The NATO summit which opened on Tuesday in Madrid, Spain, officially invited Sweden and Finland to join the military alliance. North of Helsinki, franceinfo was able to share a few hours with the first artillery force in Europe, the Parolannummi Armored Brigade.
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It is in the huge Parolannummi camp, an hour’s drive north of Helsinki, that Finland trains its gunners, particularly on the most recently acquired weapon systems, such as the K9 howitzer.
Lieutenant Hendrick of the armored howitzer battery makes the introductions: “Meet the K9 Thunder, one of our heavy guns. It is central in our defense because it is self-propelled. In motion, it takes us a minute to put the weapon in battery and less than a minute after the shot for it to start again…“
Of K9s – the equivalent of the French Caesar cannon but mounted on tracks – Finland has 58 of them and should eventually have a hundred. But this is only a fraction of its artillery force, which totals nearly 1,500 weapon systems. To be compared, for example, with the 260 artillery pieces of the French army.
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Why so many guns in Finland? This is the result of the country’s geography, explains Major Juuso Welin, responsible for Finnish howitzer training. “We live in a very large country for our small population, so to protect it we need long-range weapons. Artillery has long been the only way to solve this equation at a reasonable cost.“, he specifies.
It should also be said that Helsinki shares a border of 1300 km with a Russia which already tried to invade it in 1939 and against which it prepared and armed. “To counter firepower, you need equivalent firepower. And we have developed capabilities that can respond to the threats around us“, warns Juuso Welin.
Stalin had nicknamed the artillery the “God of the war” and swore by it. Nearly a century later, things haven’t changed much, Lt. Hendrick remarks: “If we look at what is happening in Ukraine in recent weeks, how they are fighting, it is clear that the artillery is still the queen of the battlefield.“Indeed: today, the Russian offensive in the Ukrainian Donbass is above all an artillery battle. And the Finnish army is undoubtedly the best equipped in Europe to counter this type of attack.