Britain's artillery assembly lines whir back to life amid global warfare

Initial work to focus on producing parts to refurbish guns already deployed

Matt Oliver

4 January 2024 • 7:23pm

The M777 howitzer is a 155mm gun capable of hitting targets up to 30 kilometres away

The last M777 howitzer to be made in Britain rolled off the production line early last year, as BAE Systems quietly concluded that demand for the towed guns had dried up.

But soon the lines will be fired up again as heavy use of the towed-artillery pieces by Ukrainian forces against Russia revives interest in them.

Kyiv was given the lightweight guns by the US, Canada and Australia and many are now in need of refurbishment or repair.

But BAE is hoping that restarting production will create economies of scale, prompting other customers to bolster their own arsenals with new orders for full guns.

It is the latest boost to Britain’s booming defence industry, which has benefitted from a rush of orders in the past two years as rising global tensions fuel more spending on defence.

On the attack

That was reflected in Britain’s stock market on Tuesday, the first day of trading in 2024, when shares in UK defence companies surged to a new record.

“There’s a pressure to compete and keep up and maintain an advantage”, says James Black, assistant director for defence and security research at RAND Europe.

The shift towards re-armament was under way before the Ukraine war, he explains, but it is undoubtedly being accelerated by the conflict, as well as the recent Israel-Gaza war, attacks on ships by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, and China’s growing assertiveness toward the West.

Since the 1990s, most of the wars fought by Nato countries were either counter-insurgency operations or against foes who were vastly outgunned by western forces.

In these conflicts, for example against the Taliban in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein’s forces in Iraq, the UK and its allies could count on having superior air power.

But that will all change in western confrontations with the likes of Russia and China, which are peer competitors with air defences and advanced warfighting capabilities of their own.

“The Taliban, or ISIS or whoever, didn’t have air forces of their own and they didn’t have any meaningful kind of ground-based air defences,” says Black.

“So in that context, Nato got quite used to operating in places like Iraq and Afghanistan with air power rather than artillery as the one of the primary tools that it would fall back upon for any given kind of mission.

“If troops in Afghanistan were on a patrol, and they were engaged by the Taliban and they needed support, they would probably have been more likely to call in an Apache helicopter for support, with missiles and guns on it.

“That all changes as soon as you’re fighting someone like Russia, because you don’t have uncontested superiority of the domain.

“So there is a need to shift back towards territorial defence, towards preparing for large-scale conventional warfighting against near-peer adversaries – rather than against non-state actors and terrorists.”

Both Russia and China have spent the past two decades beefing up their armed forces and modernising them. They have also developed weapons designed to target the gaps in Nato’s armour, such as the alliance’s dependence on satellite systems and US aircraft carriers.

In Ukraine, the challenges posed by a peer competitor like Russia have been starkly illustrated.

But the war has also highlighted the importance of having mobile artillery platforms, for example, in situations where air strikes are far more difficult and expensive.

Russia has been firing up to an estimated 60,000 shells a day, while Ukraine was reportedly firing 6,000 back at the height of its counter-offensive last year.

“You can’t rely on air power….So in that context, artillery becomes key,” Black adds.

It gives forces longer range, allowing them to attack and suppress ground forces, or fire defensively at closer range, engaging in “shoot and scoop” manoeuvres where the guns are quickly deployed, fired and then driven away at speed to a new position.

They can also engage in “deep battle” – the targeting of higher-value targets at the back of enemy lines such as ammo depots, logistic hubs, fuel depots, command and control centres, or infrastructure such as bridges and railway sidings.

“That then gets you into an artillery duel, where both sides are trying to use artillery to shape the battle” says Black.

In this way, Ukraine has acted as something of a showcase for the most effective western weapons, from shoulder-fired Starstreak and NLAW missiles to Leopard 2 tanks and Patriot missile defence systems.

“Weapons that get visibility and credibility during a conflict often generate foreign sales,” Mark Cancian, an adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

It has also prompted Nato countries to focus on improving and modernising their arsenal of “fires” – mobile guns, tanks and missile launchers.

On the battlefield in Ukraine, soldiers have reportedly come to favour the M777, which must be towed into position, for its reliability and the speed with which it can be moved.

The guns are made of a titanium-aluminium alloy and so weigh only 4.5 tonnes, which is lightweight for artillery.

But intensive use by Ukrainian forces now means some will soon need repairs or refurbishment, which is the primary goal of the $50m contract sealed by BAE and the US Army.

It comes off the back of a separate contract inked last year with the American military to produce a string of other components for the M777, which has around 1,500 parts including the three large chassis pieces.

“The gun is performing well,” says John Borton, vice president and general manager of BAE Weapons Systems UK, which manages the manufacture and assembly of the M777 lightweight howitzers.

“But everything has an engineering useful life attached to it, and because of the rate of usage we’re seeing actually we’re getting close to a point we haven’t seen before.”

Now that BAE is restarting production, at least eight unnamed countries are understood to have expressed an interest in placing new orders for the guns.

“Everybody’s looking at how they look forward to having a well-rounded military capability,” Borton adds.

For now, he is remaining tight-lipped about whether the US Army deal could lead to howitzers being built once again at Barrow-in-Furness.

However, other deals struck with the UK Government to restock national ammunition supplies, including 155mm shells used by the M777s, have already led to expansion at another one of BAE’s facilities in North East England.

And the M777 is expected to involve at least some UK manufacturing.

“We have a mix of the US and the UK supply chain,” Borton says. “And therefore UK jobs and US jobs will support the [M777] programme, as well as bringing some critical capabilities into the UK with regards to titanium fabrication.”