- Scott Ritter: Why the HIMARS is so difficult to target + Ask the Inspector Ep. 34 Archived Message
Posted by sashimi
on January 6, 2023, 2:29 pm
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5 January 2023 (quote) Just seconds after the stroke of midnight on December 31, in the early moments of 2023, a US-made M-142 HIMARS (highly mobile artillery rocket system), operated by the Ukrainian armed forces, fired off a pod of six Guided Multiple Rocket Launch System (GMLRS), each with a 200-pound unitary high-explosive warhead that is guided to its target using GPS, toward the 19th Vocational School in the town of Makeevka. At the school, soldiers from the Russian Ministry of Interior's 20th Special Forces Detachment and 360th Communications Training Regiment, along with freshly mobilized Russian soldiers assigned to the 631st Regional Training Center of the Russian Missile Troops and Artillery Forces, were celebrating the arrival of the new year. The troops, numbering more than 400 in total, barely had time to get off a congratulatory toast when four of the GMLRS rounds slammed into the school building, levelling it (two other GMLRS rockets were successfully engaged and shot down by Russian air defense.) The initial casualty reports issued by the Russian Ministry of Defense put the number of dead Russian soldiers at 63; that number later climbed to 89 as more bodies are discovered, and it is anticipated that this number could go higher. Almost immediately, Russian social media blogs and channels were abuzz with criticism and condemnation of the Russian high command, demanding accountability for the Makeevka disaster. Questions about why the Russian leadership allowed such a concentration of forces to take place in such a vulnerable, easily identifiable location were followed by more asking why the Russian military, some six months after the HIMARS system was introduced into Ukraine, was still unable to interdict these launches, abounded. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a commission to be formed to investigate the Makeevka disaster, and it is to this commission that answers regarding the decision to concentrate Russian troops in the 19th Vocational School will hopefully be found. As to the question of why the Russian military has failed to successfully interdict the Ukrainian HIMARS system, history provides the answer: mobile relocatable targets, such as mobile missile and artillery systems, are extremely difficult to locate and successfully target. While offering no solace to the families of the slain Russian servicemembers, the failure of the Russian armed forces to interdict the Ukrainian HIMARS echoes similar failures by the US and Great Britain in World War Two, targeting the German V-1 and V-2 rockets, and the United States during Operation Desert Storm targeting Iraqi SCUD launchers. (/quote) -- Cont'd at https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/why-the-himars-is-so-difficult-to (including an embedded video of "Scott Ritter Extra Ep. 34: Ask the Inspector") |
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