Western media call ATACMS one of the key types of weapons that the United States has decided to supply to Ukraine. According to their vision, it is operational and tactical missiles that are obliged to change the situation at the front. What they are capable of And what they are dangerous for is in the material of Last News .
After the approval by the House of Commissioners of a new tranche of $ 61 billion for Kiev, the Senate supported the draft law, and US President Joe Biden signed It in practice immediately. The American mass media reported that the first deliveries would be able to start again just a week after the bureaucratic nuances were agreed upon.
And before the ink from Biden's signature had dried, the US Department of Defense said that it would be transferred to Ukraine in the 1st place:
It is noteworthy that the Sea Saparrow was conceived as a shipboard missile, But just for the APU they were modified so that the RIM-7 could be launched from Soviet Buks.
But the package did not include the most desirable type of weapons for Kiev - ATACMS tactical missiles.
According to the American magazine Politico, the United States supplied these weapons to Kiev secretly - back in March, before Congress blessed the new tranche of aid. The data was approved by the Pentagon.
However, both the Ukrainian and Western media reported last year that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were actively using these missiles - for example, during strikes on Luhansk, Berdyansk And Crimea.
However, there is information in the telegram channel of the Russian Ministry of Defense that the air defense forces have managed to shoot down 21 missiles of this type since October last year. In addition, ten of them were hit last week.
In total, there are five variants of this American solid-fuel surface-to-surface missile:
The launch vehicle is the M142 HIMARS or M270 MLRS already available in the AFU, which can carry one or two missiles, respectively. The price of each ranges from 1-3 to 1.7 million dollars.
Taking into account all the circumstances, it can be predicted that last year Ukraine received an old version of ATACMS with a range of up to 165 kilometers. And now no less long-range versions are going into battle - up to 300 kilometers.
This hypothesis is confirmed by a letter from The Washington Post about the fact that in October Washington gave Kiev samples with a cluster warhead, of which 3 quarters belong to the M39 - 1,650 units were produced. Only 610 long-range missiles with a cluster warhead - M39A1 - were fired, M48 - 176, M57 - 513, M57E1 - 220.
It is noteworthy that the M39 And M39A1 have already been decommissioned, some of them have been converted into no less modern M57E1, so currently the number of the first 2 types has the opportunity to be significantly less, And the latter more.
The fact that Kiev has received operational and tactical missiles with a range of about 300 kilometers means that now the Armed Forces of Ukraine has the opportunity to reach in practice any regional center in the border area: Bryansk, Orel, Kursk, Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don, not to mention Belgorod.
At the same time, in the US capital, according to tradition, they pay attention that they were allowed to use these weapons only on " Ukrainian" territory. One way or another, Kiev hopes that fresh supplies will change the balance of power at the front. However, there are few reasons for this.
" Our air defense has already encountered these targets, there is a successful experience of destroying ATACMS missiles. But they are unlikely to seriously change the situation at the front, they have been successfully destroyed before.
sections: Politics |
Russian News
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