A video of Ukrainian troops fighting at night is making the rounds on Twitter. An M777 gun is taking out a Russian tank. Instead of using a sling or a five-ton BAE FMTV truck to move it, they found the closest machine and told it to do the job. In this case, it is a 6.0-liter Power Stroke diesel Ford Super Duty. Even though I’ve spent a lot of time around diesel pickup trucks, I’m not an expert on war. Everyone who has used a 6.0-liter Ford says it is a mixed bag for efficiency, which would be very important in this situation. Think about what would happen if the head gasket on your tow truck broke while you were in the middle of a well-planned operation. A six-oh would go through exactly that. Strangely, “bulletproofing” is a set of changes made to Power Stroke pickups from 2003 to 2007. The water pump must be changed, an engine oil cooler and an EGR cooler must be put in, the stock head gasket must be replaced, and new head studs must be put in. These changes often fix or eliminate the most common problems with the 6.0-liter, which can turn sour very quickly. In this case, prayer has yet to be done. Even though it looks like a lot of weight for a car that regular people can buy, the M777 is less heavy than its predecessor. BAE Systems says it weighs less than 10,000 pounds, while its predecessor, the M198, weighed more than 15,500 pounds. When I called The War Zone’s assistant editor, Joseph Trevithick, he mostly agreed. “The M777 was made to be very light for a 155mm howitzer on purpose,” he said. This is what the program for making the Lightweight 155mm Howitzer (LW155) was called. Because of this, the M777 has a much lower maximum rating than an F-350 and a lower maximum pulling capacity than a diesel F-250. It’s hard to tell from the video which truck this is. In either case, these pieces of weapons should be pulled by workhorses with air brakes. Simply put, this is only sometimes possible during the war. You’ll notice that this thing has a strange carriage and is pulled by the end of the barrel. This is different from most cannons and artillery pieces, which have a big gun on a carriage with a trail or a split trail. Since I’ve never been in the service that got my attention, it just attaches to the pintle hitch on the Super Duty. That makes a lot of sense. When the job is done, the men are shown getting back into the Ford and driving along a gravel road while pulling a part of the team in the truck bed. It might have seemed strange, but anything goes in a fight like the one in Ukraine.
