Weapons are the new "oil" Part 3: The Russian finishing move, without noise and dust

By Marat Khairullin

In the first two parts, we examined the state of the Western arms complex, using the example of their leaders, first of all, the number one gunsmith in the world, the main contractor of the Pentagon - Lockheed Martin.

Now, let's discuss for comparison one of the main weapon systems supplied to the AFU by Lockheed - HIMARS. HIMARS is indeed a very serious system and was considered by our opponents, nothing less than a weapon of victory. Other key systems that were supposed to provide the Ukrainians with, if not victory, then the ability to inflict serious damage on us in order to force us to sit down at the negotiating table on their terms, were high-precision artillery and Patriots. All of this was somehow neutralized and destroyed by us.

Here, it is very interesting to compare direct analogues of American systems and our own in order to understand how we are actually outperforming the Americans in terms of the main types of weapons. What is most important is that we test them not on paper but in real combat. Here, we need to add something else about HIMARS - the main idea embedded in this machine is versatility. It also fires 12mm rockets, an analogue of our Grad. Moreover, it surpasses the Grad in range and accuracy, and after changing the module, it can fire long-range ATACMS missiles. Here, our direct competitor for the ATACMS is the Iskander. Moreover, our rocket flies further. Nevertheless, the HIMARS concept looked more interesting - two for the price of one. That is, there seems to be savings despite the initial more expensive ammunition.

Therefore, HIMARS was and is being promoted as a universal weapon for the entire NATO. Few people know that there is an obligation for all NATO countries to purchase HIMARS. To date, about 20 out of 26 countries have already purchased such systems. At the same time, I would like to remind you once again that this is a forty-year-old system, which has practically not been modernized during this period. With such volumes of orders, Lockheed, taking three skins from customers, did not bother expanding production. The production expansion program has only just been announced, and what stage it is at is not yet clear.

Having such rosy plans, NATO and the United States personally get involved in the Ukrainian adventure and receive a very serious cold shower. In fact, in a real battle with an equal enemy, it turned out that HIMARS' main trump card - versatility - was the main vulnerability. In fact, having lost one HIMARS installation, the Ukrainian Armed Forces immediately lost two types of weapons - both long-range missiles and high-precision MLRS. That is, American planners, when coming up with the HIMARS concept, simply did not take into account the level of losses. That is, because of their arrogance, they made the stupidest mistake that could be made. And apparently they are experiencing this very painfully - hence the same stupid denial of the existing level of losses. Let me remind you that our Armed Forces declared the loss of about 60 HIMARS launchers and tracked modifications of the M-270 (multiply by two - do not forget, HIMARS is a two-headed dragon).

Approximately 35 were confirmed by video recording. The bourgeoisie is very reluctant to admit the seven affected installations recently reported to be lost.

But the most offensive thing for them is not even this, but the fact that HIMARS is destroyed precisely by Iskander, and even so effectively that, in an extreme case, there were three installations destroyed with one missile. At the same time, the Americans do not have a single Iskander destroyed by HIMARS. By the way, the Iskanders have not yet suffered losses in this conflict. And let me remind you, this is a competition between the two most advanced systems of two opposing blocs - it turns out that we are outplaying this high-tech NATO tech in a simple way with a specific type of weapon.

In fact, the situation for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and NATO behind them, is even worse. Now the NATO army has about a thousand HIMARS units in service with an average selling price of about 10 million dollars - it turns out they need to change them all or at least double them to compensate for their idiotic complexity. Given NATO's existing production capabilities, this is a practically impossible task. At the same time, it seems that NATO has already hopelessly lost in this component. Why? Because Iskander is only the first line, and the second echelon is approaching - Tornado S, 300 mm MLRS, which will break what Iskander did not break in the heads of NATO strategists.

