I spent 24 hours in the most dangerous desert on earth while the United States Marines and their biggest gun, the M777 Howitzer, fired round after round in the heat of the day and throughout the night. They literally brightened up the night sky for hours with parachutes and candles. And I'm gonna take you behind the scenes and show the A to Z of what I experienced.
Like the unusual tools and unique equipment that you've probably never seen before. The various types of ammunition, how they're prepped before shooting and learning how they lifted the rounds to see if I could do the same. The different methods of transporting the gun and what it actually takes to set it up and operate it safely and efficiently.
And that's just the tip of the barrel. But why is there a fever gauge hidden inside the propellant charges? How can artillery rounds be programmed to avoid friendly fire?
Why is the lanyard that's used to pull the trigger sometimes short and sometimes very long? And why artillery rounds go shorter when fired at night is not what you think! The M777 is insanely loud, making it the only alarm clock that you'd never need to snooze.
The sound level meter that I brought with me, though, was useless and couldn't handle the peak sound levels of the gun, which can reach up to 183 decibels near the muzzle. Thus loud enough to easily damage your hearing, which is why everyone was wearing hearing protection. The thing is, traditional earplugs can make it hard for the crew to communicate with each other.
That's why Marines use "Peltons". At first glance, "Peltons" look like regular earmuffs, but they have built in electronics which blocks the deafening sound of gunfire while conveniently allowing the crew's voices to come through clearly. But wait, how did this gun get here?
It's not like it just fell out of the sky. Or is it? The fastest way to transport the M777 is via air.
The Marine Corps can accomplish this with the help of helicopters like the CH53 or an Osprey tiltrotor. Aside from its speedy delivery, air transport also allows Marines to get the gun to locations that are otherwise difficult or impossible to get to from the ground. So the M777 can sometimes fall out of the sky quite gently, however.
But by far the most common transportation method is towing the M777 by a prime mover, which is a truck that pulls the gun and also carries the Marines their personal equipment and a limited amount of ammunition. That said, the driver is not the person who decides where the gun would go. .
. That's the job of a scout that goes out to survey the area and find an appropriate spot that would accommodate one or more guns. Then one person from each gun crew goes out and marks the exact area for their gun by sticking a post into the ground.
This way, when the entourage of guns arrive, each driver knows where to go exactly. Upon arrival, the crew waste no time. The first order of priority is disconnecting the gun from the prime mover so that they can push the 4.
2 ton howitzer into position. The M777 crew is typically made up of seven Marines and could even operate with a minimum of five. But the more marines you have, the easier it would be to set up and operate the gun.
Next, the crew ensures that this doesn't happen. . .
That was, of course, on frozen ground in Ukraine, but you get the idea. So they pick up a shovel and start digging. They need to dig two deep holes to drop in the gun's two legs.
So when the gun fires for the first time, the legs would be driven into the ground. This prevents the gun from moving backwards with each consecutive shot. The next step is to set up a net over the gun and the supporting vehicles.
. . But this net does a lot more than just providing camouflage.
It creates shade. And as you're about to see, controlling the temperature of the rounds and the charges can make the difference between hitting the target accurately and not being able to shoot the gun at all. This is why everyone is working pretty hard to get the shade set up and secured to the ground.
Well, almost everyone! If you peel off the red sticker that's on the propellant charges, you can see a thermometer hidden inside. This thermometer plays a big role in targeting accuracy.
See, the charge is what explodes inside the barrel and propels the round. . .
But at the time of detonation, a hotter propellant charge would burn slightly faster than a colder propellant charge. And even though we're talking about a difference in milliseconds or even less, that's enough variance to change the trajectory of the round. For this reason, Marines regularly take temperature measurements of the propellant charges and report it back to the FDC.
This is so that the fire direction center, or FDC, can take the propellant temperature into consideration when providing directions on where the gun should be exactly aimed at. In fact, there is a sensor built into the gun which measures the muzzle velocity of the M777. This data helps the FDC with calibrating the gun as it fires its first rounds during each mission.
