Footage of Ukrainian troops using the M270 long-range rocket launcher was first exposed. The number of M270 rockets is 4, and it is not announced which country supported it, but both the United Kingdom and Norway have previously promised to supply Ukrainian with M270 rockets.
The M270 rocket launcher uses a tracked armored chassis, 12 tubes, firepower is stronger than The Hippos, and the off-road performance is good, but long-distance maneuvering requires the use of flatbed trailers, long-range mobility is relatively low, suitable for combat in certain spans of non-major zones.
The arrival of the M270 rocket launcher will have strengthened the long-range firepower of the Ukrainian army. In the past month, the Ukrainian army's use of the "Haimas" rocket artillery to attack the Russian logistics ammunition supply system has forced the Russian army to load and unload ammunition and store ammunition at railway stations farther away from the front line, which can effectively reduce the density of heavy artillery and rocket artillery fire on the Russian front.
The M270 and M142 "Haimas" rockets should theoretically be equipped with three types of rockets, one is a common M26 rocket with a range of 42 kilometers and a multi-purpose submunition warhead. The second is the M30 GMLRS extended range guided rocket, equipped with a sub-mother-daughter warhead. The third is the M31 guided rocket, equipped with a high-explosive single warhead. The latter two guided rockets have a range of 70 kilometers, adopt a joint guidance system of inertia + GPS, and the end strike accuracy is meter-level.
At present, the M270 used by the Ukrainian army is a castrated version modified according to the requirements of the Oslo Cluster Bomb Convention, which can only launch M31 single-warhead satellite-guided rockets, and has no sub-bullet launch capability, so it can only strike targets such as the command center of the ammunition depot of the fortifications.
The M26 submunition and M30 guided submunition are more suitable for attacking armored cluster targets, and the warhead of each rocket is loaded with 644 bombs. A single salvo of M270 can drop 7728 submunitions in the target area, which can destroy the target in an area of one square kilometer, which is very powerful.
The Ukrainian side believes that the number of Hemas supplied by the United States is too small, and the Ukrainian defense minister once called out to the United States to require at least 100 Haimas rockets to be enough, which is equivalent to about 20% of the total inventory of the US Army and Marine Corps.
But the U.S. side cautioned ukraine that it should be more concerned about the supply of ammunition for such rockets than about launchers. Even if there are 100 launchers, if there is not a sufficient amount of ammunition to fire; Then it's just a pile of scrap iron.
The M31 guided rockets are expensive, and the U.S. military itself procures about $90,000 and supplies them to Ukraine under the Lend-Lease Act, with an estimated doubled price. A 12-piece full-barrel salvo costs more than $2 million.
The 150-kilometer ER GMLRS (Extended Range Guided Multiple Rocket Launcher System) rockets under development are more expensive, and the United States had planned to spend $4.3 billion to buy nearly $29,000 guided rockets in fiscal years 2021-2024, with a unit price of nearly $150,000 each.
Former commander of the European Army Command and commander of the Seventh Army, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertlin, has said that 16 Haimas launchers, each firing 6 rockets each time, plus 12 tubes of 4 M270 rockets, only two salvos per day are calculated, and the Ukrainians will consume 8600 rockets in a month. (In fact, there are not so many, some analysts believe that in half a month, the Ukrainian side has used The Hippos rockets to launch about 2,000 to 3,000 rockets.) ）
The number of M30 and M30A1 GMLRS guided rockets produced and delivered to the U.S. Army and foreign customers to date is about 50,000, but these rockets have not been supplied to Ukraine. Supporting Ukraine's relatively new single-warhead M31 guided rockets, the U.S. military itself has more than 10,000.
That is to say, even if the Ukrainians save some use, the 20 M270 and M142 Seamas operations will run out of the existing inventory of the US military in one month. The cost of 8,600 rockets is about $1.5 billion, and the intensity of this consumption is estimated to be painful for Americans.
At present, only the military powers such as China, the United States and Russia are competing for long-range precision-guided rockets, and China is fortunate to be at the top.
The U.S. military's current M30/31 GMLRS guided rocket has a range of only 70 kilometers, and the er GMLRS (Extended Range Guided Multiple Rocket Launcher System) with a longer range of 150 kilometers will not be put into production this year. The Chinese Army has already installed a large number of precision-guided long-range fires with a range of 150 kilometers or 300 kilometers.
China's new long-range rockets have achieved ultra-high-precision guidance, that is, a small inertial navigation system + Beidou satellite positioning navigation + laser terminal guidance of the composite guidance system, the end accuracy can reach the meter level. Achieved a large fire density, that is, box loading, multi-pipe salvo + multiple warheads.
Moreover, the advantage of China's long-range guided rockets is that it has a full set of technologies, China has its own developed application chip of cheap Beidou navigation and positioning satellites, and has a low-cost Jetlink inertial navigation system that is independently mastered, so the price of long-range rockets produced by China with better performance is lower, and only China is far-reaching and sweet.