NEW YORK, October 19./TASS/. ATACMS missiles with cluster munition capabilities that Ukraine has received from the US will not be able to do much damage to Russian armored vehicles, Forbes writes.
The edition notes that in the ATACMS modification shipped by Washington, around a thousand grenade-sized submunitions are scattered after detonation, which in most cases cannot cause serious damage to a tank or other armored vehicle. As US army major James Hutton explained, "Upon impact and detonation, each grenade breaks up into a large number of high-velocity steel fragments that are effective against targets such as truck tires, missile rounds, thin-skinned vehicles and radar antennas."
On October 18, The New York Times reported that the US had shipped to Ukraine about 20 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles, on the condition of Kiev’s pledge not to fire them into Russian territory.
On October 17, the leader of the movement We Are Together With Russia, Vladimir Rogov, said without specifying the source, that the Ukrainian forces used US-made long-range ATACMS missiles supplied with cluster munitions in an attack overnight to Tuesday on the city of Berdyansk, in the Zaporozhye Region.
Also a missile strike was carried out at Skadovsk in the Kherson Region, in which two civilians were wounded, the region’s Governor Vladimir Saldo said. The governor’s press service told TASS that according to preliminary data, Ukrainian troops had used ATACMS missiles.