Putin must have thought he'd seen it all from Ukraine, but it's only getting worse for Russia's soldiers on the battlefield. The US built one of the most powerful weapons in the world, and Ukraine is now crushing Russia's soldiers with it. Without any real fanfare, Ukraine has just casually added one of the world's most fearsome artillery guns to its arsenal, and it's made all of Russia's weapons useless. Ukraine itself never expected this. Russia had no idea it was coming. But thanks to what the US created decades ago, Ukraine now has a devastating weapon that it can use to end Russia's war. The weapon in question is the 203 millimeter M110 self-propelled howitzer, which has been given to the 52nd artillery brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. That's according to United 24 Media, which says that the brigade itself has confirmed the arrival of the weapon, and noted that it's slotting in nicely alongside domestically made Ukraine in artillery that is shattering Russia's spring offensive. Our equipment includes the 2S-22 Badana self-propelled howitzer, RM-70 vampire multiple launch rocket systems, and the 203 millimeter M110A. The 52nd casually announced in a social media post on April 2nd, almost making the M110 seem like an afterthought. It isn't. And you're going to find out why the arrival of this powerful artillery gun in Ukraine is going to force a shift on the battlefield very soon. First, the question has to be asked, how did Ukraine manage to get its hands on M110 howitzer's at all? This is a cold war era weapon that the US military has officially retired, so you would think that there will be no chance that Ukraine could get it. However, a retired weapon doesn't necessarily equate to an obsolete one, and the origins of the M110s that are now in Ukraine can be traced back to a deal made in October 2025. That's when Army Recognition reported that Greece had approved the transfer of 60 of its US-made artillery systems to Ukraine, along with 150,000 of the shells the system needs, and some zoony rockets in a deal believed to be valued at 199.4 million euros or a little under $230 million. The artillery and ammo were set to make their way to Ukraine via the Czech Republic, and the systems would make their way to Ukraine's sons any modifications or refurbishment. That may make it seem like Greece was getting the better of the deal, but that isn't the case at all. Ukraine, this deal meant that it was getting its hands on a large number of artillery systems that have long been a specter on the battlefield for any force that has come up against it. The M110 howitzer may not be modern or ultra-clever, but what it can do is to live a massive amount of firepower very quickly as part of a war that in many ways feels like a time capsule of how battles were fought decades, rather than the sort of conventional conflict you might expect to see in modern times. More may also be coming to Ukraine, Army recognition notes that the Greek armed forces have operated the M110A2 since the early 1980s, and that it held approximately 145 units of the artillery system before the announcement of the transfer of 60 of those units to Ukraine. For decades, the system has been Greece's long-range artillery solution, though it has become surplus to requirements as Greece modernizes to the standard 155-millimeter NATO systems. But Ukraine, that modernization represented an opportunity to get its hands on the powerful artillery that can shatter Russian defenses and cripple troops as they attempt to launch attacks. So it was a good deal all round, and it looks even better for Ukraine when you see the breakdown of shells that have been packaged along with the 60 howitzes. United 24 media says that Ukraine has received 50,000 high explosive M106 rounds as part of the deal, along with 40,000 rocket-assisted M650 rounds, and 30,000 each of the M509A1 dual-purpose cluster munitions and M404 improved conventional munitions that were made for the M110 later in its service life. This means that the howitzes that Ukraine has received will be versatile as well as powerful, and that's only going to make them more useful to Ukraine on the battlefield. Before we get to how, another question has to be answered, could Ukraine get its hands on more M110 howitzes now that it has this initial batch? The answer seems to be yes, if Army recognitions claims about Greece's stockpiles are accurate. There should be another 85 M110s that Greece could transfer, though this assumes that the howitzes that Greece has left are in a good enough state of repair for them to be useful to Ukraine. We'll have to wait and see if any more deals can be struck that would allow Greece to profit from a system that it sees as obsolete, but that Ukraine could use to cause serious damage to a Russian military that is largely fighting the Ukraine war as though it's stuck in the 1950s. But the bigger question lies in whether Ukraine will be able to get its hands on the M110s from the United States. After all, this is an American weapon, there is an initiative in place that allows NATO nations to buy weapons from the US that are then delivered to Ukraine. The prioritized Ukraine requirements list or pearl could be the key to Ukraine getting its hands on more of these howitzes, assuming they prove useful enough on the battlefield Ukraine to want even more of them. Ukraine's NATO allies have been making good use of pearls so far. As of December 2025, they had funded more than $4 billion in packages for Ukraine via pearl, which is a clever concept that sees Ukraine denote what it needs in military aid so that it can be delivered directly to the front lines by way of purchases from the US. With pearl, Ukraine gets to dictate where the military aid it receives goes, rather than hoping that its allies contribute weapons that it will find useful. So pearl could be the route taken to the US stockpiles of M110 howitzes, but there may not be any explosive presence at the end of that route. According to D.Gaal, the US did produce 1,100 M110 howitzes after first