A recent article from VICE News discusses a cluster munition attack in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on October 2, 2014. ARES produced a conflict damage assessment report for VICE News, and investigated munition remnants and munition impact sites from the attack, identifying the munition used as the Russian 9M27K rocket with 9N128K warhead,
Yuri Lyamin and Michael Smallwood The remnants shown above, recovered from eastern Ukraine in late July, are incendiary components likely to be from the Russian 9M22S rocket. Fired by the BM-21 ‘Grad’ (Град; Hail) multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) and similar systems, the 122 mm 9M22S was developed by the Splav State Research and Production
By Michael Smallwood. Header image displays an improvised launcher in a two-tube configuration mounted on the rear of a pickup truck. Photos emerging from Iraq purport to show members of the Islamist militant group Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) in possession of 333 mm Falaq-2 artillery rockets and improvised launchers. In the photo below, a substantially
The following post originally appeared here, authored by the Oryx Blog team. It has been expanded and modified with their permission for The Hoplite by Michael Smallwood and Yuri Lyamin. In a series of photos coming out of Tripoli, Libya, militants are shown using sophisticated guided air-to-surface missiles as unguided surface-to-surface weapons. The missile shown,
Yuri Lyamin Amongst various arms and munitions recovered from pro-Russian separatists by Ukrainian forces in recent days, were ZRP-2 Tropa (‘Path’) man-portable mine-clearing line charges. ЗРП stands for ‘заряд разминирования переносной’, or ‘portable mine clearance charge’. The ZRP-2 is designed to create a breach in an antipersonnel minefield under combat conditions. Some modern mines have
N.R. Jenzen-Jones Armament Research Services (ARES) was provided earlier today with images showing the remnants of several artillery rockets in Slavyansk, Ukraine. These images show the nose cones and cargo sections belonging to 220 mm 9M27K series cluster munitions. Remains of 9M27K type rockets have previously been photographed in Syria, as identified by ARES here.
N.R. Jenzen-Jones Video and images circulating on social media networks and in various online forums suggest that 9M55K cargo rockets containing 9N235 fragmentation submunitions may have been used in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. Armament Research Services (ARES) has previously documented these munitions in Syria. The 9M55K rocket is fired from the the 9K58 Smerch (Смерч; ‘Tornado’) 300
Update 4/6/14: The OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) released a statement yesterday which included some observations on this attack: In Luhansk the situation remained volatile. On 2 June, shortly after 15:00 hrs, rockets hit the occupied regional administration building. Based on the SMM’s limited observation these strikes were the result of non-guided rockets shot from an
Armament Research Services is proud to release its second Research Report. Authored by N.R Jenzen-Jones, Yuri Lyamin and Galen Wright “Iranian Falaq-1 and Falaq-2 Rockets in Syria” documents the use of these weapons in Syria’s ongoing civil conflict, and provides a brief history and technical appraisal of the systems and their munitions. Below are some extracts
N.R. Jenzen-Jones and Yuri Lyamin The Syrian conflict continues to see the use of new types of weapons by the various parties to the conflict. On the 23rd April of this year, new footage emerged from the area near Sawaysa town in the Syrian province of Quneitra, showing the use of another new weapon: Chinese Type
