The top US general revealed Friday that American troops involved in Operation Epic Fury have used a ballistic missile system to sink Iranian warships, including a submarine, offering some insight into the targets US artillery is engaging in this war.
Artillery soldiers and Marines are “sinking ships, destroying depots, and launching Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS,” and “Precision Strike Missiles, or PrSMs,” Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a Friday press briefing.
“From outside Iran, our Army and Marine artillerymen are hitting sites that Iran relies on to project power beyond their borders,” he said.
“In just the first 13 days of this operation, our artillery forces have made history,” Caine said.
“They fired the first precision strike missiles ever used in combat, reaching deep into enemy territory,” he said. “They’ve used Army ATACMS to sink multiple ships, including a submarine.”
US forces are “continuing to destroy the Iranian Navy to ensure freedom of navigation. He said that the US military is targeting mine-laying vessels and the ability to target commercial vessels.
“In less than two weeks, we’ve rendered the Iranian Navy combat ineffective and continue to attack naval vessels, including all of their Soleimani-class warships, which were armed with anti-ship missiles and anti-aircraft weapons,” Caine said.
Other naval targets sunk include Iran’s new purpose-built drone carrier.
Army Tactical Missile Systems are typically used to target land-based targets, such as enemy air defense systems and logistics hubs.
Each missile costs upward of $1 million, depending on the range and type of warhead. ATACMS missiles can hit targets out to as far as about 200 miles away and are fired using the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System or M240 Multiple Launch Rocket System launchers. The HIMARS can also fire PrSMs and much shorter-range guided rockets.
The Lockheed Martin-built ATACMS is guided by GPS and inertial navigation that tracks its flight toward a designated target, and hence cannot be used to accurately fire on moving targets. For this reason, it’s likely that the ships destroyed were pierside or moored.
The ATACMS augments the strike power of Army and Marine Corps artillery, allowing land force commanders to hit critical targets without relying on air or naval forces to deliver the strike. The system was designed during the Cold War and first used in combat in the 1991 Gulf War.
The Ukrainians have also used their limited supply of US-provided ATACMS to hit Russian military facilities. With these weapons in short supply, Ukraine has since developed its own domestically built capabilities.
US forces have attacked over 6,000 targets in Iran, Caine said on Friday. As the US and Israel have established air supremacy over Iran, allowing bombers and fighters to fly overhead, they’ve shifted to munitions like gravity bombs, which are much cheaper to produce and more plentiful in the US arsenal than missiles.
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