Why Ukraine is pleading with the US for rocket artillery
Despite the massive influx of military aid from the United States and other NATO partners, the Ukrainians say they still lack weapons systems that would give them a chance against the Russian invaders: Rocket artillery.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has personally appealed to several members of Congress for the United States to provide Ukraine with multiple-launch rocket systems, said a congressional staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
President Joe Biden recently caused a bit of confusion when he said the U.S. government will not give Ukraine any “rocket systems that can strike into Russia.”
A senior administration official subsequently clarified that the United States is still considering giving the Ukrainians multiple-launch rocket systems, but not with long-range artillery rockets that hit targets beyond the battlefield.
Specifically, the Biden administration is looking into providing Ukraine with Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, which has a range of about 43 miles, Wall Street Journal reporters Michael Gordon and Nancy Youssef first revealed on Tuesday. Those rockets would be mounted on High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems.
Notably, the Biden administration has decided not to include any Army Tactical Missile Systems, which have a range of roughly 186 miles, in the next tranche of military assistance to Ukraine, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Because the Russians have plenty of multiple-launch rocket systems and they are well skilled at using them, the Ukrainians need comparable rocket artillery “to have a fighting chance,” said Marine Col. Jay Frey, who has extensive experience with both tube artillery and rocket systems.
During the Cold War, the Soviets developed multiple-launch rocket systems that could outrange and outgun U.S. tube artillery and also “wipe out a grid square early on,” said Frey, who is also a senior military fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, D.C.
“The Ukrainians want to have an equal or greater capability than the Russians because you just don’t want to be slugging it out via tube artillery,” Frey told Task & Purpose. “You would like to have an equivalent or better counter than what the Russians have – and they currently are really good at their rocket systems.”.......snip.......
Russian leaders are becoming increasingly confident that the war will turn out in Russia’s favor, according to Meduza, an independent Russian news site now based in Latvia.
“We’ll grind them [the Ukrainians] down in the end,” an unnamed Kremlin source told Meduza for a May 27 story. “The whole thing will probably be over by the fall.”
Full article: https://taskandpurpose.com/analysis/ukraine-rocket-artillery-russia/
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