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EASTERN UKRAINE — The top-of-the-line weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal drives down a dirt road unmarked on any maps past a sunflower field before its military guards park it among the trees — branches shielding it from the Russian drones no doubt in pursuit.
The M142 highly mobile artillery missile system, known as HIMARS, is one of four the Ukrainians received last month from the United States as part of a $700 million military aid package. The soldiers assigned to this one have already decorated the interior with a picture of a scantily clad woman, air freshener and rosaries. The outside has three small black skulls emblazoned on it – one for each successfully hit target.
“Actually, we have six,” said the head of this system, whose call sign is Kuzya. “We just haven’t had a chance to add the other three yet.”
Following public frustration over Western delays in transferring promised heavy weaponry, particularly multiple-launch missile systems such as HIMARS, the Ukrainians quickly put their new hardware into operation more than four months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Kuzya and his comrades said their targets so far have been Russian command posts – warehouses where enemy officers and weapons were stationed.
Ukrainian officials say the new tranche of Western supplies is already making a difference on the battlefield — a testament to the importance of continued security assistance and the painful cost of slow supplies as the Russian military slowly expands its control in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Artillery strikes from French self-propelled howitzers stationed in the port city of Odessa reportedly forced the Russians to withdraw Thursday from the strategically important Snake Island in the Black Sea.
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HIMARS is the most advanced system provided by the US and has the longest range of Ukraine’s ground weapons, nearly 50 miles, allowing its forces to deliver precision strikes on Russian military targets without endangering its own civilians in the occupied territories . Ukraine wanted the weapons about two months before the transfer was approved — after Ukraine assured the Biden administration it would not use them to carry out cross-border attacks in Russia.
The Biden administration pledged to send Ukraine four more HIMARS as part of an additional $450 million in aid announced last week. All four have been offered in Europe, and training on those systems has already begun with Ukrainian troops who will use them, according to a Pentagon spokesman.
“What we used before was much more worrisome,” said the gunner of the four-man team, whose role is to input the target’s coordinates. His call sign is Moroz, which translates as “frost”.
HIMARS also brings more peace of mind, the soldiers said. With their old equipment, they avoided missile trajectories that passed through populated areas, limiting them to only firing through fields and forests to avoid potentially injuring civilians, Moroz said.
“I have no doubt what we’re going to hit,” Moroz said. “I know the missile will hit its target because it is guided by a satellite.”
The system this unit previously used was the Soviet-era Uragan, a self-propelled multiple rocket launcher with a maximum range of about 20 miles. It also had a margin of error of about half a mile and was directed in coordination with a drone or reconnaissance team. HIMARS is guided by a satellite and deviates from its target’s coordinates by at most one yard, the soldiers said.
They asked to be identified only by their callsigns as a security measure. Because the systems are considered the highest priority target for the Russians, the families of the team members don’t even know they are working with them. They must keep HIMARS constantly on the move, as staying in one place for too long risks its location being revealed.
The launcher holds six rockets and is attached to a dark green truck frame. Operations mostly take place at night – soldiers stand at a distance and count down before shouting “fire!” There is a bright flash as each rocket takes off. They are then ready to move within two minutes — and speed is imperative to keep HIMARS safe because the Russians can quickly determine the source of the fire and return fire. The mobility is impressive – for a huge vehicle, it can travel up to 60 miles per hour, they said.
“We were also surprised that such a high-precision weapon could fire so quietly,” Kuzya said.
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The department eagerly awaited the arrival of HIMARS for a month. Then they finally got first-hand experience at a secret location outside Ukraine with American instructors for about two weeks. Instead of letting the Americans simply demonstrate, the Ukrainian troops asked them to explain what to do, let the students try and adjust from there.
“They were like, ‘Oh [expletive]” he said with a smile, wearing a bulletproof vest emblazoned with a skull and “Welcome to Hell” patch.
The computer system is entirely in English, so during training, translators explain what each button means – everything is documented in a notebook that soldiers refer to regularly. But Google Translate is still necessary sometimes.
Kuzya said it would be nice to have 50 HIMARS so that Ukraine could deploy four in each direction on a huge front that spans almost its entire eastern border with Russia. Sputnik, the unit’s commander, said it would be better to have the equipment sooner – before Moscow’s forces take control of most of the country’s Luhansk region.
“I think it took too long to get them here,” he said. “If they had been here much sooner, I think we would have ended this war by now.”
Anastasia Vlasova contributed to this report.
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