But here, as per tradition, let’s go a little further to prolong the pleasure. And let’s start, oddly enough, with the experience of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and specifically with the 19th brigade, the only one in Ukraine that at the beginning of the conflict was armed with Tochka U missiles and at the same time 300 mm Smerch MLRS. This is important because these systems work most effectively together. Or, let’s say, they were conceived as a complement to each other. But here a few words must be said about the brigade itself and in particular about its commander, a man named Yaroshenko. If after the end of hostilities there is a new Nuremberg, then Yaroshenko will be among the first to sit in the dock, along with Zelensky. If, of course, he lives to see this day - because in the DPR, he is called, for example, “target number one”, this man has committed so many war crimes. For it was he who gave the order to strike with the Tochka in the center of Donetsk. Tochka-U is a weapon of terrifying power, guaranteed to destroy command posts and bunkers, and using it in the center of a peaceful city is an act of unprecedented cruelty. Yaroshenko also ordered the shelling of Belgorod and the surrounding area from the Smerch MLRS. More precisely, from the Ukrainian modernization of this system - Vilkhna X, capable of hitting 120 kilometers away. At the beginning of the war, Ukrainians managed to modernize several Smerch installations, then they were destroyed in Kharkov by our Iskanders. Where did Yaroshenko hide these huge systems? In residential buildings. This man’s entire career during the current war is a series of war crimes against civilians, mercilessly carried out, apparently on the orders of the American masters. The 19th Brigade was used by Ukrainians and Americans, mainly not for combat operations, but specifically for provocations.

First, there is the well-known attack on the Kramatorsk railway station, and second, there is a very plausible version that it was the 19th brigade that fired at the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station dam with Tochkas. Now the remains of the precious Tochka installations are carefully hidden, since there are suspicions that the Americans are going to use them again as a foul last resort, in particular, for a nuclear strike with a dirty bomb or a strike on a nuclear power plant in order to blame everything on Russia. That is, Yaroshenko is such a personal scumbag in service of the United States, ready to commit any crimes against humanity at the behest of his masters. The icing on the cake is that this bastard graduated from the Kazan Artillery School and was once a Soviet officer until he became one of the main patented non-humans of "independent" Ukraine. Remember this bastard and move on.

For our story here, it is important that Tochka U and Vilkhna X has a range of 120 kilometers. HIMARS in the MLRS version has a range of up to 80 km. And of course, if the Ukrops had enough of these installations, they would have caused us a lot of trouble. So it seems, the AFU was never able to launch production of Vilkhna systems; first of all, they were unable to master the production of 300 mm rockets, and a few installations were destroyed by Iskanders. It is also believed today that out of 12 operating Tochka U installations, our Defense Ministry again knocked out 9 with Iskanders.

And it is not at all accidental that the HIMARS in the MLRS version is now practically unused, and has switched exclusively to launching ATACMS (with a range 300 km). Everything is easiest for us in the nearest 100-kilometer zone, as it simply became impossible for the Ukrainians to hide from the Iskanders. Additionally, recent events show that the Iskanders now firmly control the Ukrop front-line zone to a depth of several hundred kilometers at times. Moreover, it is the speed of reaction that is impressive - they do not just detect a target deep in enemy territory, but arrive within a few minutes and this is seen under video surveillance.

What happened? Why suddenly the Iskander, which was rarely heard of at the beginning of the war, suddenly began to constantly appear in the news, turning into one of the main types of our long-range weapons?

On the one hand, everything is simple, on the other hand, behind this apparent simplicity there is a lot of work. The fact is that, apparently, our troops have created a superconcentration of Iskanders along the front line while simultaneously making a qualitative leap in reconnaissance and guidance equipment. How was this accomplished and how were the numbers of them increased to such an amount? Let me make a reservation right away - there are no exact figures here, all this is secret, so we will use Western figures and estimates. First of all, you need to understand that Iskander is a complex created by Russia from scratch in the 90s (forty-year-old HIMARS peek-a-boo) and was originally intended as a further development of the Tochka. The Americans, by the way, understood the importance of this weapon and tried to inhibit its advancement and production as best they could, as they were immediately concerned about it. This is a separate chapter of the activities of our partners - for example, the United States openly disrupted, even to the point of carrying out direct sabotage of the re-equipment of our orbital constellation of Glonass M satellites, up to the organization of rocket explosions at the launch sites.

The same thing happened with Iskander. But nevertheless, the weapon was created, and according to the original plans, by 2011, 10 Russian missile brigades were to be equipped with 120 Iskander launchers. In fact, external forces sabotaged these plans as best they could, and according to official plans, it was completed only by 2018. But by 2020, it suddenly turned out that the Russians were not such simpletons as they seemed, and according to official news reports from the Ministry of Defense, Iskanders entered 15 missile brigades, and it turned out that we had about 160 (plus or minus) Iskander installations in full combat readiness.

