Ukrainian soldiers gather at a base near their old anti-tank gun just northeast of the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, Ukraine. Photo Tyler Hicks / The New York Times.
KHERSON REGION, Ukraine – Since Russia invaded, NATO nations have augmented the Ukrainian arsenal with ever more sophisticated tools, with more promise, such as the advanced multiple rocket launch systems promised by the United States and Britain.
But train Soldiers on how to use the equipment became a major and growing obstacle, one that the junior sergeant.
A Ukrainian artillery unit with its old anti-tank gun was located northeast of the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, Ukraine. Photo Tyler Hicks / The New York Times.
Dmytro Pysanka and his crew, firing an old anti-tank gun camouflaged in green bushes and nets in southern Ukraine.
Looking through the sight attached to the gun, Pysanka is greeted by a kaleidoscope of numbers and lines which, when read correctly, should give him the math he needs to fire on Russian forces.
in any case, the mistakes they are common in the chaos of battle.
More than a month ago, the commanders of his front-line artillery unit got their hands on a much more advanced tool:
A Ukrainian artillery unit with its old anti-tank gun was located northeast of the city of Kherson. Photo Tyler Hicks / The New York Times.
a high-tech laser rangefinder provided by the West to aid in target selection.
But there’s a problem: nobody knows how to use it.
“It’s like having an iPhone 13 and only being able to phone,” Pysanka said, clearly exasperated.
The rangefinder, called the JIM LR, is likely part of the equipment supplied by the United States, Pysanka said.
It may seem like a perfect option to make better use of the anti-tank gun, built in 1985.
You can see targets at night and transmit their distance, compass direction and GPS coordinates.
Some soldiers learned enough to operate the tool, but then rotated elsewhere in the last few days, leaving the unit with a expensive paperweight.
“I tried to learn how to use it by reading the manual in English and using it Google translator to figure it out, “Pysanka said.
On Monday, Britain promised to send more mobile rocket launchers to Ukraine, improving the range and accuracy of Ukrainian artillery, just days after the president Joe Biden undertake to send similar weapons.
Ukraine’s most advanced new weapons are concentrated in the eastern region of donbaswhere the fiercest fighting is taking place when the forces of the Russian president, Vladimir Putinapproaching from the east, north and south, are trying to crush a part of the territory controlled by Ukraine.
On the eastern edge of that pocket, the two sides waged a back and forth battle over the devastated and mostly abandoned city of Sieverodonetsk.
Ukrainian troops regained ground in the city over the weekend, according to Western analysts and Ukrainian officials.
But on Monday, the Ukrainians were forced to back down again as the Russian army has already stepped up heavy artillery attackaccording to Serhiy Haidai, Ukraine’s administrator for the region.
One day after a risky troop visit in Lysychansk near Sievierodonetsk, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky gave reporters a clear assessment of the challenge on Monday:
“There are more. They are more powerful. But we have every chance to fight in this direction “.
Ukrainian leaders often demand high-end Western weapons and equipment, pinning their hopes for victory on the demand for new anti-tank guided missiles, howitzers and satellite-guided rockets.
But in addition to the need for tools of war, Ukrainian troops need to know how to use them.
Without proper training, the same dilemma faced by Pysanka’s unit and her lone rangefinder will generalize on a much larger scale.
Analysts say this could echo the failed US approach of providing the Afghan military with equipment that could not be sustained without massive logistical support.
“Ukrainians are keen to use Western equipment, but training is needed to maintain it,” said Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at CNA, a research institute in Arlington, Virginia.
“Some things aren’t easy to rush.”
The United States and other NATO countries provided extensive training to the Ukrainian military in the years leading up to the war, although not on some of the advanced weapons they now ship.
From 2015 to the beginning of this year, US military officials say, US instructors have trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center near Lviv.
There was more than 150 military adviserss Americans in Ukraine when Russia invaded last February but withdrew.
