Somewhere in the east of Ukraine, a drab green military truck roars to life and pulls out of
its temporary shelter inside some trees. On its back is a single pod of 6 227mm rockets,
despite having less power than a traditional multiple rocket
launch system this single truck is the deadliest weapon in the Ukrainian war.
The driver clears the trees and the crew gets to work,
as the rocket pod lifts up off the bed of the truck on its own and swings to the left.
Targeting data provided by US satellites and secret intelligence sources
is fed into the firing computer, which in turn programs each rocket with its own impact point.
Once ready, a simple press of a button sends six of the big rockets screaming into the sky.
As soon as the last rocket clears the launcher, the truck is already on the move.
This single piece of rocket artillery provided by the United States is Ukraine's most important
weapon, and is the single most hunted piece of hardware of the entire war. Russian troops are
on the hunt for each and every one of these sixteen trucks currently in the nation,
and their commanders have been ordered to expend any amount of life required to destroy them.
Thus the trucks are constantly on the move, never staying still in one place for long and always
under heavy cover when idle. They pop out of their tree cover or camo netting to fire a salvo
and then immediately retreat to avoid counter battery fire or an air attack. It's a dangerous
game of cat and mouse, but to date the Ukrainians have been winning- to devastating effect.
The truck is long gone by the time its rockets find their target.
Several dozen miles behind enemy lines, well out of the reach of any other artillery,
Russian Colonel Andrei Vasilyev, commander of an elite paratrooper regiment, is taking a meeting
with his senior officers. To date, Russia has lost a whopping 55 Colonels in its half a year effort
in Ukraine, a casualty figure so staggering the only parallel is from the second world war. Thus
Colonel Vasilyev has taken great pains to keep his exact location a secret- but US intelligence has
found him and transmitted the GPS coordinates of his secret command post to the Ukrainians.
One rocket impacts the command post with a precision of half a meter,
instantly incinerating the good Colonel and his officers. For him, the war is over, but for those
Russians still living the deadly rain of rockets continues. Supplies and ammunition for artillery
pieces is destroyed, as dozens of other soldiers are killed or wounded in the precision strike.
Colonel Andrey Vasilyev is now the 56th Russian colonel to die in Ukraine,
but he won't be the last. And a large part of Ukraine's stunning success
in recent months is all down to one single gift from the United States:
the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, otherwise known as HIMARS.
The impact of HIMARS in Ukraine cannot be understated. While the Javelin has become
the patron saint and protector of Ukraine, this American weapon is far deadlier to the Russians
than even the Javelin- and that's thanks to its range and precision. With just twelve of
these weapon systems in the country, Ukraine has ground the Russian offensive to nearly a
complete halt. But how in the world could so few weapons be giving Russia so much trouble,
and why can't Russia overcome such tiny numbers of US weapons?
The HIMARS was developed in the late 1990s for use by the US Army.
The system is not much different than other rocket artillery, save for the fact that
instead of the two rocket pods used by the Army's M270 MLRS, HIMARS has only one pod
for greatly increased mobility. This allows the system to very quickly move into firing position
and then escape before enemy counterbattery fire or a ground attack mission arrives on-scene,
and is why Russia is having such great difficulty neutralizing the dozen units provided to Ukraine.
HIMARS can be loaded with a standard six rocket pod, or can carry a single tactical ballistic
missile with a quick conversion. Its rockets have a range of between 1.2 and 190 miles (2-300km), or
up to 190 miles (300 km) when using the army's ATACMs surface-to-surface missile. It can even be
equipped with SLAMRAAM missiles, surface-launched variants of the AMRAAM anti-aircraft missile.
But its versatility doesn't end there, because unlike any other rocket artillery in the world,
HIMARS can even engage targets while loaded up on a transport ship. In October of 2017 the US Marine
Corps fired a single rocket while at sea from the deck of an amphibious transport dock ship,
successfully hitting a shore target with precision. This now makes HIMARS deadly
not just on land, but even when it's still loaded on a ship and waiting to be delivered.
The weapon system saw wide use in the Iraq/AFghanistan conflicts,
and in a prelude of what was to come- if Russia had been paying attention-
HIMARS’ high precision allowed it to target Taliban commanders' hideouts in October of 2010,
forcing them to flee the country temporarily. With its impressive range and precision,
HIMARS has fired over 400 rockets at Islamic State militants since November of 2015,
and the year after it fired rockets into Syria in support of Syrian rebels there.
In January of 2016, manufacturer Lockheed-Martin announced
that HIMARS had reached 1 million operational hours with US forces,
achieving an incredible 99 percent operational readiness rate. Compare that with strike fighter
aircraft who have been loitering at around a 70% readiness rate for years and you can see
why HIMARS and its precision fire has become an incredibly important tool for the US Army.
And now it's the most important tool in the Ukrainian army.
Russia must have been sleeping through the last decade, because upon making an appearance in
Ukraine, HIMARS' impact was immediate- pun intended. The first four units arrived on
the 23rd of June, and just two days later they were in use against Russian forces,
killing over 40 Russian soldiers on a precision strike at a military base in Izyum.
