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Troops in Siberia practice force-on-force duel of Msta-S large-caliber howitzers

This exercise requires high skills and professionalism as troops must be quick to deliver a strike against the enemy and leave their positions to dodge retaliatory fire

MOSCOW, May 17. /TASS/. Troops in Siberia practiced the first ever force-on-force artillery duel involving self-propelled batteries of 152mm Msta-S howitzers, Commander of the Central Military District’s 41st Combined Arms Army Lieutenant General Sergei Ryzhikov said in an interview with the Defense Ministry’s Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper on Monday.

"In the course of a comprehensive exercise on the Yurginsky combined arms training ground, the troops practiced a force-on-force artillery duel for the first time when self-propelled batteries of 152mm Msta-S howitzers acted alternately against each other while staying in a positioning area obviously unknown to a notional enemy," the general said.

This exercise requires high skills and professionalism as troops must be quick to deliver a strike against the enemy and leave their positions to dodge retaliatory fire, the general stressed.

It was reported in August 2020 that Uraltransmash (a subsidiary of the defense manufacturer Uralvagonzavod within the state tech corporation Rostec) delivered a batch of upgraded Msta-S self-propelled howitzers to Russian troops under the 2019-2021 state contract on the single day of military output acceptance.

The 152mm 2S19M2 self-propelled howitzer features technical innovations that increase the gun’s accuracy and rate of fire and cut the time of fulfilling a combat task.

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