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Russia’s Volgograd railway power substation burns after night drone raid (video)
(euromaidanpress.com)
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Ukraine Retakes 2nd Sumy Objective As Russian Offensive Completely Stalls
(www.thelowdownblog.com)
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How HIMARS delivers precision strikes deep behind Russian lines | War on Tape | Daily Mail
(m.youtube.com)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M142_HIMARS
The HIMARS weapon system is probably the most pivotal weapon in the defense of Ukraine behind drones (a distant second, but second nonetheless) and artillery. Why? The reasons aren't necessarily obvious at first, with so many different types of advanced unmanned drone weapon systems what does a rocket fired out of big clunky truck/tank really do to radically change the strategic balance of land warfare in the region?
The answer to that question is among one of the most pressing lessons that the world, especially Europe must learn. Ukraine already learned it awhile ago, that is why they are always asking for more HIMARS missiles...
To explain why this weapon system is so crucial, I think this recent bit of news actually helps explain it best. The US Army is replacing 14 howitizers stationed on Hawaii for defense with HIMARS weapon systems.
Consider the problem as an army (not a navy or air force) detachment charged with defending Hawaii from a possible invasion. Artillery/howitizers are still crucial as they are anywhere else... but their range tops out at maybe 50km with specialized ammunition. Consider the size and scale of the Hawaiian Islands.
The range of a HIMARS system on the otherhand is approaching 500km/300 miles, and you can immediately see how much more useful even a much smaller number of HIMARS systems and ammunition would be for an army detachment defending the Hawaiian island chain than almost any number of traditional howitizer cannons.
It is this scale that the HIMARS system dominates at, and the same logic of choosing a HIMARS system in a situation like the US army faces in constructing a defense of Hawaii applies to a highly contested near peer landwar like Ukraine where the closer you get to the front the more lethal things become.
In otherwords, using HIMARS systems to reach out and strike enemy artillery, radar, anti-air defenses, logistics or other high value targets from the distances HIMARS can fire places the enemy in a situation where all of their forces might as well be stranded on an island with 100km of impossibly fearsome ocean between them and the HIMARS system. You cannot commit your experienced military staff to battle and count on enough of them surviving to continue to effectively fight a war under this kind of consistent, undefendable precision threat.
Traditional tube or cannon artillery is not going anywhere except in unique situations like defending a massive island chain like Hawaii as a ground force, rather the very nature of artillery has been radically changed by the introduction of HIMARS as a new even longer range compliment to shorter range high volume cannon artillery systems. The fact that Russia does not have an effective counter nor even capacity to execute similar strikes at scale makes the likelihood of them making a decisive breakthrough in an offensive this summer remote even with a large advantage in infantry number.
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Canada has announced an additional contribution of $14.6 million to support the maintenance and repair of Leopard 2 tanks provided to Ukraine, underscoring Ottawa’s ongoing commitment to Kyiv’s defense against Russian aggression, according to Canadian officials on July 21.
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The funds will go toward sustaining the Leopard 2 Maintenance and Repair Facility located in Poland, a critical logistics hub for keeping Ukraine’s armored forces operational.
This is very good news for Ukraine, let me state this in blunt terms if "western" foreign military aid is willing to commit to supplying leopards and helping maintain them longterm to Ukraine, that means the whole chain of less heavy weapon systems is also going to be similarly committed since the last thing the weapons manufacturers of the west want is for Russia and its allies to get easy access to the capacity to manufacture similar tanks to Leopards or Abrams (which I am sure they are desperately trying to do at some capacity at a medium term scale), so committing Leopards to war means committing all of the support main battle tanks require to war as well.
Think of main battle tanks as the drill bit on a tunnel boring operation, while the drill bits may be more or less effective over time for tunnel drilling crews, and the technology used may change, what doesn't change is that tunnels still need to be bored and that if you see a big pile of drill bits being gathered you can rest assured somebody is planning on boring some tunnels.
Notice how the movement of a serious amount of main battle tanks and associated logistics to Poland was simultaneous/preceded by a deployment of Apache AH-64 helicopters to Poland. The planned 60 or so helicopters Poland wants will form an immensely terrifying bulwark to Russian attacks either from the air or ground and I think at least the US if not other foreign powers were very hesitant to deploy a large concentration of armor near Russia for fear of it backfiring spectacularly without any less of a defensive assurance.
:some more thoughts, not necessary to the post..
The future of the main battle tank I believe will actually be benefitted by drones. I think one of the reasons there is such an intense change in winds in military support for Ukraine is that "western" generals and military contractors realize that main battle tanks must be extremely tightly integrated with FPV drones and other associated nimble UAVs and UGVs.
