Russia will soon deploy its newest howitzers to its Northern Military District which borders Finland and Norway, the head of the Rostec state defense conglomerate said in remarks published on Wednesday.
The testing of the new Coalition-SV self-propelled artillery units has been completed and their mass production has already started, Sergei Chemezov, the head of Rostec told the state RIA news agency in an interview.
The first pilot batch will be delivered by the end of 2023, he said.
"I think they will appear there (in the Northern Military District) soon, since howitzers of this class are needed to provide an advantage over Western artillery models in terms of firing range," Chemezov said.
In 2021, Russia's President Vladimir Putin changed the status of the Russian Northern Fleet, whose zone of responsibility was chiefly the Russian Arctic, to the Northern Military District, incorporating into it also the Murmansk region, which shares borders with Finland and Norway.