70-Year-Old KS-19 on American MAN Truck: Improvised Gun Vehicle With “Sniper-Like” Precision
Ukrainian artillerymen have designed and implemented an unusual improvised weapon system: a KS-19 mounted on a retired MAN truck of the U.S. Army. This is one of the four KS-19 guns that the 111th Territorial Defense Brigade has received from decades-old storage, as journalists of the Ukrainian state-affiliated Rada TV channel explain.
The KS-19 is originally an anti-aircraft gun with ground attack capabilities. The Ukrainian unit, which operates on the Pokrovsk axis, eastern Ukraine, notes that such an improvised artillery system helps in repelling russian infantry assaults.
Mobility and careful disguise allow the artillery team to avoid return fire effectively. In the video report, as soon as the soldiers heard a potentially hostile drone flying nearby, they stopped firing and covered the makeshift howitzer with camouflage.
The gun is over 70 years old, the journalist notes. These systems were in service with the Soviet bloc countries post WWII but were eventually phased out by more effective air defense missiles. However, the demand for more artillery forced Ukrainians to roll their KS-19s out of dusted warehouses in 2023. These systems were observed in use with russian invasion forces as well.
Design-wise, KS-19 is very close to a conventional towed howitzer. Heavy 100mm rounds are loaded one by one manually, the variety of ammunition includes anti-armor piercing rounds. The rate of fire relies on agility of the crew, which totals 15 people, and can reach 15 rounds per minute if well-organized.
Against aerial targets, the maximum vertical range is 15 km; when used as a howitzer for indirect fire on ground targets, the horizontal range is 21 km. This makes the weapon vulnerable to drone attacks and counter-battery fire. Yet, the operators praise the system, mainly for its precision, referring to it as a “sniper rifle among artillery.”
The source of ammunition remains a mystery, though. Rare 100mm caliber rounds are not produced in Ukraine and are hard to come across abroad because of the age of this system. As News Hub noted in our previous article about a KS-19 mounted on Czech Tatra chassis, the shells could be supplied by one of the former operators of these systems, most likely candidates are Bulgaria, Poland, or the Czech Republic.
