US Army M119A3 Howitzers Train to Stop Amphibious Assaults With Counter-Landing Fires in Philippines.

U.S. Army soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Regiment, 25th Infantry Division used M119A3 105mm howitzers during a counter-landing live-fire drill at La Paz Sand Dunes in the Philippines, demonstrating how light artillery can disrupt amphibious assault forces before they establish positions ashore. Images released by the U.S. Army on May 4, 2026, during Exercise Balikatan 2026 highlighted the growing focus on fast-reacting coastal defense capabilities aimed at denying enemy movement along strategically contested littoral zones in the Indo-Pacific.

The M119A3 gives forward-deployed forces a mobile and rapidly deployable fire support system capable of striking landing troops immediately after detection, increasing the survivability of defending units and slowing hostile advances inland. The exercise reflects a broader shift toward distributed coastal defense operations and allied interoperability as U.S. and partner forces prepare for high-intensity warfare across island and maritime environments.

Related topic: U.S. Army 1st Armored Division Artillery enhances its readiness with New M109A7 Self-Propelled Howitzers.

U.S. Army soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Regiment, 25th Infantry Division fire an M119A3 105mm howitzer during a counter-landing live-fire exercise at La Paz Sand Dunes in Laoag City, Philippines, on May 4, 2026, as part of Exercise Balikatan 2026 (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

The M119A3 is a 105mm lightweight towed howitzer used by U.S. Army infantry brigade combat teams and light forces that need artillery support without the transport burden of a 155mm gun. The weapon has an unassisted range of 14 km and reaches 19.5 km with rocket-assisted ammunition. The U.S. Army lists its rate of fire at six rounds per minute and fields it in two six-gun batteries per M119A3 battalion. This gives a battalion 12 guns, enough to mass fires on a narrow coastal sector, shift rapidly to a second target area, or maintain one battery in displacement while the other continues fire missions.

The gun’s armament is built around NATO-standard 105mm semi-fixed ammunition, which is important for logistics and tactical flexibility. High-explosive rounds are used against infantry, light vehicles, exposed crews, landing craft after beaching, and equipment concentrations. Smoke rounds can obscure observation from a beachhead or screen the movement of friendly infantry and anti-armor teams. Illumination rounds allow night engagement and target identification. Rocket-assisted projectiles trade some payload efficiency for reach, allowing the battery to influence approaches beyond the immediate beach. Compared with 155mm ammunition, 105mm rounds are lighter, easier to move by hand, and better suited to dispersed firing points where trucks, helicopters, and small crews must sustain ammunition flow.

The A3 variant is not just a legacy gun with updated markings. Its Digital Fire Control System gives the crew self-location, digital fire mission processing, and faster alignment with the fire direction center. U.S. Army reporting on the upgrade states that the M119A3 includes inertial navigation, GPS-based location functions, a digital gunner’s display, and digital communication between the gun and fire direction center. Earlier Army reporting also noted that digital fire control reduced emplacement-to-first-round time to roughly two to three minutes, compared with more than ten minutes for non-digitized M119A2 procedures. In a counter-landing fight, that difference is operationally relevant because targets may appear in short windows between surf, dunes, vegetation, vehicles, and smoke.

The recoil and carriage changes also matter. The M119A3 uses an upgraded fixed recoil arrangement and a Suspension Lock Out System that allows top-charge firing at all angles, according to the Army’s product office. That detail is more than a maintenance note. In broken coastal terrain, guns may be forced into imperfect firing positions because dunes, soft sand, roads, and cover limit ideal emplacement. The ability to fire top charge at all angles gives crews more consistent access to maximum ballistic performance when the tactical situation does not permit careful selection of firing points. It also supports “shoot-and-move” employment, where crews fire a short mission, displace, and avoid detection by unmanned aerial vehicles or counter-battery sensors.

For the 25th Infantry Division, the M119A3 fits the Pacific problem better than its small caliber suggests. The division’s artillery must be able to move across islands, operate from austere roads, and support infantry without assuming that large ports, paved airfields, or secure rear areas are available. A 105mm howitzer can be towed by light tactical vehicles and moved by rotary-wing or fixed-wing aircraft more readily than heavier artillery. That does not make it a substitute for HIMARS, 155mm howitzers, coastal anti-ship missiles, or attack aviation. Its value is narrower and more practical: it gives infantry commanders a responsive gun line for suppression, obscuration, immediate destructive fires, and final protective fires around defended coastal terrain.

In a counter-landing event, the M119A3 would normally sit inside a layered defense rather than act alone. Sensors and observers would identify incoming craft or dismounted troops; fire direction centers would allocate missions; howitzer sections would engage targets that had reached the beach, exited vehicles, or begun forming into assault groups. The artillery effect is cumulative rather than decisive by itself. It slows unloading, forces dispersion, suppresses crews, damages light vehicles, and complicates command and control at the moment when an attacker is most exposed. This is why 105mm guns remain relevant in exercises focused on littoral defense even as the U.S. Army and Marine Corps emphasize longer-range strike weapons.

Balikatan 2026 places that artillery drill within a larger shift in U.S.-Philippine military planning. The exercise includes counter-landing drills, coastal defense activity, unmanned systems, HIMARS employment, and operations in areas linked to the South China Sea and northern Luzon. Japan’s participation with ground troops and missile firing in northern Luzon also shows that the exercise has moved beyond bilateral training into a broader allied readiness event. The La Paz Sand Dunes firing is useful because it shows the lower layer of the fire plan: not a strategic strike, but the artillery needed to keep a beachhead from becoming usable terrain.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.