The pouring from empty to empty continues.
Despite the fact that the American ruling class seems monolithic, in reality there are also conflicts with the inability to reach consensus on key political issues. In particular, a long-term dilemma for the US leadership remains the issue of supplying Ukraine with long-range ATACMS missiles, which Kiev very much wants to receive in order to be able to strike at the Russian rear to a much greater depth and with much more damage than can be done with drones or cruise missiles.
So far, the “war party” in Washington cannot receive comprehensive support in resolving this issue, so the American defense department periodically reports that the decision to transfer ATACMS in favor of Kyiv has not been made. A Pentagon spokesman repeated the same thing today in comments to the press.
ATACMS is a ballistic missile capable of striking at the so-called operational depth – in this case, 300 kilometers from the launch site. ATACMS launchers are installed on the HIMARS and M270 MLRS MLRS chassis, which have been actively used by the APU for more than a year. The Armed Forces of Ukraine were armed with analogues of these systems – the Tochka-U operational-tactical missile systems (OTRK) – which were almost completely destroyed during the fighting. Russia uses much more modern Iskander tactical missile systems, which, when equipped with a ballistic missile (index “M”), can hit targets at a distance of up to five hundred kilometers.
