New Types Of Ammunition Make Ukraine’s HIMARS Far Deadlier

HIMARS rocket launchers have been among Ukraine’s most effective weapons against the Russian invaders, and yesterday’s DoD announcement that they are sending four more will be welcome. Perhaps more significantly, images from Ukraine show HIMARS may be receiving new types of ammunition which take it to a different level of lethality against both personnel and vehicles.

The original M26 rockets had cluster warheads which distributed over 600 small bomblets over a wide area. Nicknamed ‘steel rain,’ these proved extremely effective during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, but left an unacceptable number of unexploded bomblets on the battlefield. the M26 was replaced with a unitary warhead, that is, one with a single, large explosive charge.

The rockets launched by Ukraine’s HIMARS are the M31 Unitary Warhead, a 196-pound weapon “effective against critical point targets.” GPS-aided precision means the M31 can hit a specific target such as a building or ammunition dump, but its effects are concentrated in a narrow area. While the M31 does have a fragmentation sleeve which produces distinctive, diamond-shaped shrapnel (seen in fragments recovered here), it is not an area weapon.

The New York TimesNYT
quotes U.S. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying that HIMARS strikes had hit more than 400 Russian targets, including command posts and ammunition depots. It has also been effective against bridges as well as fuel storage and communication centers. What it has not been hitting are concentrations of troops and vehicles.

There is also a more advanced warhead, known as the Alternative Warhead or M30A1, which makers Lockheed Martin call “the first munition developed to service area targets without the effects of unexploded ordnance.”

The secret of the M30A1 lies in a huge number of tungsten BBs arranged around an explosive core – about 182,000 of them. The design is from a technology known as Lethality Enhanced Ordnance developed by Orbital ATK, later acquired by Northrop GrummanNOC
. This approach uses computer modeling to calculate the optimum size, number, density and placement of fragments to ensure that a warhead produces the maximum possible effect against a specific type of target. The developers claim that the M30A1 produces the same sort of lethality as the cluster warhead. This blanketed an area of over four football fields per rocket, so a salvo of six would blanket half a square mile.

Images shared on Twitter show pods of M30A1 rockets in Ukraine; close inspection of the markings shows that they have the correct manufacturer and lot numbers and were produced in 2017.

The new rockets are highly effective against trucks and other soft-skinned vehicles, which the Russian forces appear to be using increasingly. They are also extremely lethal against infantry; the M30A1 can burst high overhead, so shallow trenches provide little protection. Russia’s 300,000 new conscripts are likely to suffer heavy casualties as soon as they arrive.

Meanwhile other reports indicate that Ukraine is now using AT2 anti-tank mines also delivered by HIMARS rockets. The reports are based on images of mines seen on roads around Lyman. The five-pound mines have a shaped charge which fires upwards when a vehicle drives over them; other mines immobilize a tank by destroying a track, the AT2 destroys them. These mines can be laid by hand or by rocket, with 28 parachuting down from one HIMARS warhead. While some have suggested the mines in Ukraine were laid by hand, others, including Ukraine’s Defence Express say they were delivered by HIMARS, which is supported by the presence of parachutes in some images. The Russian-backed government of Donetsk has condemned the mines, noting that locals say they were delivered by rocket.

The AT2 warheads were originally intended as a rapid way for NATO forces to lay minefields in the path of approaching Soviet armor. They were acquired by (West) Germany rather than the U.S., as well as the UK and Norway. There is no indication where the specimens seen in Ukraine came from.

In the current conflict, the long range of HIMARS—over forty miles — and the strategic situation mean the mines may be used in others ways. For example, fired far over the front lines, they can block supply routes and prevent reinforcements from being sent to critical locations They can also slow down or halt counter-attacks.

The most recent tranche of U.S. weapons announced for Ukraine also includes 1,000 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mines (RAAM) – an artillery round which scatters 9 anti-vehicle mines, giving Ukraine further instant minelaying capability.

The flow of Western weapons to Ukraine continues, and may even be accelerating. As Russian rhetoric becomes more bellicose, the restraint in supplying only certain weapon types may finally be wearing off.