In the next month, Turkey will transfer a large quantity of surplus munitions to Ukraine. The list is made up exclusively of U.S. made long-range strike weapons and artillery platforms according to documents sent to the U.S. Congress. If approved, which it should be, the transfer marks one of the largest transfer of U.S. made weapons by a third country.
- 70 M39 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles
- 2,500 M26 DPICM rockets
- 12x M270 MLRS launchers
- 47,000x 203mm DPICM artillery shells
The U.S. state department notified Congress of the transfer through documents delivered around August 3 and published in the Congressional Record on August 6,. Because the systems are American-made, U.S. authorization is required under the Arms Export Control Act for re-export. The U.S. government has indicated it is prepared to authorize the deal, describing it as consistent with its security assistance objectives. Delivery of the weapons will take place after the mandatory congressional review period (often cited as 15 days.) Congress is in recess at the moment and that 15 days will overlap and likely go through as the transfer doesn’t require Congress to approve, just that they don’t deny it.
The 12 HIMARS in the list are believed to make up the last of Turkeys HIMARS. Turkey is currently in the middle of an extensive modernization effort of its military so cleaning out some of its older equipment to make room for the new makes sense for them.
The list is made up of munitions that Ukraine has already used in this war previously. Some to great effect.
The relationship between Moscow and Ankara could be a full article itself covering all of the intricacies with many cases of cooperation and competition. Their relationship could be described as something like a cooperative rivalry. These two nations have worked together in areas like Syria and Turkey has vehemently supported Ukraine’s territorial integrity and right to defend itself.
M142 HIMARS
The M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), is a light multiple rocket launcher (MRS) mounted on a M1140 truck frame. Developed in the 90’s for use by the U.S. Army, it saw its first operational combat use in the Iraq War.
Now moving onto the munition, the ATACMS, which stands for Army Tactical Missile System, is a family of 24 inch surface-to-surface missiles. For our purposes we only have to talk about a couple specific ones.
M39 (ATACMS BLOCK I)
HIMARS launched inertial guidance short-range ballistic missile with a range of 16–103 miles (25–165 km). The missile carries 950 M74 Anti-personnel and Anti‑materiel (APAM) bomblets which can completely shred anything within around 140 square feet.
The M26 DPICM rockets being sent are also fired from the HIMAR (and the M270 MLRS) carries a cluster warhead filled with 644 M77 Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM) submunitions designed to suppress area targets, armor, and personnel out to 20 miles (32 km).
The last munition talked about was the M509A1 203mm DPICM artillery shells, another cluster artillery munition. This one carries 180 M42/M46 dual-purpose anti-personnel and anti-armor submunitions out to the range of around 14-18 miles depending on the artillery used.
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