For the first time since the war began, Russian rear areas were under threat from Ukrainian
weapons, and the fear this realization struck was palpable- specially as successful fire mission
after successful fire mission took place. Within days of its opening salvo, the Russian military
said that the US's M270 MLRS and M142 HIMARS were the most dangerous weapons in Ukraine,
and that it was vital for Russian forces to destroy them at any cost.
Yet not all Russian officers were convinced, and it was believed that their air defense units
such as S-300 and S-400 systems would be able to knock the American rockets out of the sky.
That however never happened, prompting the Russian government to launch an investigation into the
manufacturer of the S-300 air defense system- just one of many ongoing investigations into failing
or underperforming Russian weapons. For Russian air defense operators,
HIMARS rockets fly too fast and too high for their systems to understand them as a threat-
they have the flight trajectory of traditional artillery but with the speed of a fighter jet,
and this can cause havoc when trying to identify a HIMARS attack. Russian software
will need to be patched to begin targeting incoming rockets, a development which could
take months to complete- if Russian can manage the feat given all their current difficulties.
Any doubt amongst Russian officers as to the deadly efficacy of HIMARS however was ended
in the coming weeks, as Ukrainian bombardments targeted Russian command posts and supply depots,
inflicting crippling casualties in Russia's command and control networks
and destroying over fifty supply depots. On the fourth of July,
Ukraine even honored the American independence holiday- with help from the Russians-
with a suspected HIMARS strike against a massive ammo depot
HIMARS has been so effective in countering Russian forces that Ukrainian commanders
report that Russian shelling is down tenfold after successful HIMARS strikes,
sparing the lives of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers. But how
in the world could twelve weapons be turning the tide of the war in Ukraine?
It has everything to do with precision. Russia has the largest amount of artillery in the world,
and has come to be called an 'artillery army'. Yet the vast majority of that
artillery is completely unguided. It is fundamentally the same artillery
that was in use since the second world war. HIMARS however is a complete game changer,
because it's smart while Russia's artillery is dumb- and it has greater range.
With its extended range, HIMARS can hit targets well behind the front lines,
putting areas normally considered safe from enemy attack at great risk. This means command posts,
staging areas, supply depots, and even long-range air defense or ground-attack systems-
all juicy and very high value targets that traditional artillery simply can't reach.
With command posts and supplies being forced to relocate further behind the battle lines,
Russian troops can’t move or react as quickly as they once did, slowing down an
offensive and limiting the Russian military’s ability to exploit battlefield opportunities.
Overextension becomes a very real problem, and could lead to outright disaster.
But the system’s real strength comes from precision, because HIMARS can accomplish with
one salvo what it takes traditional artillery dozens, if not hundreds of rounds to do.
And Ukraine is using that precision to great effect by targeting Russian supplies
and command posts. This is a strategy in effect since the start of the war,
with Ukraine devastating Russian logistics even to the point of ignoring targets such as artillery,
troops, or tanks. After all, without fuel and ammo, an army can't fight.
And Russian forces are discovering that they are having acute supply issues
thanks to HIMARS destroying their supply hubs, greatly slowing the pace of their advance and
even halting it in places. The use of just twelve HIMARS systems has helped open up a
window for a Ukrainian counterattack in the south, which is expected to commence
at the end of July and will probably have started by the time you watch this episode.
But precision is worthless if you don't know where the enemy's juiciest targets are,
and this is largely where the US comes in. The United States has been feeding vast amounts of
intelligence to Ukrainian forces since the start of the conflict, and the US is very
good at sniffing out enemy VIPs and other high priority targets. That's partly thanks to one
of the largest intelligence apparatuses in the world, but also thanks to the Russians themselves
who have almost no concept of operational or communications security. A fundamental
lack of encrypted radios has allowed Ukraine and the US to snoop on Russian communications,
and take appropriate action. US intelligence has led to over a dozen Russian generals earning an
early and permanent retirement. And with HIMARS on the front lines, that list is bound to grow.
The US is committed to keeping Ukraine resupplied with the rockets it needs to keep blasting Russian
targets, and is even shipping additional HIMARS units over the next couple months.
Ukraine has said that with 100 of these systems it could push Russia out of its territory,
and though we don't know how many the US will end up sending to Ukraine,
we know that an additional four are already being planned for delivery.
For its part, Russia has publicly downplayed the threat HIMARS poses-
yet the facts don't lie. Russian use of artillery is down significantly
in areas where HIMARS is in play, as Russian artillerymen are forced to conserve ammunition,
and destruction of the American weapons has become a top priority. Russia claims
it has destroyed four of the units to date, a claim that both Ukraine and the Pentagon deny.
Now we have news that the US House of Representatives has approved a measure to
provide $100 million in funding to train Ukrainian pilots in the use of American F-15s and F-16s.
If the bill passes the Senate in September, then Ukrainian pilots could begin training as early
as January of next year in US planes. By next summer, Russia could have yet another headache
on its hands as it now faces modern American weapons both on the ground and in the sky.
The real question though is: with all its bluster about destroying NATO,
how exactly does Russia plan to do that when it can't even handle a dozen US HIMARS? With nearly
400 HIMARS units in service, other NATO members are now requesting the weapon system from the US,
which is bad-news-bears for Vladimir Putin's dream of Russian expansionism.
Now check out What Will Ukraine Do After Its War With Russia? Or click this other video instead!