A servant of long standing, the M109 self-propelled howitzer was developed in the 1950s and has been in service from the 1960s, across numerous variants; the M109A6 took over the torch in the 2000s. Mounted in the fully-rotating turret was the L/39 155mm main gun, which had a range of 24 kilometers (30km with rocket-assisted projectiles) and was equipped with a semi-automatic loading system. 975 M109A6s were produced between 1992 and 2002, and they experienced their first action in the Iraq War in 2003.