A military theorist once wrote “the backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy” — an idea that perfectly describes the capabilities of the Hawkeye Mobile Howitzer System (MHS). The Hawkeye MHS is made by AM General, the same company that created the Humvee.
A howitzer is a type of artillery weapon that is generally towed and then mounted onto a vehicle. The Hawkeye MHS is a “shoot-and-scoot” solution that eliminates the need to tow a howitzer by building directly into a vehicle. This gives operators the ability to deploy and redeploy with both speed and secrecy.
“So it’s one single unit,” Capt. James Brock of the Illinois Army National Guard said. “You don’t have to displace the howitzer, or unhook the Howitzer from the vehicle in order to fire the Howitzer. So it’s a little bit of a time saver.”
The Army has tested the MHS for several years but has yet to sign off on it. However, that could change depending on recent events.
Mike Evans, the director of AM General’s Soft Recoil Technologies and Fires Programs, told people at the U.S. Field Artillery Association’s Fires Symposium that the howitzer Hawkeye may play a role in Ukraine’s war against Russia’s invasion.
“We recently put a 105 system into Ukraine,” Evans said. “We shipped it on [April 26]. It was received in Ukraine on [May 2]. We trained it for two weeks, they immediately went into testing and that systems destined to be one of the first soft recoil systems in combat. So it’s moving very quickly.”
The Hawkeye MHS is equipped with a soft recoil system and said to generally fire three rounds per minute. It can safely fire up to eight rounds per minute for three minutes. As for the range of fire, if it is equipped with the extended-range rocket-assisted M913, it can hit targets up to 12 miles away.
In a May 2019 interview, Brock said that kind of performance is one artillery can get behind.
“The soldiers were obviously excited,” Brock said. “I mean, anytime you get an opportunity to work on any other howitzer system … if it’s different, but it still goes boom and it’s loud. They’re always excited to try out a new weapon system.”
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