Since the start of the war, the United States has promised around $ 54 billion in aid for Ukraine and supplied a range of weapons and equipment, most recently several advanced HIMARS mobile rocket launchers, a move that met with swift condemnation from the Kremlin.
But to avoid a more direct confrontation with Russia, the Biden administration has so far refused to send military advisers back to Ukraine to help train Ukrainian forces in the use of new weapon systems, and instead has relied on programs of training outside the country.
This put enormous pressure on Ukrainian soldiers such as the sergeant. Andriy Mykyta, a member of the country’s border guard who, before the war, received brief training from NATO advisers on anti-tank weapons Advanced British, known as NLAW.
Now run for the frontline positions trying to educate their mates on how to use them.
In many cases, he said, Ukrainian soldiers have learned to use certain weapons, including NLAWs, on their own, using online videos and practicing.
“But there are types of weapons that you can’t learn by intuition: surface-to-air missiles, artillery and some equipment,” Mykyta said.
“So we need formal courses,” he added.
Ukraine’s needs are palpable in the region where the Pysanka unit is rooted, just northeast of the Russian-occupied city of Kherson.
The area was the scene of a brief Ukrainian offensive last week that slowed as the retreating Russians destroyed a key bridge.
The Ukrainians’ lack of long-range artillery meant they could not attempt to cross a difficult river in pursuit, Ukrainian military officials said.
For Pysanka’s weapons team, the only instructor available for the laser rangefinder is a soldier who has fallen behind the last unit and took the time to translate most of the 104-page instruction manual.
But it’s still trial and error as they figure out what combination of buttons does what, looking for ad hoc solutions to solve the lack of a mounting tripod and a video monitor (both are announced in the instruction manual).
“If you work long distances by holding it in your hand, you can sometimes pass inaccurate figures,” Pysanka said.
“It is safer,” he added, “to work when the team is positioned on the tripod facing the enemy and the operator is working with the monitor covered.”
The JIM LR, manufactured by the French company Safran, looks like a cross between a virtual reality headset and traditional binoculars and can be used in conjunction with a map application on a tablet that Ukrainian troops use to call for help. artillery attacks.
Weighing in at about 2.7 pounds, it is much smaller than the US-supplied 4-1 / 2-tonne M777 howitzer that recently reached the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
But both teams have complexities that are reminiscent of the complications that arise when supplying foreign material to an army.
The M777 is highly mobile and capable of long-range firing, but training has been a bottleneck in howitzer deployment, Ukrainian officials say.
In the week-long courses in Germany, the United States trained the soldiers shoot the gun and others to hold it.
But an oversight nearly delayed all weapon maintenance on hard-to-reach front lines, Ukrainian officials said.
The whole M777 machine is assembled in the imperial system used in the United States, which means using a metric key The Ukrainian in it would be difficult and risk damaging the equipment.
Only after shipping the weapons did the United States organize an urgent shipment of toolboxes with imperial-caliber keys, said Maj. Vadim Baranik, deputy commander of a maintenance unit.
But tools can be lost, misplaced, or destroyed, which could render the weapons unusable unless someone searches for a US-supplied wrench.
And the JIM LR, capable of displaying highly accurate target data, provides the information, known as grid coordinates, in a widely used NATO format that Pysanka must convert to the Soviet-era coordinate system used on NATO maps. .
Those little bumps in speed and chance of error add up, especially when you’re under the stress of a Russian artillery barrage.
For now, Pysanka is focused on learning the rangefinder. In their small part of the war, the weapons and equipment provided by the West are limited to a small number of anti-tank rockets and first aid kits.
“We can’t boast of the same kind of resources that are found in the east,” said Maj. Roman Kovalyov, deputy unit commander overseeing the Pysanka weapons post.
“What Ukraine gets, we can only see on television. But we believe that sooner or later it will appear here ”.
The report was provided by Andrew E. Kramer of Kramatorsk, Ukraine, and Eric Schmitt of Washington State.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalia Yermak
Source: Clarin
