Footage released by the Russian Defence Ministry on July 26 has shown a successful strike using the Iskander-M ballistic missile system to neutralise a significant concentration of Ukrainian Army assets, including one HIMARS and five BM-21 Grad rocket artillery systems, five tanks, and up to 10 other armoured vehicles. These assets were all heavily concentrated at a hidden armaments depot belonging to the Army’s 56th Separate Motorised Infantry Brigade. The attack represents a major success, with the cost of the assets destroyed estimated at over $100 million excluding personnel losses. Destruction of six rocket artillery launchers and associated munitions is particularly significant as these assets have played a central role in the conflict. It remains uncertain what classes of tanks and armoured vehicles were destroyed, but it is known that the brigade relies heavily on the T-64BV with a smaller number of T-72s in service.
The strike on the 56th Motorised Infantry represents the latest of multiple significant recent successes gained by the Iskander which were captured by drone camera. On July 25 the Iskander-M was used to attack the positions of both Western foreign fighters and the Ukrainian Army 151st Mechanised Brigade in Kharkiv, killing an estimated 100 personnel including around 40 Westerners and 60 Ukrainians. Two days prior an Iskander-M attack on June 23 caused approximately 50 deaths among Western foreign fighters in the same region. Earlier in the month, a ‘double strike’ was used to take out key rail infrastructure and cause significant casualties. Footage released a few days prior showed the Iskander-M destroying two batteries from one of Ukraine’s scarce Patriot surface to air missile systems near the settlement Yuzhnoye in the Odessa region. At the beginning of the month, the systems were used in a successful strike on Mirgorod Airbase, destroying several of Ukraine’s few remaining Su-27 fighters and dealing a very serious blow to its combat aviation capabilities.
The Iskander-M has played an increasingly central role in the Russian war effort in Ukraine as supplies have grown due to a surge in production. Each Iskander-M brigade is comprised of 51 vehicles, including 12 transporter erector launchers and 12 reload vehicles which between them can deploy 48 missiles simultaneously. They are supported by 11 command vehicles, 14 personnel support vehicles, one data preparation vehicle, and one service and repair vehicle. The missiles launched fire on semi ballistic depressed trajectories with apogees of around 50 km, and can conduct extensive in flight manoeuvres throughout their entire flight paths. This not only makes their missiles extremely difficult to detect or track, but also allows them to use their fins to manoeuvre much better than would be possible on standard ballistic trajectories. Iskander-M systems have struck increasingly high profile targets since the new year, and in March were successfully used in air defence suppression operations against Ukrainian Patriot systems, among other surface to air missile assets, allowing them to serve as force multipliers that significantly increase the vulnerability of nearby Ukrainian forces.