Artillery Get Some
Happy Pi Day to all!
Seems American artillery just keeps getting better and better. Most recently? Talk about an unusual kill… 3rd Battalion, 27th Field Artillery, 18th Field Artillery Brigade – sank a submarine.
U.S. forces have struck with Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missiles. ATACMS cannot hit moving targets, so the submarine would have had to have been stationary in port when struck. TWZ was first to report earlier this week that M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers firing ATACMS, as well as Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) short-range ballistic missiles, had been aiding in the destruction of Iran’s Navy as part of Operation Epic Fury. The conflict has also marked the first combat use of PrSM, which brings a major boost in range over ATACMS.
Even docked or stationary, it’s safe to call this an unusual kill, moving or not.
A review of satellite imagery in Planet Labs’ archive does show one of Iran’s three Russian-made Kilo class diesel-electric submarines sunk at Bandar Abbas as of March 4. The submarine had looked to be untouched in an earlier Planet Labs image taken on March 2 in the aftermath of a wave of strikes, as TWZ previously reported. Bandar Abbas is the Iranian Navy’s main base and occupies a particularly strategic position along the Strait of Hormuz.
On March 10, CENTCOM released the video seen below, showing strikes on various Iranian vessels at sea and in port, including what looks to be a Ghadir class diesel-electric midget submarine. That boat was struck by an AGM-114 Hellfire missile, a U.S. official told TWZ. How many Ghadir class submarines were in Iran’s inventory before the current conflict is not clear, but prior estimates had generally put the size of that fleet at between 16 and 20 hulls.
I suspect that mixing Hellfires with midget subs does not work out well for the subs.
PrSM, which only began entering service in the past two years or so, offers significantly greater reach than ATACMS, allowing it to hold a much broader swath of territory at risk from any launch position.
Just yesterday, Lockheed Martin also announced the first test launch of a full-up Increment 2 PrSM, an anti-ship optimized version in development now. In that test, a HIMARS launcher fired the Increment 2 missile, which flew out to a range of around 217 and a half miles (350 kilometers), according to a company press release. The Increment 2 PrSM features an additional multi-mode seeker specifically designed to allow it to engage moving targets at sea. TWZ
Not sure how many subs have ever been sunk by field artillery before. Maybe in WWII at LeHavre? but the opportunity probably doesn’t present very often. I debated on an alternate article title – “So Many Acronyms, So Little Time”.
Anyway – I think KOB would smile.
Category: Army, Iran, We Remember, WWII
