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The Russian military has targeted and destroyed yet another American-made M142 HIMARS multiple rocket launchers of Kiev forces.
The HIMARS was reportedly destroyed in a forest near the settlement of Khotimlya in the Kharkiv direction. Video footage showing what appears to be a Iskander-M tactical quasi-ballistic missile hitting the launcher and accompanying vehicles surfaced online on June 20.
The United States has supplied Kiev forces with at least 39 HIMARS launchers since the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. Germany promised to buy three more for Kiev forces earlier this year.
These launchers are typically armed with M30/M31 series GMLRS GPS-guided rockets, which have a range of more than 70 kilometers, or MGM-140 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles with a range between 165 and 300 kilometers depending on the version.
The Russian military has already damaged or destroyed many of Ukraine’s HIMARS launchers using precision-guided weapons, like the Iskander-M. In addition, Russian air defense and electronic warfare means have significantly reduced the effectiveness of the system.
The Iskander-M has a range of nearly 500 kilometers. It can be armed with different conventional warheads, including a cluster munitions warhead, a fuel–air explosive enhanced-blast warhead, a high-explosive fragmentation warhead, an earth penetrator for bunker busting and an electromagnetic pulse device for anti-radar missions.
The highly-maneuverable missile is guided by a GLONASS-aided inertial navigation system. It can be also equipped with an optical seeker with a digitized scene-mapping area correlator system for terminal guidance.
The ongoing ground operations in Kharkiv allowed the Russian military to hunt down several HIMARS launchers which were recently brought into this direction by Kiev forces to attack Russian territory with permission from the U.S.
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