The Ukrainian Armed Forces have been confirmed to have launched a ballistic missile strike on the NIP-16 Deep Space Communications site in Vitino on the Crimean Peninsula, the extent of the damage from which remains uncertain. The attack comes as part of the major expansion of recent attacks on Russian targets using increased supplies of American Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short range ballistic missiles, including variants with both cluster and fragmentation warheads. Use of these systems has been very heavily facilitated by the presence of American military advisors on the ground and by access to a network of hundreds of NATO satellites which provide targeting data among other roles.
Ukrainian forces have increasingly struggled to use precision guided assets against Russian frontline positions due to effective use of electronic warfare to jam their guidance systems, which appears to have increased their propensity to use systems such as ATACMS for strikes on strategic fixed targets deeper behind Russian lines which lack comparable protection to frontline forces. The attack comes a month after a drone strike on Voronezh-DM early warning radar system at the Armavir Radar Station in Russia’s southwestern Krasnodar Krai, a similarly high value strategic asset relied on to provide early warning against Western intercontinental range nuclear strikes.