There is simply no talking about armored manuever without talking about drones anymore, which means in terms of raw geopolitical power expression just having a bunch of tanks suddenly doesn't necessarily mean anything. For a whole variety of reasons this makes Ukraine suddenly an extremely important ally to work with because it is Ukraine that in all likelihood will develop the necessary technology but more importantly tactics and doctrine to successfully integrate UAVs and UGVs into core aspects of armored manuever doctrine.
The presence of a single AFV/IFV in the midst of an operation like this would be a massive force multiplier and the risk to the AFV/IFV crew would be minimized. I am not some magic armchair genius, I am sure Ukraine realized the same thing a long time ago.
The tight integration of armor with UAVs and UGVs is vital of course for situational awareness to survive and for the capability of UAVs to intercept enemy FPV drones in a defensive manner, but also because.. well let me put it this way in a fight the best sidekick for an elephant is a rat that can bite at the enemies heels and sneak around gathering intel for the elephant not yet another elephant.
The problem main battle tanks have had since nearly the beginning is that they quickly outrun their supporting infantry and even logistics support after smashing through enemy lines, paradoxically though tanks NEED infantry support, but tanks and infantry are an uneasy duo as the environment tanks demand is highly lethal to infantry not deeply entrenched... and infantry has to be exposed to even remotely keep up with armor... so what can accompany the tanks? No one had an actually good battle tested answer other than armored fighting vehicles/APCs (which still have to ultimately expose human beings to the hellish conditions tanks thrive in) until Ukraine developed a plethora of nimble FPV type drones.
https://cnc.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_drone
I mean, C&C Generals was playing around with the idea in 2003....
I think there is an immense tactical benefit to main battle tank crews having an absurdly agile tiny hovering drone that can dance around the tank providing necessary close range situational awareness while also having the ability to ferret out AT crews/UGVs/UAVs trying to sneak up on the tank or heavily entrenched hiding infantry. I KNOW that if I am even somewhat on the mark about this military experts all around the world have to be chomping at the bit to work with Ukraine on developing tactics, technology and doctrine through their use of unmanned vehicles in combined arms operations with leopards and other main battle tanks.
I know if I was a top military brass in a country that was somewhat aligned with western military powers I would be focused on quickly helping Ukraine win the war and then gaining primary access to Ukraine UAV and UGV crews to train my ground forces with and "against" in Opfor training exercises. The changes in the dynamics of near-peer warfare in this conflict are too major to ignore, unless you are Russia...
As a final aside, notice how the evolution of armor in response to drone threats has been to make larger and heavier armored fighting vehicles. This is happening with Russia's improvised "turtle tanks" but also in armored fighting vehicle design all over the world. Bigger and heavier is the obvious trend (though there are many exceptions). The silhouette profile of armored fighting vehicles keeps increasing, and this isn't even to mention the inherent tradeoffs MRAPs make which are proliferating even into near-peer fullscale landwars in ways they were never designed for as they have absolutely HUGE silhouettes.
MRAPs are an extremely successful family of armored vehicle design, but they are inherently larger than armored vehicles designed to avoid destruction by direct fire rather than IEDs, UAVs, or other ambush tactics/small arms fire.
Do you know what main battle tanks love? Vehicles with HUGE silhouettes. So... logically there is a certain size that armored fighting vehicles will grow to counter drone threats and other new technologies... until their silhouette becomes so large it is catastrophically vulnerable to main battle tanks and TOW missiles. What is that size? I don't know, but there is a size limit that dynamic will occur at and I think Russia is going to figure out the hard way what it is.
To boil this tangent down, I think there is a possibility the ideal conditions for main battle tanks fielded closely with UAVs and UGVs and combined arms support to perform decisively may be developing and Ukraine is clearly far better situated to exploit that both in doctrine and in material access to armor.
Maybe if the Russians learn how to act like a barn with their obsolete tanks they can actually use their high visibility as a bold form of camouflage.... or more likely once Ukraine starts to get more semi-modern tanks fielded on the battlefield these monstrosities will get annihilated from a 1km away by a leopard mbt and drone scout team the crew never saw coming, and the remaining Russian armored vehicles in the wake of the sudden explosion will be too panicked to figure out where the attack came from in time.
By comparison a tank "in defilade" which means the hull of the tank is not physically presented to the enemy, only as much of the turret as necessary is visible over the rise from the target's perspective 1km away.
Anyways, my point is, I think this is a VERY solid indicator Ukraine will not lose this war. The geopolitical military players in the west I don't think would let heavy armor begin to be committed to Ukraine like this if they thought Ukraine had any chance of losing this war (which is shitty of them, not denying that).
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