Dan Rice
Sept 28
Well written article on ATACMs cluster missiles. I wish more authors had been writing about these cluster munitions over a year ago and we might have gotten them sooner.
Everyone seems to put too much focus only on ATACMs vs the shorter range HIMARS M26 and M26A1 cluster rockets. The ATACMs is a GIANT leap forward for Ukraine long range fires and will have an immediate impact on this war-no doubt.
The shorter range rockets, in large quantities, are going to make any Russian unit within 50km of the front line’s life unlivable. And they are available in massive numbers.
But together, TOGETHER is why this war is about to have an irreversible change towards a Ukrainian victory and 1991 borders.
Combined, the 155mm DPICM, the shorter range DPICM rockets to destroy front line and rear echelon battalions, and simultaneously combined with the ability for ATACMs clusters to reach deep and hit command and control, supply depots, transportation nodes, large troop formations, will change this war in October.
This is what General Zaluzhnyi requested 12 August 2022. After I presented a DPICM capabilities brief for 155mm and Himars to Dr Liudmyla Dolhonovska on the General Staff on 11 Aug 2022 in Kyiv, and she convinced him to request later that same day. This was my vision.
“Air defenses, especially Russia’s long-range S-300 and S-400 types that are a finite resource in great demand, would be at incredible risk of being totally destroyed by cluster munition-packing ATACMS. Instead of attacking the radar or command vehicle with a missile or drone equipped with a unitary warhead, a single ATACMS would blanket the area where the SAM system is emplaced with bomblets. The soft skin of the system’s vehicles and delicate sensor components would be showered with shrapnel. Missiles would be cooked off. It would not just be a ‘mission kill’ or the partial loss of the battery, it would be a total or near-total loss. And while these SAM systems have some anti-ballistic missile capabilities, ATACMS is a hard target to take down operationally. If used as part of a layered attack, it would be even harder.”
Excellent.
Also, thousands of cluster-equipped rockets would marmalise the orcs in sufficient numbers to force a retreat.
What are they waiting for? It’s the proverbial game-changer.
It’s not only a shame but a downright crime not handing over such effective munitions to Ukraine. I don’t know how the likes of Biden and Scholz can sleep at night. Surely, they know that they are prolonging this war, causing many more deaths each day and night by their cowardice?
Sir OFP when you ask how Biden and Sholz can sleep…it’s easy given the caliber of politicians that they are. There are few political leaders in the world today that I feel have the communication skills combined with personal principles which lead into strategic policies that they can carry into office. President Reagan was the last guy I know that stood on his principles and was capable of communicating. I hate to say this but the orange baboon has some (I do mean some, not nearly enough) of this but unfortunately his character and narcissistic personality just kills it. Trump has principles but those principles only entail whatever can give Trump power.
“The article says that ATACMS long-range missiles, which President Joe Biden agreed to send to Ukraine last week after more than a year of debate, are a fresh example of how decisions are made in Washington because the Pentagon initially resisted their delivery because the US did not have a single free missile in its own arsenal.”
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/09/28/7421774/