Somewhere in the east of Ukraine, a drab green
military truck roars to life and pulls out of its temporary shelter inside some trees. On
its back is a single pod of 6 227mm rockets, despite having less power than
a traditional multiple rocket launch system this single truck is the
deadliest weapon in the Ukrainian war. The driver clears the trees
and the crew gets to work, as the rocket pod lifts up off the bed of
the truck on its own and swings to the left. Targeting data provided by US satellites
and secret intelligence sources is fed into the firing computer, which in turn
programs each rocket with its own impact point. Once ready, a simple press of a button sends
six of the big rockets screaming into the sky. As soon as the last rocket clears the
launcher, the truck is already on the move. This single piece of rocket artillery provided
by the United States is Ukraine's most important weapon, and is the single most hunted piece of
hardware of the entire war. Russian troops are on the hunt for each and every one of these
sixteen trucks currently in the nation, and their commanders have been ordered to expend
any amount of life required to destroy them. Thus the trucks are constantly on the move, never
staying still in one place for long and always under heavy cover when idle. They pop out of
their tree cover or camo netting to fire a salvo and then immediately retreat to avoid counter
battery fire or an air attack. It's a dangerous game of cat and mouse, but to date the Ukrainians
have been winning- to devastating effect. The truck is long gone by the time
its rockets find their target. Several dozen miles behind enemy lines, well
out of the reach of any other artillery, Russian Colonel Andrei Vasilyev, commander of an
elite paratrooper regiment, is taking a meeting with his senior officers. To date, Russia has lost
a whopping 55 Colonels in its half a year effort in Ukraine, a casualty figure so staggering the
only parallel is from the second world war. Thus Colonel Vasilyev has taken great pains to keep his
exact location a secret- but US intelligence has found him and transmitted the GPS coordinates
of his secret command post to the Ukrainians. One rocket impacts the command post
with a precision of half a meter, instantly incinerating the good Colonel and his
officers. For him, the war is over, but for those Russians still living the deadly rain of rockets
continues. Supplies and ammunition for artillery pieces is destroyed, as dozens of other soldiers
are killed or wounded in the precision strike. Colonel Andrey Vasilyev is now the
56th Russian colonel to die in Ukraine, but he won't be the last. And a large
part of Ukraine's stunning success in recent months is all down to one
single gift from the United States: the High Mobility Artillery Rocket
System, otherwise known as HIMARS. The impact of HIMARS in Ukraine cannot be
understated. While the Javelin has become the patron saint and protector of Ukraine, this
American weapon is far deadlier to the Russians than even the Javelin- and that's thanks to
its range and precision. With just twelve of these weapon systems in the country, Ukraine
has ground the Russian offensive to nearly a complete halt. But how in the world could so
few weapons be giving Russia so much trouble, and why can't Russia overcome
such tiny numbers of US weapons? The HIMARS was developed in the
late 1990s for use by the US Army. The system is not much different than other
rocket artillery, save for the fact that instead of the two rocket pods used by the
Army's M270 MLRS, HIMARS has only one pod for greatly increased mobility. This allows the
system to very quickly move into firing position and then escape before enemy counterbattery fire
or a ground attack mission arrives on-scene, and is why Russia is having such great difficulty
neutralizing the dozen units provided to Ukraine. HIMARS can be loaded with a standard six rocket
pod, or can carry a single tactical ballistic missile with a quick conversion. Its rockets have
a range of between 1.2 and 190 miles (2-300km), or up to 190 miles (300 km) when using the army's
ATACMs surface-to-surface missile. It can even be equipped with SLAMRAAM missiles, surface-launched
variants of the AMRAAM anti-aircraft missile. But its versatility doesn't end there, because
unlike any other rocket artillery in the world, HIMARS can even engage targets while loaded up on
a transport ship. In October of 2017 the US Marine Corps fired a single rocket while at sea from
the deck of an amphibious transport dock ship, successfully hitting a shore target with
precision. This now makes HIMARS deadly not just on land, but even when it's still
loaded on a ship and waiting to be delivered. The weapon system saw wide use in
the Iraq/AFghanistan conflicts, and in a prelude of what was to come-
if Russia had been paying attention- HIMARS’ high precision allowed it to target
Taliban commanders' hideouts in October of 2010, forcing them to flee the country temporarily.
With its impressive range and precision, HIMARS has fired over 400 rockets at Islamic
State militants since November of 2015, and the year after it fired rockets into
Syria in support of Syrian rebels there. In January of 2016, manufacturer
Lockheed-Martin announced that HIMARS had reached 1 million
operational hours with US forces, achieving an incredible 99 percent operational
readiness rate. Compare that with strike fighter aircraft who have been loitering at around a
70% readiness rate for years and you can see why HIMARS and its precision fire has become
an incredibly important tool for the US Army. And now it's the most important
tool in the Ukrainian army. Russia must have been sleeping through the last
decade, because upon making an appearance in Ukraine, HIMARS' impact was immediate- pun
intended. The first four units arrived on the 23rd of June, and just two days later
they were in use against Russian forces, killing over 40 Russian soldiers on a
precision strike at a military base in Izyum. For the first time since the war began, Russian
rear areas were under threat from Ukrainian weapons, and the fear this realization struck was
palpable- specially as successful fire mission after successful fire mission took place. Within
days of its opening salvo, the Russian military said that the US's M270 MLRS and M142 HIMARS
were the most dangerous weapons in Ukraine, and that it was vital for Russian
forces to destroy them at any cost. Yet not all Russian officers were convinced,
and it was believed that their air defense units such as S-300 and S-400 systems would be able
to knock the American rockets out of the sky. That however never happened, prompting the Russian
government to launch an investigation into the manufacturer of the S-300 air defense system- just
one of many ongoing investigations into failing or underperforming Russian weapons.
