Ukraine’s French Recon Vehicles Are Too Flimsy For Frontal Assaults, So The Marines Are Using Them As Artillery

Omnipresent drones, mines and anti-tank missile teams have made the Ukraine front line a very dangerous place for tanks and recon vehicles. So more and more, the Ukrainian and Russian armies are deploying their big-gun armored fighting vehicles—recon vehicles and tanks alike—as artillery. It’s a compromise that protects the vehicles without wasting their firepower. “They make for an inefficient form of artillery,” analysts Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds wrote about the tank-howitzers in a recent study for the Royal United Services Institute in London. “Nevertheless, these engagements can often be made from positions that would not be viable for artillery.”