In addition to the propellant, you, also don't want to let the rounds get too hot. . .
Handling a hot metal object is tricky, but marines wear gloves for that reason. The real problem with hot rounds is that they can get stuck inside the barrel. See this?
It's a sleeve at the bottom of each round. It protects the driving band from getting dirty or damaged and is removed before the round is used. This band bites into the rifling grooves that are inside the barrel of the gun, and that's what makes the round spin, which stabilizes it in flight.
But if the round gets too hot, the metal will expand, and it's possible for it to jam the gun. But none of this would matter if the crew isn't able to operate the gun. Here at "Twentynine Palms", summers can get so hot that you could fry an egg by just cracking it on a metal surface.
And not to scare you, but this place is in the middle of the desert, home to scorpions, rattlesnakes, and the most dangerous of them all, unexploded ordnance, which I think makes it the most dangerous desert in the world. We actually had to undergo a basic desert survival training, which taught me three important things. .
. First, drink lots of water, which is why I brought my "CamelBak". .
. Second, don't put anything like a backpack on the ground, because the animals that I mentioned earlier would love to take cover under its shade. And third, don't pick up anything shiny because it could be unexploded ordnance.
In fact, metal scrappers illegally enter the base and risk collecting these shells. And more often than not, their picture ends up on this board after they get caught. This is the ammunition truck.
. . Inside the ammo truck, you typically find three types of ammunition.
High explosive rounds are the ones used to destroy targets. Illumination rounds can light up the sky at night. Talk more about it when we get to the nighttime operations.
And white phosphorus rounds, which are used to generate smoke or an incendiary effect. Each 155mm high explosive round weighs 103. 5 pounds, or 47kg.
. . That doesn't sound super heavy, but the long and cylindrical shape of these rounds make it difficult to move them around.
One marine demonstrated for us how to pick up a shell, and he made it look easy because even though I picked it up without a problem, I found walking around with it to be very uncomfortable. And considering that during training or combat, crew members lift and load these rounds dozens or even hundreds of times in a single session, it was honestly very impressive and humbling to see them toss around these rounds like it was nothing. Interestingly, the ammunition truck doesn't always carry the same amount of firepower.
The capacity depends on two things. One is the distance from the target, and the other is the mix of ammo that's required for the mission. See, the farther the target, the longer the round has to travel to get to it.
And that demands more propellant charges per round fired. So a mission that's targeting a farther point on the grid Would require more propellant charges. The thing is, the charges take up a good amount of space Inside the ammo truck.
And having more charges leaves less room on the truck to carry the rounds, and this inevitably results in less firepower. Of course, when an M777 battery gets low on ammunition, the battalion command nodes handle all the logistics for an ammunition resupply train to deliver more rounds and charges to the batteries and munition trucks. The other thing that can restrict the capacity of the ammo truck Is when a mix of different rounds Are required for a particular mission.
For example, white phosphorus and high explosive rounds Must be transported on two different truck beds for safety reasons. . .
The only ammunition type that marines are allowed to mix with white phosphorus rounds is Pringle. By the way, that hook at the tip of each round Is called a plug, and it is quite useful for handling the shell during the manufacturing process. But before the shell can be fired, the plug has to be unscrewed and replaced with a fuse, which comes in many different types.
This is a point detonating fuse, which, as the name suggests, detonates on impact. The fuse is initially screwed in by hand, but to make sure that it's tight enough, Marines use a simple tool that fits over the grooves on the two sides of the fuse. And then they just need to give it a couple of nice taps.
If the fuse can't be easily opened by hand, it's ready to be fired. This one is a time fuse where you could set the number of seconds after which the charge would trigger the explosion of the round. Even though there is a way to manually set the time on each fuse, marines use this artillery fuse setter when they have to program many fuses.
This tool can be configured for different fuse types as needed. And then all you have to do is place it on top of the fuse. And at the push of a button, the fuse is programmed using induction.
Once the FDC sends in the firing data, the gunner and assistant gunner take care of aiming the gun, which can be elevated between 0 and 71. 7 degrees. This is accomplished by Cranking the wheels that are on either side of the gun.