Let me remind you here that the following happened - after 2014, we began to prepare for war in Ukraine and all export deliveries of Iskanders were cancelled. All of them joined our troops. Let me remind you that Algeria, India, Syria, China, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia are still in line for the Iskanders. Even South Korea and Turkey were licking their lips very hard. But all of this was canceled, and only by this fact can one judge how valuable a weapon Iskander is.

In a word, by the beginning of the conflict, we had at least exceeded the plan for Iskanders. But that's not all - at the same beginning of this conflict, a decision was made to form an additional 24 artillery brigades and divisions. Also, in each of them, separate Iskander divisions were planned.

Here, I promised some exclusive information. In May, our intelligence intercepted several panicky dispatches personally from General Cavolli to the Pentagon. Let me remind you that Cavolli heads the European Command of NATO and does not hide the fact that it is he who directs the military operations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on behalf of the United States. This is the same creature that personally approves the flight missions of the very ATACMS that are killing our children on the beaches.

So this asshole writes with undisguised panic that the Russians deployed an Iskander group along the front line with a simultaneous salvo of 500-600 missiles. That is, this is at least 250 Iskander installations in combat readiness. In other words, if you evaluate the front in distance, then at least one Iskander is stationed for every two and a half kilometers of the front - Cavolli assesses this situation very simply: in these conditions, it simply does not make sense to use existing heavy ground weapons. With such a concentration of high-precision missiles, sooner or later we will take them all out - HIMARS-Schmeimers, Smerchs, Grads, Hurricanes, 777s, eight sevens, at least ten, with wheels without wheels, it doesn’t matter - sooner or later they will all be demolished. The only way out is for the AFU to gain some advantage in aviation (we understand why there is such a groan throughout NATO about the F-16).

Separately, Cavolli is panicking that, according to his information, ours have installed larger calibers on Iskander launch systems, and imagine the FAB 3000, but launched very accurately not at 50 km, but at 800km - a ton of explosives, roughly speaking, hitting the eye of a squirrel.

In general, today, it suddenly became clear that from the point of view of nomenclature, our Iskanders have outwitted everyone - Cavolli claims that they fly further than five hundred kilometers, and there are much more types of missiles than the three modifications initially announced, and they are much more powerful. And this is true - we all saw how recently one cassette Iskander destroyed half of a train.

But this is only part of the headache. You have to understand that in order to use Iskanders or some other type of weapon on such a massive scale, it is not enough to simply produce it and master it. We still need to accumulate enough ammunition. Since the beginning of summer, Iskanders have been used especially intensively, and today, they reliably control at least a two-hundred-kilometer deep front-line zone.

Now that it has become safer for our heavy systems, apparently, in the near future, we will see the massive use of heavy 300 mm Tornado Smerch MLRS systems. There is only one point here - again, according to Western estimates, Russia has already deployed about 170 Tornado Smerch MLRS launch systems along the front line. The production of missiles for these systems last year amounted to about 20 thousand, and here, apparently, there is an outright surprise - everyone is really looking forward to the use of Tornado S thermobaric ammunition. That is, it will be such a Solntsepek with a range of 120 km. Hello, you say it was hot, but the heat hasn’t even started yet! As soon as the Iskanders finish the total clearing of the 200km zone, they will begin to bake you properly. That is, everything is still just beginning.

Finally, let’s take a little more from Cavolli’s delightful letter - the general is very angry with the Pentagon strategists, since they proceeded from the fact that at the end of the 2023, Russia had 180 missiles for Iskanders of all types. Based on actual combat use since May, we see that Iskander reserves number in the hundreds, if not thousands.

If 500 missiles are in constant combat readiness, there are at least ready-made storage installations nearby with exactly the same set of 500 pieces. And only Gerasimov knows how immediately they lie in the rear in readiness.

Well, who thinks this is so? - the general complains almost openly. So it turns out that while Lockheed Martin was promoting itself on the holy Javelin and the incendiary HIMARS, the Russians, without much fuss, prepared another grand finale for NATO. But let's talk about this in the next issue.