For months the Ukrainian military has requested long-range precision artillery and missile systems from Western partners. Now they have and are developing them with significant effect both in the south and east of the country. The Ukrainian military is not giving many details, but Vadim Denyshenko, a senior Interior Ministry official, said on Wednesday that over the past two weeks, “primarily thanks to the weapons received by Ukraine, we were able to destroy about two dozen weapons caches and fuel and lubricant stocks. This will certainly affect the intensity of the fire” the Russians can muster, he said. Best in class is the US-supplied HIMARS multiple launch missile system, but the Ukrainians have also received M777 howitzers from the US and Canada and long-range Caesar howitzers from France. In addition, the UK has committed to providing M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), which are more powerful than HIMARS, but it is unclear when Ukraine will complete training on the system and deploy it. The versatility of HIMARS is in its name: the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. Its mobility makes it harder to target and it can only cover eight soldiers. The missiles supplied to Ukraine have a range of 70 to 80 kilometers (about 50 miles). And their GPS guidance systems make them extremely accurate. As Mick Ryan, a military analyst and former Australian general, says: “It is used to destroy critical communication hubs, command posts, airfields and important logistics facilities.” Therefore, senior Russian officers are particularly vulnerable. The accuracy of HIMARS also means that the Ukrainians can worry less about civilian casualties. The guided missiles are accurate to within two to three meters, two defense officials told CNN, allowing the Ukrainians to use far fewer rounds to accurately hit targets at distance. The HIMARS appears to have been used in a massive attack on a warehouse in the town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region on Monday night. The impact caused secondary explosions and caused extensive damage, according to satellite images reviewed by CNN. The images showed how precise the attack was, leaving only a small crater. Local pro-Russian officials said parts of a HIMARS missile were recovered. the serial numbers matched the gun. Large explosions also occurred in Luhansk and Donetsk regions, causing multiple explosions. The same happened in Shakhtarsk in Donetsk and the Kherson region over the weekend, as well as near Melitopol in Zaporizhia last week. In all, it appears that about a dozen targets deep behind Russian lines were hit in July, most of them at least 40 kilometers behind the front — a distance at which accuracy with the old Tochka-U missiles would have been difficult. The Ukrainians also fire HIMARS at night, making it more difficult for the Russians to spot and hit the launchers. Russian forces have struggled to fight at night since the beginning of the conflict, and the Ukrainians continue to use this to their advantage.
Change battlefield
Targeting may also have been made easier by the way the Russian military stores and moves its weapons. Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, says the Nova Kakhovka strike is revealing “of the state of logistics warfare and the real problems facing the Russians”. The target was next to a railway junction, vital to the Russian logistics effort to sustain their attack, and so was an obvious target. “The Russians left a ridiculously easy to spot, large supply depot exactly where one would expect to find it. Either the Russians can’t react due to command failure or they can’t move the depots because they don’t have road traffic.” O’Brien tweeted. A Ukrainian official suggested that targeting the warehouse was easy. Serhiy Khlan, a member of the Kherson regional council, said on Facebook: “In Nova Kakhovka minus one Russian ammunition depot. They brought, brought, piled up, piled up and now they have fireworks at night.” Ben Hodges, the former commander of US forces in Europe, tweeted after the Kherson attack over the weekend: “Least favorite job in the Russian military? Ammunition handler.” In a briefing last week, a senior US Defense Department official said “the focus on higher capability, precision and longer-range weapons” for Ukraine was front and center. On Friday, the Pentagon announced a shipment to Ukraine of 1,000 155mm artillery shells — but a newer, more accurate munition, according to the official. The Ukrainians are expending 155mm ammunition at the rate of 3,000 per day. Like HIMARS, more accurate rounds should mean fewer are needed. The official argued that HIMARS was changing the battlefield. “What we have seen is the ability of the Ukrainians to use these HIMAR systems to significantly disrupt the ability of the Russians to advance.” “If the Russians think they can outsmart the Ukrainians, they need to think again,” the official added. A Russian military reporter, Yuri Kotenok, said this week that HIMARS represents “a serious threat. The liberated areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, DPR and LPR, as well as the territory of Russia, are coming under potential fire HIMARS.” Kotenok, who has nearly 300,000 followers on Telegram, said Russian air defenses need to be improved — as is the targeting of HIMARS, whether transiting or deployed. He said that “If this continues, it is necessary to strike at the decision-making centers. Our limitations on retaliation against the enemy are somewhat incomprehensible to me.” Another Russian reporter, Roman Sapenkov, said he witnessed the strike over the weekend at the Russian base at Kherson airport. “I was impressed that the whole package, five or six missiles, landed on almost a dime. Usually MLRS land over a wide area and at maximum range they disperse like a fan,” he wrote, referring to multiple launch missile systems that are less advanced. from HIMARS or M777. “Clearly this is just the beginning… They will cover all administrative posts and military installations; the data for this has been collected over the last 4 months.”
The importance of pallets
One problem for the Russians may be how they transport the ammunition, where the humble pallet comes into play.
Few Russian military trucks include a crane for lifting heavy ammunition, which is rarely carried on pallets, but is loaded and unloaded by hand. Many aging Soviet ZIL trucks have been seen in Ukraine.
Moving weapons and ammunition in this manner is cumbersome, time-consuming, and potentially gives enemy surveillance a greater opportunity to detect such shipments. In contrast, the UK and US militaries palletize much of their ammunition or transport it in containers.
The Russian way of war — as witnessed over the past three months in eastern Ukraine — relies on massive artillery barrages to pulverize targets before advancing. Russian military doctrine has always emphasized the massive use of artillery, MLRS and mortars. That requires constant resupply: Some analysts estimate that Russia uses at least 7,000 shells and rockets a day in the Donbass, and often many more.
Serhiy Hayday, head of the Luhansk regional military command, said on Wednesday: “The Russian army is not stopping the shelling. However, it is probably saving the existing stockpiles of shells because their supply has been interrupted by the work of our new long-range ranged weapons’.
Ukrainian officials claim that the Russians are being weakened by their growing ability for long-range precision strikes.
In and around Melitopolis, for example, the Russians have imposed restrictions on civilian movement in recent days. The region has seen at least two major strikes this month against Russian bases.
But for the Ukrainians to maintain this strike rate requires an unimpeded pipeline of ammunition from the West. The Ukrainian military is transitioning from an organization that relies heavily on Soviet-era artillery and missile systems — with insufficient ammunition — to using Western precision weapons with sufficient ammunition in a matter of months.
It is also unknown if any of the few HIMARS deployed so far have been taken out by Russian fire. The Ukrainian army and defense ministries have avoided providing details about their deployment.
Ryan warns that while HIMARS “provided the Ukrainian Armed Forces with a new ‘Long Arm’ to attack Russian invaders, there is no silver bullet solution to the war.”
But U.S. officials are confident that the weapon’s accuracy — as well as other long-range precision systems — will gradually change the battlefield.
