Russia Claims Decoding 'Complex' Atacms U.S. Missiles Haunting Their Military

This sounds like propaganda positioning mainly for their internal consumption. ”Look how we quickly deciphered this tricky American technology, it’s just another 3 days and Kiev is ours. And it has a quadruple safety system, how silly of those Americans! Let’s laugh at them together!”

This a mid-80s technology and if they really just discovered something important and valuable about the technology, they would keep their mouths shut. If they put it out as a press release, it’s precisely because they didn’t discover anything new.

This far along into the war, their personnel have already figured out how to engage ATACMS with the S-300 and S-400 (although recent losses of S-400 units to ATACMS show they aren't doing really well at it [0] ). We already know they're jamming GPS and ATACMS is still getting through with inertial guidance. Maybe some of this newfound knowledge will benefit their engineers somehow when designing new weapons, but it's not very new stuff, and their industry is not well positioned to exploit it.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/06/12/ukrainian-a...

> He stressed that the West should recognize the superiority of Russian weapons and countermeasures over Western military technology.

Ah, yes. The logical conclusion.

Obviously they disclose this so we don't waste any more ATACMS. How nice of them.

Confusing headline. A few points inside:

• Analyzing the missile’s maneuverability will determine which anti-aircraft missiles it can evade.

• They might advise on disrupting the missile’s communication or disabling its GPS.

• This analysis would help the RF military quickly detect launch sites and missile locations.

Predication: Russia's claims are overinflated as usual; US Military will use this to get more money to increase lead. Net result: Will end up even farther ahead. 20 years from now, we'll find out this was also a lie.

Russians: How is it possible that this missile can track its location anywhere? Sir, we’ve found it uses GPS. Wow, we never would have guessed that. Sneaky Americans. Now that we know their secret, we can defeat them!

You'd have to be either a liar or a fool to publicly admit that you've deciphered something about your opponent's secret capabilities. The allies didn't go bragging to the Nazis every time that they broke the enigma machine.

Dang they’re only 30 years behind us now.

Would be interesting to know how they got a intact ATACMS.

It was clear from the beginning that every weapon system used in Ukraine could and probably would land on the black market, that’s why Israel didn’t provide any own weapon system fearing it would land in the hands of their enemies.

Article claims that ATACMS have been highly effective, but all 5 missiles launched at Crimea recently were shot down.

As usual, everything is completely unclear in this stalemate war where both sides regularly claim overwhelming successes yet nothing has changed for 2 years.