Just seconds after the stroke of midnight on December 31, in the early moments of 2023, a US-made M-142 HIMARS (highly mobile artillery rocket system), operated by the Ukrainian armed forces, fired off a pod of six Guided Multiple Rocket Launch System (GMLRS), each with a 200-pound unitary high-explosive warhead that is guided to its target using GPS, toward the 19th Vocational School in the town of Makeevka. At the school, soldiers from the Russian Ministry of Interior’s 20th Special Forces Detachment and 360th Communications Training Regiment, along with freshly mobilized Russian soldiers assigned to the 631st Regional Training Center of the Russian Missile Troops and Artillery Forces, were celebrating the arrival of the new year. The troops, numbering more than 400 in total, barely had time to get off a congratulatory toast when four of the GMLRS rounds slammed into the school building, levelling it (two other GMLRS rockets were successfully engaged and shot down by Russian air defense.)
Why the HIMARS is so difficult to target
Why the HIMARS is so difficult to target
Why the HIMARS is so difficult to target
Just seconds after the stroke of midnight on December 31, in the early moments of 2023, a US-made M-142 HIMARS (highly mobile artillery rocket system), operated by the Ukrainian armed forces, fired off a pod of six Guided Multiple Rocket Launch System (GMLRS), each with a 200-pound unitary high-explosive warhead that is guided to its target using GPS, toward the 19th Vocational School in the town of Makeevka. At the school, soldiers from the Russian Ministry of Interior’s 20th Special Forces Detachment and 360th Communications Training Regiment, along with freshly mobilized Russian soldiers assigned to the 631st Regional Training Center of the Russian Missile Troops and Artillery Forces, were celebrating the arrival of the new year. The troops, numbering more than 400 in total, barely had time to get off a congratulatory toast when four of the GMLRS rounds slammed into the school building, levelling it (two other GMLRS rockets were successfully engaged and shot down by Russian air defense.)