introducing the weapon in 1963. The same outlet also notes that the system is somewhat active in various countries such as Turkey, Spain, Bahrain, Morocco and Jordan along with Greece. A couple of those are countries that could feasibly provide some of their howitzes to Ukraine, such as Spain especially. But as for the US, D.Gaal makes the contradictory claim that the M110 is both active in the US military and that it was retired in the 1990s, leaving only the M109 as America's self-propelled howitzer option. Attends the question into what happened to those 1,100 M110s. We know the answer for at least some, as real clear defense notes that the 1990s saw the US use spent M110 barrels as makeshift casings of GPU-28 bunker-busting bombs that were used in the Gulf War against Iraq's military. But that doesn't tell us whether there are still M110s lying around in America's stockpiles, only without barrels, or if the US scrapped the artillery units themselves, in the process of extracting the barrels. If it's the former, perhaps Ukraine could get its hands on what's left of America's M110s and then build barrels for the howitzers. The Czech initiative, through which Greece sold its M110s to Ukraine, might be able to help out with that, though this is admittedly a speculative idea that relies on the US still having some M110s and, as crucially, being willing to sell them to Ukraine via PURL. Let's move away from the ifs and maybes and look at something more important. The arrival of the M110 howitzer and Ukraine could lead to key shifts happening in the portions of the front lines where the weapon is deployed. That alone changes these weapons from Cold War era relics to game changes. Before we dive deeper into that, you are watching The Military Show. If you're getting value from the channel, remember to subscribe so you always stay ahead of the curve. Now, what does the M110 bring to Ukraine? For a start, it delivers the sort of firepower that Ukraine has been missing on the artillery front for much of the war with Russia. This isn't to say that Ukraine had no artillery firepower, but the M110 it now has brings several flavors of devastation for Russia's forces. Every shell fired by the M110 delivers 90 kilograms or about 198 pounds of explosive force to a target, and with the help of rocket assisted munitions, which we know Ukraine has received from Greece, but firepower can travel for up to 30 kilometers or about 18.6 miles to whatever Ukraine needs to explode. This strength is combined with mobility as the M110 is loaded onto a track chassis with a 405 horsepower engine, allowing Ukraine to move, strike and move again so it can cover a wide portion of the battlefield than it will be able to hit with immobile artillery. There is a sacrifice that Ukraine has to make for this firepower though. Army recognition notes that each M110 has to be crewed by a total of 13 personnel. 5 of whom operate the M110's vehicle, with the rest following up in a cargo carrier that holds the shells used in operation. That's a pretty large troop commitment, and it explains why the M110s that Ukraine has are being rolled out specifically to artillery brigades. Those crews get their hands on a gun that elevates between minus 2 and 65 degrees, the same outlet points out, and is traversable 30 degrees left and right. The M110 also has manual backup controls that can be used if it's hydraulics fail, so Ukraine will have to train its crews to use those. Speed could also be an issue, the M110 typically fires one round every two minutes, though it can allegedly reach two rounds per minute during periods of intense fire against the enemy. That assumes the weapon can be reloaded quickly enough as it only carries two rounds, though the M110 isn't a perfect weapon by any means, but it hits hard enough for the sacrifices that Ukraine has to make to use it seem almost irrelevant. The M110 is the equivalent of the haymaker being delivered behind the rapid jabs that Ukraine fires at Russian positions with its smaller and faster how it sits, and this combination of firepower is another key factor, and why the M110 will be a game changer, as you'll soon find out. Before we get to that, there's also the price to consider. Yes, the M110 is old equipment, at least compared to a lot of what Ukraine receives from its western alloys, but there's a good reason why Ukraine paid money for 60 of them rather than insisting that Greece donates its old artillery units. Just on rounds alone, the $230 million that Ukraine spent works out to a little over $1,500 per powerful round, and that would assume that Ukraine got the 60 M110s themselves for free. It didn't. They have to be included in the price, so $230 million has brought Ukraine a lot of firepower at a very cheap price. According to Defense Express, Greece priced each of the M110s that it sold to Ukraine at 520,000 euros, or about $599,000. Multiply that by 60, you get about $35.9 million for the how it sits. That in turn brings Ukraine's cost per shell down to under $1,300, or Ukraine has to do is hit a few tanks and troop gatherings with its M110s, and the artillery has practically paid for itself. That sort of return on investment is huge for a country that is facing major financial difficulties caused by four years of war with Russia. Those difficulties will be ease when Ukraine finally starts receiving the $105 billion loan that the European Union has committed to providing. The BBC since the first portion of this loan could arrive in Ukraine as early as April, though the government's plan to spend $112 billion in 2026 still leaves it short of around $45 billion. Anything that Ukraine can do to keep its own costs low while infecting maximum financial damage on Russia as a positive move, and the cheap M110s that Ukraine just received slide nicely into that strategy. Then there's the versatility that the M110 offers, and that's where things start to get serious for both Ukraine and Russia. The 52nd artillery brigade that has received the first batch of M110s is getting a weapon that perfectly