Open letter to The Atlantic on HIMARS and ATACAMS effectiveness

Open letter to The Atlantic, Karl Marlantes and Elliot Ackerman.

I read an article named The Abandonment of Ukraine in “The Atlantic” by respectful authors Karl Marlantes and Elliot Ackerman.

I would like to focus on following sentences:

</quote start>An example of this is HIMARS, the long-range rocket artillery that the U.S. has provided at a maddeningly slow pace. A year ago, HIMARS was the most in-demand system on the battlefield. Now, it has a success rate of less than 10 percent because of Russian innovation in electronic warfare. Each rocket fired by HIMARS costs roughly $100,000. Because of the rapid decrease in HIMARS’s effectiveness, the Ukrainians have developed a drone that has a similar impact of the early HIMARS and costs about $1,000. The Ukrainians, however, are rightfully worried that, within a few weeks, the Russians will develop countermeasures that bring the effectiveness of this kind of drone down to that of the current HIMARS. It is, literally, an arms race.<quote end>

First of all, we have 2 different ammunitions for HIMARS, first one is GMRLS M30/M31, another one is ATACMS.

To be short, GMRLS M30 carries about 50 kilos warhead staffed with 185 000 (yes, thousands) wolframium particles, travels with speed of 3 MACHs at distance of 80+ km. GMRLS/M31 is almost the same, but without wolframium particles. GMRLS navigation system is dual, first one is inertial, corrected by GPS. It is impossible to interfere inertial navigation system by any known means, but its not very precise.

Flight trajectory is very high, 20+ km fro GMRLS and 50+ km for ATACMS, on final stage its vertical, e.g, hit the target from above the sky. In deep theory, Russian can interfere GPS on the final stage of GMRLS trajectory, but it means that it will be not so precise, but it will hit the target anyway due to air blast.

Another ammo is ATACMS missile with range from 150 km to 300 km. It carries cluster ammunition, warhead is 240+ kilos. Navigation system in old missiles is inertial, so it cannot be interfered using any kind of electronic warfare. I don’t have information what exact ATACMS model we got, but Russians published photos of ATACMS containers after Ukrainian strikes on their air fields of those outdated, inertial guided missiles.

Yes, we have very nice drones which can strike deep targets on Russian territory, but its price is not 1 000 USD and it cannot be compared even close to HIMARS ammunition. Price of deep strike drone with internal combustion engine starts at 4 mln UAH (about 90 000 USD) up to 8 mln UAH. Those drones are very slow, about 200 km/h, speed of HIMARS ammunition is 3+ MACHs (3 700 km/h), in simple words – you can hit target in 2-3 minutes, while drone will travel to the target in 100 km about 30 minutes.

Yes, we have drone called Palyanitsa with reactive engine, but its price according to the Minister of digital technology Fedorov “less than 1 mln USD” and its also very slow comparing to HIMARS missiles, about 600 km/h versus 3 700 km/h. It travels on low height and can be intercepted using standard anti air systems. It carries much smaller warhead. Ukrainian drones are very important for our defense, but it cannot replace HIMARS and its ammunition.

Please do fact checking before publishing.

I would like to thank American people for a huge support and for HIMARS ammunition in almost every military aid package. Its vital for our defense.

P.S. few words about myself – I am founder of Ukrainian non-profit organization called Reactive Post, dedicated to support artillery and rocket forces of Ukrainian army. I am doing this for 10 years already. https://reactivepost.org/en

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The specialists and Fedorov said each missile costs less than $1 million, and the military is turning to the private sector to bring down production costs further. “The private market generates solutions incredibly quickly,” the minister said.

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