M142 HIMARS and its role in the war
HIMARS. The word, which all the Ukrainians know and honour. These weapons, firstly delivered to Ukraine at the end of June, have already changed the war.
Let’s speak about these robust systems, and why and how they made such significant contributions to the war.
M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) is a light multiple rocket launcher developed in the late 90th for the US army.
The system can hold two types of rockets. The first variant is six GMLRS rockets, which are high-precision missiles. The GMLRS can strike the target at the 92-kilometre distance. The second ammo is ATAMCS, one rocket per HIMARS, which can strike at 300 km.
So, we know the HIMARS system's specifications, but why is it unique and breaks all the Russian plans?
When HIMARSes arrived in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin said nothing was exceptional. He stated that HIMARS is just an MLRS, such as Soviet BM-30 “Smerch” or BM-27 “Uragan”. However, the Russian president (terrorist) was not correct.
Soviet systems are not accurate and designed to strike big squares, not specific targets. HIMARS, on the other hand, can strike a specific target such as storage, HQ, an artillery system, or barrack.
At the start of the so-called Battle for Donbas, Russians had absolute dominance in artillery. They had dozens of times more guns and ammo. When Wester man-handed anti-air systems and old Soviet systems such as S-300 struck Russian air superiority, invaders were still more powerful in artillery.
Ukrainian answer was HIMARS. Firstly, the Ukrainian army used HIMARSes to strike the storage of Russian ammo. It lowered their artillery dominance dramatically. Russians can not store the ammo near the frontline and are forced to keep it 100 kilometres out of the frontline.
The officers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said that after the HIMARS strikes, Russian shelling became rare and not so strong. At some parts of the frontline, they have even stopped the fire. Ukrainian officials said that earlier Russians used 20000 artillery shells; now it is approximately 5000
After striking the ammo storage, Ukrainian troops made Russian logistics routes their main target. For example, Antonivskiy bridge in Kherson oblast was destroyed by Ukrainians on July 27th. The bridge is on of the 3 routes to supply Russian troops on the western bank of the Dnipro. Without the bridges, 3 more than 10000 Russians will be cut off from their main army and supply.
More detailed actual information about the situation on the frontline in my week summary
Also, Ukraine uses HIMARSes to strike enemies' anti-air systems. The results are pretty obvious, during the last week Ukrainian Air Forces every day strike Russian positions in the South. So, Ukrainian artillery crushed the Russian air superiority.
To sum up, Ukraine continues its mobile war, when there are no massive attacks. The Ukrainian army uses small groups to attack vulnerable areas of the Russian army. HIMARSes together with other Western artillery and unmanned combat aerial vehicles are the weapons of the future, which will help Ukrainians to defeat a much bigger Russian army.
Thank you for reading. My name is Volodymyr Sukholytkyi, and it is my newly created blog.
Here we will be talking about world politics, economy, social phenomena and actual news. Nowadays for me a Ukrainian, the main theme is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So, it will also be the main theme of this blog.
Thank you one more time and see you!