It was exported to several other countries including Germany, South Korea, Spain, Greece, Iran, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Turkey.

This led the U.S. Army to issue a requirement for a new series of self-propelled artillery systems: the new weapons were to be lighter, to be transportable by air, and would continue the practice of deriving several vehicles from the same chassis, to simplify maintenance and training.

[3] Both the M107 and M110 are based on a common chassis, which features five road wheels on either side of the chassis, idler arms attached to torsion bars, tracks driven from the front by a 450 hp (340 kW) General Motors turbo supercharged diesel with the turbocharger connected to the supercharger by a steel pencil sized "quill" shaft.

The primary purpose of the hydraulic pump was putting the barrel into battery, ramming ammunition and charges, raising or lowering the rear spade, rapid coarse deflection adjustment by the gunner and rapid coarse elevation adjustments by the assistant gunner.

The M107/M110 chassis only provides protection to the driver, with 13 mm (0.51 in) of aluminum armor sufficient to block only small arms fire and shell splinters.

Later on, Kevlar shields were often provided to M107 units for additional protection, but due to the unwieldiness of their use, these were often kept stowed on the sides of the vehicle or even left behind before deployment in the field.

The Number one cannoneer opens and closes the breech, verifies ramming of the round with ram rod and powder load red on the rag (which means he can see the red igniter patch to verify that the powder is not put in backwards),[8] loads the primer, hooks up the lanyard (pig tail), pulls lanyard on command, and unlocks the right spade lock.

[5][6][7][8] Cannoneers two through nine set up the collimator (US Army Tm 9-2300-216-10), aiming stakes, bore sight (For Direct Fire missions only), communications, prepare additional ammunition (including fuzing) and powder zones, provide security, drive the M548, operate the ring-mounted M2 .50 caliber machine gun, set up camouflage nets, dig a burn pit, and conduct the resupply of ammunition.

This retubing was usually accomplished by the supporting U.S. Army Ordnance Company or a fixed depot as it requires an overhead electric rail winch and chassis modifications for the E2 barrel.

The Vietnamese words Sấm Sét ("Lightning") and Vua Chiến Trường ("King of the Battlefield") were often painted on the guns to commemorate its sheer firepower.

[9] There, it proved its effectiveness by having one of the longest ranges of any mobile artillery-piece operated during that theater of combat in the Cold War, outranging the Soviet 130 mm M46 heavy field guns employed by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN).

This long-range advantage, along with its ability to rapidly move from its previous position, made it an effective weapon for destroying PAVN and Viet Cong command-and-control sites, communications facilities and supply-columns, while evading counter-battery fire from its Soviet counterparts in service with North Vietnam.

This was proven in 1968 at the Battle of Khe Sanh, where American forces came under a long and intense siege by PAVN troops and were constantly bombarded by accompanying artillery fire.

In addition, as noted above, the gun barrel on the M107 required frequent changing on early versions of the weapon.

Individual batteries did not have the necessary equipment and parts for changing the barrel, so higher-level maintenance support was required, taking two hours in addition to the transportation time.

Four M107s were captured during the First Battle of Quảng Trị in April 1972 and another 12 were taken during the Central Highlands offensive in 1975 towards the end of the Vietnam War.

[10] When these guns were outranged by rocket fire from Tyre, they were upgraded with the addition of extended range, full-bore ammunition and new powder supplied by Gerald Bull's Space Research Corporation.