A new video from the combat zone shows the operation of HIMARS systems — American-made wheeled rocket artillery launchers. However, for a number of reasons, they will not be able to have a noticeable impact on the fighting. Despite this, their use can lead to a serious escalation of the conflict in a different way.
As Naked Science wrote earlier, the United States recently approved the supply of multiple rocket launchers of its own production to Ukraine — both from the presence of its army and from European allies. The peculiarity of these 227-millimeter systems is that their unguided ammunition has a high percentage of failure of fuses — from two to five percent — because of which, after firing them, the area actually turns out to be "mined" with unexploded, but still dangerous ammunition.
A new video from the combat area shows 12 shots fired, as far as the video quality allows, from two HIMARS installations. Unlike their tracked counterparts, such launchers carry only six missiles each:
Shooting of two M142 HIMARS installations in Ukraine / ©YouTube
M142 HIMARS, in addition to unguided ammunition, can use six GMLRS M30/M31 missiles with inertial and GPS guidance. They have modifications with both a cassette and a high-explosive fragmentation warhead. The range of both systems is 15-84 kilometers. That is, closer than 15 kilometers from itself, this system cannot attack anything, but its maximum reach is 84 kilometers.
Each M30 missile carries 404 DPICM M101 fragmentation submunitions (2424 in one salvo of one launcher), which are characterized by a high percentage of non-rupture. The M30A1 modification tries to combat the problem of non-rupture of submunitions by the fact that it does not have them: instead, when it explodes, it gives 182 thousand striking tungsten elements (1,092,000 elements in one salvo of the installation). The M31, M31A1 and M31A2 missiles carry a high-explosive type warhead (gives few fragments) weighing 90 kilograms.
It is not yet clear which versions of these missiles Kiev has requested and received. From the point of view of military logic, the M30A1 is the most valuable, but it is unclear how much the States were guided by it in the process of allocating this assistance. According to open data, there are about four such installations in Ukraine today, and in the near future there may be noticeably more of them.
Militarily, the impact of the supplies will be minimal, if at all tangible. The Russian army has a relatively large number of Tornado-S with a range of 120 kilometers (HIMARS, we recall, is no more than 84 kilometers), while each launcher carries 12, not six missiles, like HIMARS. It fires both unguided ammunition and a 9M542 correctable projectile, as well as a type of projectile with a self-aiming (by IR radiation of target vehicles) combat element capable of hitting any tank or lighter equipment. In one volley of "Tornado-C" (or "Tornado"), there are 60 such elements. Here is an example of their use by American self-propelled guns M109 in Ukraine:
Shelling of the battery of American self-propelled guns M109 with self-aiming combat elements from "Smercha" shells / © YouTube
In the case of a counter-battery fight, HIMARS will basically not even be able to reach the enemy, but he will be able to defeat the machines of the complex. Nevertheless, the new MLRS are able to influence events not so much of a military as of a humanitarian nature.
It should be noted that the distance from the areas controlled by the Ukrainian military to the Russian Belgorod is also less than the range of HIMARS. In the case of covering peaceful cities with rocket artillery of Western origin, it is difficult to rule out an escalation of the conflict with unpredictable consequences.