I definitely wanted to give it a try and things started pretty good. But I got really exhausted really quickly. My heart rate was through the roof and I had to let someone else take over.
Once the aim is set, a round is brought over by one Marine and then rammed into the breach with the help of another. . .
Someone else loads one or more propellant charges based on FDC's direction, and then the breach is closed. The lanyard is then hooked in. The section chief who's supervising the rest of the crew gives the order and the lanyard is pulled.
This makes for a really bad day for those on the receiving end. The lanyard is then unhooked for obvious safety reasons. The breech door is then opened and the same Marine that had previously loaded in the propellant charge now uses a bucket of water and a swab to remove any hot embers that might be inside the tube.
This also prevents the buildup of carbon after each round is fired. The next round is brought over and the sequence is repeated. A well trained crew can fire one round every 12 seconds.
But how accurate are these artillery guns? When shooting at a target that's 15 kilometers away, a typical 155mm round could land up to 95 meters away from the bullseye. And that margin of error increases as the target gets farther away.
But that's if you use a dumb fuse. The alternative is course correcting smart fuses that use GPS to improve targeting accuracy. Like the M11156 Precision Guidance Kit, or PGK.
If you shoot at a target that's 30km away using a smart round, the error will be reduced from 257 meters to just 50 meters an improvement of more than five folds. Plus course correcting fuses only have a fraction of the cost of precision guided artillery rounds like the Excalibur, with a price tag of $100,000. And cherry on top, a PGK fuse would prevent friendly fire and reduce collateral damage.
That's because you can program them to only explode if the round lands within a designated target area. That's not the sun. But two illumination rounds can make a huge difference at night.
And this was the coolest part of my experience. Direct fire at night. At times, it really felt like I was in a warzone with illumination rounds that would light up the sky for two minutes.
And thanks to my zoom camera, we could capture the parachute that deploys and provides the extended hang time for the flare. Without illumination, you could only see a silhouette of the mountains. Here it is with illumination rounds.
And here are night vision goggles for comparison. Even though I was a newbie, I wasn't the only one who was captivated by the view. It was gorgeous.
We even caught a shooting star on camera. But then it was time. Direct fire is much more risky to the crew than indirect fire.
That's because the barrel of the gun is pretty much parallel to the ground. And with a kill radius of 230ft, you, don't want to be too close to the gun. But that didn't stop me.
I mean, it's not every day that I get to stand next to an M777 and see the rounds land and explode in front of me. Interestingly, these shots being fired at night are not going as far as they otherwise would if this was daylight. And that's for two reasons.
The air is colder at night, which makes it more dense. And this creates more friction as the round travels through the air. For the same reason, the round would not go as far if it was raining.
In addition, since the propellant charges are also colder at night, they burn a tad more slowly, and that means slightly less range. But whatever you do, never push a howitzer past its limits, because it can backfire on you. An M777 can last between three to five years.
The first thing to wear out are the electronics like the screen, Then the mechanics like the recoil system, and then the barrel itself. But the gun's breech is the very last thing to wear out and in fact, has a lifespan of about five barrels. Also, if you fire many rounds back to back, the barrel heats up, which is why it's important to pay attention to the barrel's thermal warning device.
You should never fire the gun when it's red, except for in a combat emergency. One M777 crew in Ukraine claims to have changed the barrel four times in order to fire 6,000 rounds from their gun. But if the gun isn't maintained properly, it can put the life of the crew in danger.
This is why longer lanyards are sometimes used in Ukraine. And yes, you can buy them on ebay. This way, the person pulling the trigger can stand farther away from the gun in case the barrel explodes.
In this business, mistakes can be fatal. And that's why marines train in some of the harshest conditions possible. And they're not alone.
More than a dozen allied nations also regularly come to the Marine Corps' combat center at Twentynine Palms because of the realistic training environment that it offers. And now you've seen it, too. So if you like this high caliber video, make sure to subscribe for more!
