- Ukrainian forces took out more than 100 Russian soldiers with an ATACMS missile, per OSINT analysts.
- Four ATACMS were used to target the group, one analyst said.
- The soldiers would have been out of reach of Ukraine’s shorter-range ATACMS missiles.
A Ukrainian ATACMS long-range missile strike killed more than 100 Russian soldiers in an occupied region 50 miles from the front line, according to OSINT and military analysts.
Ukrainian forces targeted a Russian military training area some 50 miles behind the front line in the occupied Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, per an assessment by The Institute for the Study of War.
According to two aerial geolocated videos posted on Wednesday by X user Osinttechnical, an account affiliated with the Centre for Naval Analyses, Ukraine appeared to strike the training area with three US-supplied M39 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles.
You want to move the most expensive western missiles into range of the cheapest Russian artillery?
Oh, you’re right. Wouldn’t want to use any of that nice military hardware - OPFOR might scratch it.
Ideally, you use the very expensive long range artillery at long range.
You don’t run it right up to the front line so the opposition can hit it with a big rock fired out of a catapult that costs a fraction as much.
I mean, yeah, ideally, but war is anything and everything but ideal. Even moreso when your logistics are as constrained and inconsistent as what Ukraine’s been dealing with for the last 6-8 months due to political fuckery.