compliments the others that it brings to its artillery assaults against Russia's forces. The brigade already has the domestically produced bowdarner, which it can use to conduct precision strikes against Russian positions at long range, so this type of artillery is ideal for hitting command and control centers, ammunition depots, and other static targets in the near-rear that Russia relies on during its assaults against Ukraine's defenses. Also, part of the brigade's loadout is the RM-70 vampire, which is used for large fire missions against equipment and troop concentrations, making it the ideal choice for dealing with Russia's mechanized assaults. The M110 expands on this by delivering huge amounts of firepower to Ukraine's artillery brigade, mentioned earlier. With this US-made howitzer, the 52nd artillery brigade can now hit hardened and high-value targets at the RM-70 vampire can't take out. That frees up the bidana to hit targets at a deeper range than the M110 can manage, essentially creating a more layered approach to artillery than Ukraine had before. The vampire takes out the assaulting units and equipment. The M110 destroys hardened targets at the rear of those assaults, and the bidana ruins Russia's rear so that future assaults are weaker and even easier to pick apart. Right now, Ukraine's 52nd artillery brigade is carrying out missions in eastern Ukraine, where it's providing fire support and conducting counter-battery operations, militani reports. That brigade is also tackling Russia's logistics, which the M110s will be able to help with. Defense Express offers a few more details, noting that the brigade is currently operating in the Karkiv and Kramatorsk sectors, where M110s are likely already in combat. The latter of those two settlements is very important. Kramatorsk is one of the four large cities that make up the Donetsk Fortress Bill, which stretches about 50 kilometers or 31 miles along the H-20 Constantinivka Slaviyansk highway. Located in the north of that belt, that city needs to stand for as long as it possibly can so that Ukraine can use it to destroy Russian forces as they attempt to follow through on Putin's objective of snatching Donetsk and in turn the Donbas away from Ukraine. Kramatorsk was already a hellhole for invading Russian forces after Ukraine spent over a decade reinforcing its defenses in the wake of Russia's original campaign of aggression in 2014. Now that the M110s are on the field, any gathering of troops or hardened targets related to Russia's push to take the city is going to be dealing with immense amounts of firepower that they're not ready to handle. That covers how Ukraine is likely using its M110s right now, but it has 60 of these howits and it seems unlikely that the 52nd artillery brigade has all of them. More awaiting in the wings and the versatility that the M110 brings to the table due to its shell variety opens up plenty of other opportunities for Ukraine. Take Ukraine's kill zones as an example. These kill zones which stretch for miles and are infested with drones and other defenses are already tearing through Putin's forces. United 24Media does a good job of explaining why, as it reveals what a typical kill zone contains in a visual explainer piece that is horrifying to read if you're a Russian soldier. Each of these kill zones has both anti-tank and anti-personnel measures designed to ruin anything that tries to make its way through them. Beyond the drones, constantly patrolling the skies above, there are mines, anti-tank ditches, and dragons teeth that are in place to stop Russian armor in its tracks. Soldiers who try to penetrate on foot have to deal with miles of barbed wire. The drones and the networks of tunnels that Ukraine has built to facilitate ambushes against infiltrating Russian soldiers. What does any of this have to do with M110s? While Ukraine's kill zones absolutely deliver on their name, as they are filled with the meat and metal of Russian assaults all over the front lines. However, their secondary purpose is to make specific pieces of territory inaccessible to Russia's ground forces. Rather than going through, those forces have to go around. That's where artillery comes into play. Through clever implementation of its kill zones, Ukraine can funnel Russian soldiers into wide open spaces in the miles of territory between Russia's positions and the defenses that the country soldiers want to assault. That funneling leads to ambushes. Our artillery rains down shells while FPV drones fly around, ripping through armor and soldiers with abandon. Now imagine M110s firing shells weighing almost 200 pounds into these ambush points. Nothing that Russia sends on the ground would stand a chance. And that's what awaits in Russia's future as it launches its spring offensive against Ukraine. The already lethal kill zones have been made even more dangerous, as Ukraine has gotten its hands on aging equipment that can be made new again precisely because Russia's main tactic is just to send cannon fodder and occasionally armor the batter Ukraine's defenses. Such antiquated tactics make an older weapon like the M110 not just viable, but utterly destructive against the slow moving Russian offensive that has turned itself into the perfect prey for such a powerful predator. A Cold War Titan has been revitalized in Ukraine. If Russia wants to fight a war using ancient strategies, Ukraine now has a weapon that it can use to counteract Putin's tactics. And the odds are high that Ukraine will find interesting new ways to modernize its M110s, now that it has them. The country specializes in upgrading the Western equipment that it receives, and there is no better example than what Ukraine has been doing with its M1 Abrams tanks. You want to find out more? Watch our video that covers the upgrade that is so ingenious that even the US wants it. And if you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to the military show, so you see more of our coverage of the latest weapons that Ukraine deploys against Russia. And thank you as always for watching.