US rockets make an impact, but a supply gap persists
Weapons from different nations ‘logistical nightmare’
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence released footage of a rocket launcher firing from the middle of a highway somewhere in the Zaporizhzhia region, the rockets arching high into what looked like an early evening sky.
They did not say what they were firing at. But the same day, a strike was reported on the air base in the occupied city of Melitopol — 80km south of the Zaporizhzhia front line.
It was the latest in a series of deep precision strikes by Western weapons that Kyiv hopes could turn the tide of the war. The United States has promised Ukraine eight M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars). At least four, including the one seen firing from Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday, arrived in the last week of June. The remainder are meant to arrive before the end of this month.
It is a small number, but the Himars out-range and are more accurate than anything either the Ukrainians or the Russians possess. Kyiv hopes that could help erode Russia’s most feared battlefield advantage. Russia is currently firing an estimated 20,000 artillery rounds a day compared with Ukraine’s 6000 rounds, according to Ukrainian officials in a recent report by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).
Ukraine cannot match the Russians gun-for-gun, even with Western weapons. But by targeting the ammunition supply chain, they hope to starve the enemy of shells.
The Himars have certainly been working overtime since their arrival.
On Tuesday alone, Ukraine had claimed three more strikes on ammunition dumps in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions. The chaos continued yesterday, with thick pillars of smoke rising over Donetsk, as the Ukrainians targeted the railway station and a nearby vehicle repair workshop.
Deprived of the ability to lay down thousands of shells a day, the theory goes, Russia will be unable to replicate its grinding advance through the Luhansk and its assault on Donetsk region will stall. “It is a solid concept that should work as long as the Russians are not using precisionguided munitions, because the way they are using artillery they cannot help but have ammunition dumps,” said Jack Watling, the Rusi researcher who wrote the report. “We will see
in the coming weeks if it works.”
The deliveries have once again highlighted a gap between what Ukraine says it needs and what the West is able or prepared to deliver.
“It is an excellent piece of equipment. We can probe deep into the front,” said Andrei Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defence minister who has been involved in talks about arms procurement from the West.
“But the short answer is no, it is not enough. We need tens of them. If we had more, we would go after their equipment, their own artillery units, their own multiple rocket launches — and then we would be able to stop the offensive and secondly return the dynamic and start to move them out. Unfortunately, at the moment, it is completely unclear when most of that stuff is coming and it is unclear what we are going to get.”
Ukraine has received a smorgasbord of Western and former Soviet weaponry from its Western allies since the war began, but often later and in smaller numbers that Kyiv would like.
The haphazard deliveries — partly the result of multiple well-meaning heads of state asking their armies what they can spare — has created what Zagorodnyuk calls a “logistical nightmare” of separate training programmes and ammunition supply chains for different units.
Delays, which have been caused by a combination of logistical challenges and Western governments’ fear of further escalation from Russia, have undoubtedly cost lives and allowed the Russians to take Lysychansk, he said.
But perhaps more concerning is the vulnerabilities at the heart of Western military planning. Few Nato members actually had much to give and discussions are now under way for a “very serious” expansion of industrial military production.
Watling said Western governments would have to significantly expand and rationalise support if they are serious about helping Kyiv win the war.
— Telegraph Group Ltd