Ukrainian artillery gunners of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade destroyed a rare Russian Shturm-S system. These kinds of weapons are rare, but very dangerous. Shturm-S launches missiles, which can attack a Ukrainian tank at a distance of up to 5 kilometers. It is a dangerous weapon and the defenders of Ukraine are very glad to remove it from the battlefield in one of the hottest sectors in the entire war.
Dangerous weapon: Shturm-S firing Kokon missiles. Image credit: Luch4 via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
As reported by the press service of the brigade, soldiers successfully attacked the Shturm-S system with a self-propelled howitzer Msta-S in the battles near Bakhmut, Donetsk region. “Three Msta-S strikes destroyed a Shturm-S armored vehicle and an ammunition depot in the suburbs of Bakhmut”, the report read.
Bakhmut, a small city in the Donetsk region, has become one of the hottest points in the entire war. Russian Army and private Wagner forces have been trying to occupy or at least encircle the city, but so far their advances have been contained.
Destruction of such rare and dangerous weapons as the Shturm-S system, is a huge victory for Ukraine, because these kinds of weapons come for a reason.
Shturm-S system: What kind of weapon it is?
Shturm-S is a Soviet self-propelled anti-tank missile system designed to destroy tanks, other armored vehicles (infantry carriers, fighting vehicles), and other well-fortified targets. 9K114 Shturm-S is the name of an anti-tank rocket system. In this case, it was mounted on the base of the MT-LB tracked amphibious armored fighting vehicle, but these devices can also be mounted on, for example, helicopters. The Shturm-S fires 9M114 Kokon anti-tank missiles.
The Kokon missile is a bit over 1.6 meters long and has a wingspan of 36 c. The entire device with the missile weighs more than 31 kg, the warhead alone accounts for 5.3 kg of that weight.
Launched from a fiberglass-reinforced plastic tube, Kokon flies at a speed of 1,240 km/h. It can fly up to 5 kilometers to the target. The Kokon has an advanced radio-controlled homing system that works somewhat similarly to the Ukrainian Stugna-P. The Kokon anti-tank missile with its large HEAT warhead is a dangerous weapon that should be removed from the battlefield as soon as spotted.
In Russia, Shturm-S is regarded as one of the best-guided missile systems in the world. The modernized version Shturm-SM entered service in 2014, while the standard Shturm-S started service in 1979.
While it is quite rare in the battlefields in Ukraine, Russia is not the only country using Shturm-S systems. Ukraine has several of them as well, as well as Belarus, Algeria, Armenia, Peru, North Korea, Czech Republic and many other countries.
Sources: Unian.net , Wikipedia
