The US-supplied HIMARS is changing the calculation on the front line in Ukraine: the military’s thoughts
The M142 highly mobile artillery missile system, better known as HIMARS, is one of four the Ukrainians received last month from the United States as part of a $700 million military aid package. Soldiers from the calculation of the car have already decorated it inside the image and with rosaries. There are three small black skulls on the outside, one for each target hit.
What our military says to the Western media:
“We actually have six. It’s just that we haven’t had the opportunity to add the other three yet.” said the head of this system with the call sign Kuzya.
Following public frustration over Western delays in delivering promised heavy weapons, including rocket-propelled grenade launchers such as HIMARS, the Ukrainians quickly put their new equipment into service more than four months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Kuzya and his comrades said their targets so far were focused on Russian command posts — warehouses where enemy officers and weapons were housed.
Ukrainian officials say the new Western troops are already paying dividends on the battlefield — a testament to the importance of continued security assistance and the painful costs of slow supplies as the Russian military slowly expands its control over Ukraine’s eastern Donbas. Artillery strikes from French self-propelled howitzers stationed in the port city of Odesa reportedly forced the Russians to retreat from the strategically important Snake Island in the Black Sea on Thursday.
HIMARS is the most advanced system provided by the US and has the longest range of Ukraine’s ground weapons, nearly 50 miles, allowing its forces to deliver precision strikes on Russian military targets without posing a threat to its own civilian population in the occupied territories. Ukraine requested the weapons about two months before the transfer was approved — after Ukraine assured the Biden administration it would not use them to launch cross-border attacks on Russia.
The Biden administration has pledged to send four more HIMARS to Ukraine as part of an additional $450 million in aid announced last week. According to a Pentagon spokesman, all four were pre-developed in Europe, and training on these systems has already begun with the Ukrainian forces who will use them.
“What we used before was much more worrisome”, — said the gunner of the four-man team, whose role is to enter the coordinates of the target, his call sign is Moroz.
According to soldiers, HIMARS brings more peace of mind. With their old equipment, they avoided missile trajectories that passed through any populated areas, limiting themselves to firing only through fields and forests to avoid potential harm to civilians, Moroz said.
“I have no doubt that we will succeed. I know the missile will hit the target because it is guided by a satellite.” said Moroz
The unit previously used the Uragan Soviet self-propelled multiple rocket launcher system with a maximum range of about 20 miles. It also had a margin of error of about half a mile, and was targeted in coordination with a drone or reconnaissance team. According to the soldiers, HIMARS is guided by a satellite and deviates from the coordinates of the target by at most one yard.
They asked to be identified only by their callsigns as a security measure. Because the systems are considered a prime target for the Russians, the families of the team members don’t even know they’re working with them. They have to keep HIMARS in constant motion because staying in one place for too long risks revealing its location.
The launcher holds six missiles and is attached to the truck’s dark green frame. Battles are mainly conducted at night – soldiers stand at a distance and count down before shouting “Fire!”. A bright light flashes as each rocket takes off. They are then ready to go within two minutes — and speed is imperative to the security of HIMARS, as the Russians can quickly identify the source of a shot and fire back. The mobility is impressive – they say it can go up to 60 miles per hour for a bulky car.
“We were also surprised that such a high-precision weapon could fire so quietly,” – Kuzya said.
The unit had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of HIMARS for a month. Then they finally got first-hand experience at a secret location outside of Ukraine with American instructors for about two weeks. Instead of letting the Americans simply demonstrate, the Ukrainian military asked them to explain what to do and let the students try to adjust from there.
The computer system is entirely in English, so during training, translators explained what each button meant — all documented in a notebook that soldiers refer to regularly. But you still need Google Translate from time to time.
Kuzya said it would be good to have 50 HIMARS so that Ukraine could deploy four in each direction of a huge front that spans almost its entire eastern border with Russia. Sputnik, the unit’s commander, said it would have been better to get the equipment earlier — before Moscow’s forces took control of most of the country’s Luhansk region.
“It seems to me that they were brought here for too long. If they had been here much earlier, I think we would have ended this war by now.” – he said.
