Look At What 720,000 HIMARS Fragments Did To A Russian Helicopter Base

Forbes

03-04-2025

A Russian soldier inspects HIMARS damage.
On or just before March 24, a quartet of Russian helicopters—two Mil Mi-8 transports and two Kamov Ka-52 gunships—landed at an austere base somewhere in Belgorod Oblast in western Russia.
Ukrainian special forces and the intelligence directorate in Kyiv were watching with at least one surveillance drone. One of the Ukrainian army's U.S.-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System wheeled launchers took aim. 'The target was engaged,' the special operations command reported.
Four 660-pound M30 rockets, each packing 180,000 tungsten fragments, rained down from as far away as 57 miles. All four helicopters appear to have been hit. A Russian soldier and at least one dog trotted out to inspect the damage.
Eight days later on Wednesday, that soldier's video circulated online—and the Estonian analyst WarTranslated translated it. 'Oh well, direct hit,' the soldier moaned as he inspected the shredded helicopters.
Speaking by phone to a comrade as he recorded his battle-damage assessment, the soldier narrated in an increasingly dire tone. 'Kerosene is pouring out' of Ka-52 number 96, he reported. 'Spillage in the front.'
'Kerosene is fucking pouring' from an Mi-8, too, the soldier noted. Worse, the same helicopter took blast damage 'to the ass' that severed a rotor blade.
The scale and severity of the damage was by design. With their thousands of submunitions or fragments, the M30 and the larger Army Tactical Missile System rocket—fired by the same launchers—are optimized for strikes on thin-skinned targets. People and helicopters, in particular.
A Russian soldier inspects HIMARS damage.
It's not for no reason that, when it tested the two-ton M39 ATACMS, the U.S. Army aimed the missile at a mock airfield where the service parked old helicopters and trucks. Footage of the test depicts submunitions tearing into the rotorcraft and vehicles.
The precision strike in Belgorod came as Ukrainian brigades, having retreated from neighboring Kursk, extended a shallow incursion into the oblast. Ukrainian forces initially made modest gains by 'taking advantage of the enemy's communication and coordination problems,' according to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies. In recent days, they've fallen back in the face of Russian counterattacks.
The attack on those four helicopters was part of the wider Belgorod campaign. But it was also revenge. On March 13, 2024, Russian artillery caught a trio of Ukrainian army Mil Mi-8 or Mil Mi-17 assault helicopters on the ground in Novopavlivka, 35 miles west of what was then the front line outside the ruins of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.
A cluster munition exploded over the helicopters, ultimately destroying as many as three helicopters and killing two aviators.