Artillery: Artillery Ammunition Quality and Quantity
March 27, 2024: NATO has sent the Ukrainians a number of artillery items, including guns, ammunition, and fire location radars. The ammunition included special types of 155mm shells. The most useful and economical accessory for 155mm shells was the PGK (Projectile Guidance Kit) 155mm fuze. The PGK fuze turns an unguided 155mm shell into a GPS/INS guided one. These were found to be exceptionally useful in Syria and Iraq and, in mid-2017, the U.S. Army ordered another 5,600 PGK fuzes and has been building a stockpile. This enabled the U.S. to send Ukraine large numbers of PGK fuzes. While armies still use unguided artillery shells for situations that don’t require precise accuracy, the PGK fuze is available to quickly turn any standard unguided shell into a guided smart shell. Many PGK fuzes were sent to Ukraine. It was found that PGK fuzes worked well particularly with the Zusana-2 8x8 155mm self-propelled artillery systems that western neighbor Slovakia purchased and then sent to Ukraine. Zusana-2 is highly automated with a modern fire control system so it can, in less than a minute, halt, fire one or two PGK equipped shells with the location data provided by FireFinder to destroy Russian artillery, and then move on before being targeted itself. Russia too has counterfire radars and guided shells, but no combination of radar and guided shells quick enough to catch Zuzanna-2s when it is employing such shoot and scoot tactics. The Zuzanna-2 armor offers some protection from shell fragments and blast effects on equipment and its three-man crew.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20240327.aspx
