What is HIMARS?

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Jan 23

HIMARS is a Lockheed-Martin product, and HIMARS stands for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.  It is designated the M142 by the U.S. Army.  HIMARS is as distinct from the missiles it fires as the M777 is from the 155 mm shell it fires.

HIMARS is a multiple launch rocket system that is relatively lightweight.  If you read “Katayusa: Stalin Organ” in the March 2022 issue of Esprit de Corps you will be familiar with the concept of rocket artillery.  However, instead of unguided missiles with a range of 3 to 9 km, the HIMARS rockets have ranges from 15 to 93 km.  Hence, the rockets are larger and of necessity have sophisticated guidance systems; and because sophisticated guidance systems are expensive, HIMARS is not an area-saturation weapon as multiple batteries of Stalin Organs could be.

A typical HIMARS rocket is 227 mm in diameter; and a pod of six is carried on the back of a specialized truck, somewhat like an HLVW in style and size.  The combination of truck chassis and missile pod is what’s designated the M142.

Why is HIMARS being talked about?  On New Year’s Eve, Ukraine attacked with four HIMARS rockets a large ammunition dump in Makiivka in the Donetsk region, thought safe well behind the lines.  Right next to the ammo dump was a vocational school serving as a temporary Russian barracks. TV pictures afterwards showed “a huge building reduced to rubble, with cranes and bulldozers picking through the concrete debris several feet deep”, according to Reuters.  The Ukrainians claimed to have killed 400.  Russia denied that number, admitting to 89.

The second reason HIMARS is in the news is that the Canadian Army wanted to acquire the system back in 2010, according to a leak, er, news report by CBC News, released a week after the Ukrainian success with the system hit the news.  Besides HIMARS, the wish list included a “ground based air defense system and a modern anti-tank system (ADATS Redux?).  The list was prepared for the Scrooge-like Harper government, and went nowhere.

In response to the operational tempo in Ukraine, Lockheed-Martin has increased annual production rate to 96 units per year.

HIMARS is reported to fire the following missiles: the MLRS system of 227 mm rockets (used for testing and practice.  These have only inertial guidance systems and are of reduced range.); and a high precision GMLRS, which have GPS guidance systems, called the M30.  These have a range of 15 to 92 km, and variants carry warheads of submunitions; an area effects warhead containing 182,000 pre-formed tungsten fragments, or a more conventional steel cased HE warhead with a 23 kg bursting charge; or a straightforward 91 kg bursting charge HE warhead.  Extended range rackets, with a range of 150 km, have bigger motors at the expense of smaller bursting charge HE warheads.  (By comparison, the bursting charge of a 16” AP shell fired by the USS New Jersey is 18.6 kg).

There are systems similar in concept to HIMARS, called tactical missile systems, which are much larger, and fire bigger missiles with bigger warheads for longer ranges.

The progression from short-range unguided missiles, like those fired from “Stalin Organs”, to HIMARS, to theatre tactical systems involve orders of magnitude changes in quality and expense.  The short-range rocket artillery systems can blanket an area with cheap firepower preparatory to a major assault.  HIMARS involves missiles costing $3.5 million each.  You have to be pretty sure of the target before you fire one of these babies; and since the target is over the horizon, it means drones, satellites, SIGINT, or HUMINT to identify the target.

Does the Canadian Army need a HIMARS system or two?  Well, to stay current and credible it should have a couple, and it sure would have been handy to have a system in inventory to lend out to a friend in need, as we did with the M777 artillery pieces.

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