For Ukraine, ATACMS Season Might Not Last Long

One day after The New York Times broke the news that President Joe Biden had licensed Ukraine to fire American-made Army Tactical Missile Systems rockets at targets inside Russia, a Ukrainian army battery flung 8 of the 3,700-pound, precision-guided rockets at a stretching Russian munitions depot in Bryansk Oblast, 60 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared regional air defenses shot down 5 of the GPS-guided rockets, each of which loads almost 1,000 grenade-sized bomblets. But a video of the Bryansk toolbox that flowed online Tuesday earlymorning illustrates a raving fire—evidence of considerable damage from the rain of bomblets.

Now that it’s licensed to fire its finest American-made munitions at targets on Russian soil, “Ukraine may cause much more damage,” according to Tatarigami, the creator of the Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight. But there are substantial restrictions.

First, the White House supposedly is enabling strikes strictly in and around Kursk Oblast in western Russia, where an roughly 20,000-strong Ukrainian force is protecting a 250-square-mile significant versus a Russian-led corps with more than 50,000 Russian and North Korean soldiers. The target of the Tuesday ATACMS raid, the 67th Main Missile and Artillery Directorate Arsenal, is simply west of Kursk.

Second, there mostlikely aren’t numerous of the 190-mile-range ATACMS left in the Ukrainian stock. It’s possible there haveactually been simply 2 deliveries of the 1990s-vintage rockets: one in late 2023 and another in March. Combined, the 2 deliveries might have consistedof less than 50 ATACMS. Over the past year, the Ukrainian army hasactually performed at least 8 ATACMS raids. Most of the raids included more than one rocket.

Those veryfirst 2 consignments of ATACMS may be running low. The Biden administration still has authority to transfer billions of dollars worth of surplus American weaponry to Ukraine, and hasactually promised to exhaust this authority before President-elect Donald Trump—who hasactually spoken out versus more help to Ukraine—takes workplace in late January.

Those billions of dollars might cover the expense of changing a lot of ATACMS, each of which was priced around $1 million at the time of manufacture.

But the U.S. Army is eager to preserve its own stock of ATACMS—currently numbering in the hundreds—until the brand-new Precision Strike Missile, a modern ATACMS replacement, is commonly readilyavailable. As justrecently as 2021, the Army arbitrarily checked some of its earliest ATACMS, dating from the early 1990s, to guarantee their rocket motors and other elements still worked.

Given the scarceness of the supply, Kyiv might conserve its ATACMS for the most important targets, the damage of which may have a cascading impact on Russian abilities. “The focused usage of long-range weapons can cause outofproportion damage versus chosen targets, consequently opening up exploitable chances in Russia’s defenses,” discussed Jack Watling, an expert for the Royal United Services Institute in London.

The barrage of that munitions toolbox in Bryansk is mostlikely a excellent example of an reliable ATACMS raid. Burning down the toolbox might throttle the supply of ammo to Russian and North Korean soldiers in Kursk—and produce a firepower space in that sector. “The concern is whether the Ukrainian military is capable of makinguseof the space developed,” Watling composed.

Don’t anticipate a genuine thunderstorm of ATACMS now that Ukraine is enabled to fire the rockets more commonly. Do anticipate rocket attacks on vital targets such