On April 17, Ukraine delivered a devastating blow to the Russian military base in the temporarily occupied Dzhankoy. The Ukrainian military used M39 long-range missiles (ATACMS), which the US provided in the March 12 aid package.
Strike of the Armed Forces of Ukraine against the occupiers' base in Dzhankoy. What did they beat?
Forbes writes that images from Dzhankoy Air Base, located 100 miles south of the front line, confirm that the Russians have lost at least four launchers belonging to a battery of long-range S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems.
The DIU claims that the missiles also disabled the S-400 control center and four valuable air defense radars.
According to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies, a helicopter regiment and three attack aircraft squadrons are stationed at Dzhankoy, but it is not known whether any of these aircraft were damaged or destroyed.
The enemy is carefully hiding the number of damaged planes, the Ministry of Defense in Kyiv said.
A video released by the Ministry of Defense shows seven or eight M39 missiles. Each 100-mile-range missile carried about a thousand grenade-sized submunitions in its 13-foot body, meaning up to 8,000 separate explosions at a Russian base.
While the wheeled highly mobile artillery missile systems of the Ukrainian army can launch one two-ton M39 at a time, the M270 can launch two at a time. Given the fact that the Ukrainians usually use their HIMARS and M270 in platoons of four launchers, it is most likely that the latter carried out the raid on Jankoi.
If the damage was as severe as the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claims, it may have been worth releasing all the M39s.
Ukrainians can take comfort in the fact that, most likely, they will receive more ATACMS missiles when Washington allocates a $61 billion aid package to Ukraine.
It is noted that the United States has hundreds of old missiles in service, and the shelf life of their fuel will soon expire. There's no reason why the White House couldn't send them all to Ukraine, and there's no reason why the Ukrainian military couldn't fire them at any Russian base within a hundred miles of the front line.
Hit on the airfield in Dzhankoy: what is known
On the night of April 17, the Armed Forces attacked the airfield in the temporarily occupied Dzhankoy, where Russian Mi-8, Mi-25M, Mi-28 and Ka-52 helicopters are based.
Later it became known that as a result of the strike, four S-400 SAM launchers, three radar stations and the Fundament-M airspace surveillance equipment were destroyed.
The DIU also said that Russian aircraft were damaged.
