Europe struggles to bridge critical missile gap for Ukraine
European countries, with varying degrees of difficulty, are capable of filling the gap left by the United States in supporting Ukraine. However, there is one key weapons system available only in the U.S. that is crucial for Ukraine.
Despite Europe increasing production of artillery shells, it cannot provide Ukraine with ballistic missiles comparable to the American MGM-140 ATACMS missiles. These simply don't exist, and developing analogues, even with secured funding and political will, will take years. The only option is logistical support for Ukraine, which has developed its own ballistic missiles known as Grom/Grom-2.
Ballistic missiles are a type of weapon that can be defended against by only a few mid-range anti-aircraft systems produced by a handful of countries worldwide. In Russia, these are the S-300/400 systems, and in Europe, a mix of American Patriot batteries and European SAMP/T.
However, these systems are few, and a battery can provide protection only within a distance of about 40 kilometres from the launcher, significantly limiting the number of protected objects. Moreover, an anti-aircraft system can be overcome by a massed attack of several or a dozen missiles approaching from different directions. This is demonstrated by examples of missile breaches in the Ukraine war or Iran's missile attacks on Israel.
MGM-140 ATACMS missiles — a powerful weapon from the U.S. that Ukraine sorely lacks
Ukraine has successfully utilized American MGM-140 ATACMS ballistic missiles, developed in the 1990s. So far, Ukrainians have focused on using M39 missiles, which have a range of 160 kilometres and contain a cluster warhead with 950 M74 APAM bomblets. These missiles have been used to attack, among other things, S-300/400 system batteries and training grounds.
According to some sources, Ukrainians also received M39A1 versions with a range of up to 300 kilometres, achieved by increasing the fuel supply at the expense of the warhead, which reduced the number of bomblets to 300. To maintain effectiveness, improvements were made to the guidance system, which, besides inertial navigation, also includes a satellite navigation module.
In addition to the cluster warhead, AGM-140 ATACMS missiles also appeared in M48, M57, or M57E1 variants with a heavy fragmentation-explosive WAU-23/B warhead weighing about 200 kilograms, designed to destroy fortified targets.
The MGM-140 ATACMS missiles stand out for their ability to reach speeds of Mach 3, approximately 3,700 kilometres per hour. Such high speed combined with a short distance means that even the newest Russian anti-ballistic systems, like the S-400 Triumph, have difficulty intercepting them.
