ambulances and anti-tank systems, among other weapons and munitions.<\/p>\n

Moscow has slammed Washington and its allies over their arms deliveries to Kiev, pointing to the danger they pose in escalating the Ukraine crisis<\/a>, setting the stage for future conflicts<\/a>, and facilitating lucrative weapons smuggling operations by criminal groups. Last month, a Sputnik Arabic investigation into dark web weapons sales found<\/a> an arms dealer willing to ship American-made M4 assault rifles from Ukraine to Yemen via Poland and Portugal. Separately, CBS News released<\/a> and then scrubbed a documentary which found that only \u201c30 percent\u201d of the equipment donated to Ukraine by the West was actually reaching the front lines.<\/p>\n

The Russian military and the Donetsk and Lugansk People\u2019s Militias and civilian administrators in the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye have also accused Kiev of using the precision weaponry it receives from the West to indiscriminately shell residential infrastructure. On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the Ukrainian military\u2019s constant shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant threatens to unleash a nuclear catastrophe.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pentagon has committed $92 million to replenish the US military\u2019s stocks of the M982 Excalibur, a 155mm artillery shell with an effective firing range of up to 57 km, after large quantities of the munitions were transferred to Ukraine from U.S. Army stocks <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=258479"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258482,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258479\/revisions\/258482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=258479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=258479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=258479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}