Making best use of available equipment appears to be the thinking behind modifications turning Ethiopian Federal Defence Forces (FDF) armoured personnel carriers (APCs) into self-propelled artillery pieces.
Janes reports that some Chinese WZ551 APCs in service with the East African country’s military now carry 122 mm D-30 howitzers. An FDF photo released on 7 August shows the artillery pieces fitted to five vehicles, allowing operation by gunners standing in the troop compartment with a shield providing limited frontal protection.
It is unclear if the APCs have been fitted with adjustable stabilisers to prevent suspension damage by recoil, the publication reports.
Ethiopia is believed to have about 20 WZ551s in service and at least 450 D-30 guns as well as two dozen M-46 130 mm towed guns. It has apparently mounted D-30 guns on T-55 tank chassis in previous efforts to create self-propelled artillery, although this cannot be confirmed.
Recent photographs also appear to show a howitzer mounted on a military truck.
Ethiopia is apparently also working on a rapidly deployable 120 mm mortar as seen in a photograph released by the FDF in August. Fitted on the load bed of a pickup truck, it appears to be a standard 2B11-pattern mortar with base plate attached to a pneumatic system to lower it from the vehicle bed to the ground so it can be fired, Janes reported.
The FDF released the modified APC photograph during a visit by senior officers to the Ethiopian Defence University in Bishoftu, which it said is working on upgrading weapons.
Another photo showed 122 mm BM21 multiple rocket launcher systems fitted onto six Toyota Land Cruisers. The vehicles were fitted with four stabilisers to keep them steady when firing. Ethiopia previously acquired multiple truck-mounted BM21 systems.
Ethiopia has been acquiring significant quantities of military hardware in recent years, with the most recent documented arrival being dozens of Calidus MCAV-20 vehicles from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last month.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI’s) Arms Transfers database, in recent years Ethiopia acquired five Despot armoured vehicles from Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2022, 32 SH-5 155 mm self-propelled guns from China in 2022, four Bayraktar TB-2 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from Turkey in 2021, and two Wing Loong-1 UAVs that same year.
China also delivered ten Type-89 APCs in 2013; four PHL-03 300 mm self-propelled multiple rocket launchers (MRLs) in 2019, and ten BP-12A surface-to-surface missile systems in 2020.
In January this year, the Ethiopian Air Force revealed it had received Bayraktar Akinci UAVs from Turkey and second hand Sukhoi Su-30K combat jets from Russia.