For Russian air defense operators, HIMARS rockets fly too fast and too high for
their systems to understand them as a threat- they have the flight trajectory of traditional
artillery but with the speed of a fighter jet, and this can cause havoc when trying to
identify a HIMARS attack. Russian software will need to be patched to begin targeting
incoming rockets, a development which could take months to complete- if Russian can manage
the feat given all their current difficulties. Any doubt amongst Russian officers as to the
deadly efficacy of HIMARS however was ended in the coming weeks, as Ukrainian bombardments
targeted Russian command posts and supply depots, inflicting crippling casualties in
Russia's command and control networks and destroying over fifty supply
depots. On the fourth of July, Ukraine even honored the American independence
holiday- with help from the Russians- with a suspected HIMARS strike
against a massive ammo depot HIMARS has been so effective in countering
Russian forces that Ukrainian commanders report that Russian shelling is down
tenfold after successful HIMARS strikes, sparing the lives of hundreds
of Ukrainian soldiers. But how in the world could twelve weapons be
turning the tide of the war in Ukraine? It has everything to do with precision. Russia
has the largest amount of artillery in the world, and has come to be called an 'artillery
army'. Yet the vast majority of that artillery is completely unguided. It
is fundamentally the same artillery that was in use since the second world war.
HIMARS however is a complete game changer, because it's smart while Russia's artillery
is dumb- and it has greater range. With its extended range, HIMARS can hit
targets well behind the front lines, putting areas normally considered safe from enemy
attack at great risk. This means command posts, staging areas, supply depots, and even
long-range air defense or ground-attack systems- all juicy and very high value targets that
traditional artillery simply can't reach. With command posts and supplies being forced
to relocate further behind the battle lines, Russian troops can’t move or react as
quickly as they once did, slowing down an offensive and limiting the Russian military’s
ability to exploit battlefield opportunities. Overextension becomes a very real problem,
and could lead to outright disaster. But the system’s real strength comes from
precision, because HIMARS can accomplish with one salvo what it takes traditional artillery
dozens, if not hundreds of rounds to do. And Ukraine is using that precision to
great effect by targeting Russian supplies and command posts. This is a strategy
in effect since the start of the war, with Ukraine devastating Russian logistics even to
the point of ignoring targets such as artillery, troops, or tanks. After all, without
fuel and ammo, an army can't fight. And Russian forces are discovering that
they are having acute supply issues thanks to HIMARS destroying their supply hubs,
greatly slowing the pace of their advance and even halting it in places. The use of just
twelve HIMARS systems has helped open up a window for a Ukrainian counterattack in
the south, which is expected to commence at the end of July and will probably have
started by the time you watch this episode. But precision is worthless if you don't
know where the enemy's juiciest targets are, and this is largely where the US comes in. The
United States has been feeding vast amounts of intelligence to Ukrainian forces since the
start of the conflict, and the US is very good at sniffing out enemy VIPs and other high
priority targets. That's partly thanks to one of the largest intelligence apparatuses in the
world, but also thanks to the Russians themselves who have almost no concept of operational
or communications security. A fundamental lack of encrypted radios has allowed Ukraine
and the US to snoop on Russian communications, and take appropriate action. US intelligence has
led to over a dozen Russian generals earning an early and permanent retirement. And with HIMARS
on the front lines, that list is bound to grow. The US is committed to keeping Ukraine resupplied
with the rockets it needs to keep blasting Russian targets, and is even shipping additional
HIMARS units over the next couple months. Ukraine has said that with 100 of these systems
it could push Russia out of its territory, and though we don't know how many the
US will end up sending to Ukraine, we know that an additional four are
already being planned for delivery. For its part, Russia has publicly
downplayed the threat HIMARS poses- yet the facts don't lie. Russian use
of artillery is down significantly in areas where HIMARS is in play, as Russian
artillerymen are forced to conserve ammunition, and destruction of the American weapons
has become a top priority. Russia claims it has destroyed four of the units to date, a
claim that both Ukraine and the Pentagon deny. Now we have news that the US House of
Representatives has approved a measure to provide $100 million in funding to train Ukrainian
pilots in the use of American F-15s and F-16s. If the bill passes the Senate in September, then
Ukrainian pilots could begin training as early as January of next year in US planes. By next
summer, Russia could have yet another headache on its hands as it now faces modern American
weapons both on the ground and in the sky. The real question though is: with all
its bluster about destroying NATO, how exactly does Russia plan to do that when it
can't even handle a dozen US HIMARS? With nearly 400 HIMARS units in service, other NATO members
are now requesting the weapon system from the US, which is bad-news-bears for Vladimir
Putin's dream of Russian expansionism. Now check out What Will Ukraine Do After Its War
With Russia? Or click this other video instead!
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HIMARS if you don’t want to watch the video.
Goddamn the click bait bullshit is heavy with this war.
Gotta profit somehow am I right?
This video is pretty out of date. If you’ve been following the war up till now you’re not really going to learn anything new.
This Youtube channel is the absolute worst.
Most of the content is just shameless clickbait with nothing new to say.