NGRNEuropean NATO armies are quietly rewriting the rules of tube artillery. Under the pressure of Ukraine’s drone-saturated, counter-battery dominated battlefield, the classic image of a large gun crew around a towed howitzer is being replaced by compact, highly automated weapon systems with minimal crews, long-range precision munitions and deep integration into digital C4ISR networks.
A new generation of 155 mm systems — Germany’s RCH 155, Italy’s RH1-155/52 Hitfire, Sweden’s ARCHER, the Czech DITA, Slovakia’s EVA/EVA M2 and the German-Spanish DONAR/NEMESIS — offers a good snapshot of where European artillery is heading.
From gun crews to robotic fire units
The most striking trend is radical automation and the move towards unmanned turrets. Systems such as RCH 155, DITA, DONAR/NEMESIS and RH1-155/52 Hitfire place the entire gun, loader and ammunition handling system in a fully automated, crewless module.
Crews are reduced to two or three soldiers seated in an armoured cab, operating the weapon via digital fire-control consoles. Loading, fuze programming, laying and firing are handled by robotic mechanisms. This brings several advantages that are now decisive in a high-intensity war:
- fewer soldiers exposed and lower casualties when a battery is hit;
- shorter and simpler training pipelines;
- higher sustainable rate of fire over long periods;
- clear growth path towards semi-autonomous or fully unmanned artillery nodes.
In effect, these systems are no longer “self-propelled guns” in the classic sense, but robotic fire units under human supervision.
Surviving drones and counter-battery fire
Modern counter-battery radars and ubiquitous UAVs mean that any gun staying on a firing position for more than a few tens of seconds risks immediate retaliation by artillery, loitering munitions or FPV swarms.
European industry is responding in two ways:
- Extreme shoot-and-scoot: Platforms such as ARCHER, DITA and EVA/EVA M2 are optimised for very rapid occupation of a fire position, automated laying, a short, intense burst of fire (often in MRSI mode) and immediate displacement. ARCHER, for example, can arrive, fire a multi-round salvo and be moving again in well under a minute.
- Fire on the move: RCH 155, DONAR/NEMESIS and Italy’s new RH1-155/52 Hitfire go a step further, aiming to deliver accurate fire while the vehicle is moving, with 360° arcs of fire. Sophisticated recoil management, stabilisation and secure robotic ammunition handling allow genuine “gun tank” behaviour — the artillery system behaves more like a manoeuvring armoured fighting vehicle than a static battery.
Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact (MRSI) is becoming a baseline feature. By varying propellant charges and elevation, these systems can deliver several rounds onto the same target at almost exactly the same moment, achieving the effect of a battery from a single platform and minimising time exposed on position.
Range, precision and the 70 km class
Another clear convergence is around extended-range, precision-guided 155 mm munitions. The new systems are all designed from the outset to exploit the latest JBMoU-standard shells:
- conventional ERFB/BB projectiles in the 35–40 km band;
- precision-guided ammunition such as M982 Excalibur;
- very-long-range rounds such as Vulcano BER/GLR and V-LAP/RAP designs reaching 50–70 km.
RCH 155, DONAR/NEMESIS and RH1-155/52 Hitfire are explicitly engineered as carriers for this 70 km-class ammunition, with automated fuze programming and fire-control algorithms tailored to long-range precision engagements.
ARCHER has already demonstrated the operational relevance of combining high automation with Excalibur-class rounds, functioning as a deep-fire asset bridging the gap between conventional tube artillery and tactical missiles.
Wheeled mobility with armoured protection
European designers are also reshaping the mobility balance between tracked and wheeled platforms.
Highly protected 8×8 wheeled chassis — Boxer for RCH 155, Tatra for DITA and EVA, VBM Plus for Hitfire, and Volvo A30D for ARCHER — offer:
- strategic and operational mobility (90–100 km/h on roads, 600–700 km range);
- lower through-life costs and easier logistics than heavy tracked SPGs;
- protection levels approaching that of infantry fighting vehicles, including mine and IED resistance.
In parallel, DONAR/NEMESIS on the ASCOD family demonstrate that for heavy brigades and difficult terrain, a fully automated tracked solution still has a clear role, bringing higher cross-country performance and armour. The common Artillery Gun Module (AGM) shared with RCH 155 underlines a modular philosophy: the same automated gun can be tailored to wheeled or tracked fleets as doctrine requires.
Digital, networked and drone-enabled
All of these systems have been conceived as nodes in a wider, digital kill-chain rather than as stand-alone guns. They feature:
- integrated INS/GNSS navigation and automatic gun-laying;
- digital fire-control systems compatible with NATO C2 and artillery fire-support networks;
- seamless data exchange with UAVs, counter-battery radars and ground reconnaissance;
- health-monitoring and diagnostics for predictive maintenance.
Italian Hitfire explicitly adopts a NATO Generic Vehicle Architecture-style digital backbone and C5I integration; ARCHER, RCH 155 and DONAR/NEMESIS are designed from the outset to plug into national and alliance-wide C4ISR environments.
On today’s drone-centric battlefield, this networked approach is as important as gun performance itself. The time from first detection by a UAV to impact can be reduced to minutes — or less — only if sensors, command systems and artillery platforms share a common digital language.
Case study: Ukraine as a live laboratory
Ukraine has become the first operational user of RCH 155, receiving the system even before the Bundeswehr. It will be the place where many of these concepts are tested under the harshest possible conditions: dense UAV inventories on both sides, pervasive electronic warfare, powerful Russian counter-battery capabilities and the constant threat of FPV and loitering munitions.
The way RCH 155 and similar systems perform there — in terms of survivability, tempo, integration with drone reconnaissance and digital command systems — is likely to shape NATO and EU artillery requirements for the 2030s.
Towards the artillery of the 2030s
Taken together, this new family of European 155 mm systems illustrates a coherent shift in artillery design philosophy:
- minimal crews in protected cabs, unmanned turrets above;
- maximum automation of the entire fire cycle;
- extreme shoot-and-scoot and, increasingly, fire on the move;
- long-range, precision-guided ammunition as the norm, not the exception;
- modular wheeled and tracked platforms tuned to doctrine and terrain;
- deep integration into digital, drone-enabled kill-chains.
In short, European industry is building artillery not for the last war, but for a drone-centric, multi-domain battlespace in which survivability, connectivity and precision matter as much as calibre and barrel length.