France announces the dispatch of 12 additional CAESARs to Ukraine

In an interview given to Europe1 radio, the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sebastien Lecornu, announced that France was going to send 12 new CAESAR artillery systems to Ukraine, while several tens of millions of euros will be released to maintain and renovate the CAESAR systems already in service within the armies of Kyiv, and which have been intensively used since their arrival in April 2022 (12 copies), then at the end of June (6 copies). The new systems are financed by the $200 million fund set up by Paris to enable the Ukrainian armies to order defense equipment from French manufacturers. For the time being, the timetable for sending these systems has not been revealed, nor the exact source of the equipment, if they are directly produced by Nexter, or if they will be taken from the Army fleet. of land before being replaced by new equipment. At the same time, France will deploy 150 French soldiers in Poland to train 600 Ukrainian soldiers per month.

The announcement of the dispatch of the new CAESARs will probably allow Paris to come out on top of the controversy which is swelling over the delivery of Leclerc tanks, or even Mirage 2000s to Kyiv. As we discussed a few months ago, sending French Leclerc tanks to Ukraine would be a very damaging decision, the Army only having a small number of these tanks, which are otherwise complex to implement and maintain, while no industrial capacity could replace these armored vehicles does not exist in the country. At the same time, the dispatch of Western combat aircraft, Mirage 2000 like F-16, is for the time being deemed out of the question by Washingtonn, probably for questions of risk of escalation from Moscow, whether in Ukraine by increasing strikes against civilian targets, or outside this theater, whether by clandestine actions or by the instrumentation of tensions as in Iran.

The delivery of 12 additional French CAESARs will provide the Ukrainian armies with a fleet of 29 of these 6×6 self-propelled guns combining significant mobility, a range greater than that of Russian systems and equipped with high precision, whereas in at the same time, Denmark announced that it would sell its 19 CAESAR 8×8 to Kyiv, and Stockholm the shipment of Archer systems. These 3 artillery systems not only share a common caliber of 155 mm and great mobility thanks to the 6×6 or 8×8 carrier trucks, but also a 52 caliber tube (52 times the caliber of the weapon, therefore 8,06, 40 meters), giving them an extension of 50 km with shells with optimized range, and more than 10 km with shells with added thrust, 2 km more than the most powerful of the Russian systems, the 33SXNUMX Msta-SM, as well as superior accuracy with conventional shells, and the possibility of using advanced shells such as the GPS-guided Excalibur or the Franco-Swedish anti-tank Bonus.

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