Precision guided artillery looked like it could be a game changer for about a month or two, then Russia figured out how to spoof and jam it, making guided artillery worse than useless. Ukraine is back to using good old dumb artillery, which isn't too accurate but at least cannot be jammed.
There is high variance in the ECCM capability of US weapons supplied thus far. JDAM and GLSDB have fallen flat while ATACMS and GMLRS have done well for themselves.
You're out of loop, HIMARS hasn't been effective for quite some time, since the Russians figured how to remotely jam the GPS and make them miss.
That's not to say they are useless as you need extensive coverage over a large front, but it's largely worthless right now.
This is by the way why most NATO countries don't love the idea of sharing the latest weapons with Ukraine, they give opposition intelligence on how to counter them.
FWIW, the US has been sending obsolete or intentionally degraded systems. There is a re-fit process if it comes from US stocks to remove sensitive tech or capabilities. It would be an error to assume that what happens in Ukraine represents the capabilities of US systems despite having the same name.
This isn't unique to Ukraine, most US weapon exports are selectively degraded or have capabilities removed. Despite this, most export versions of US weapon systems are still very competent.
> It would be an error to assume that what happens in Ukraine represents the capabilities of US systems despite having the same name.
It's speculation, at best, to assume the opposite.
Of course we know that there are export versions, but those are given in general different labels, and we don't have any intel on the specific system version used in Ukraine.
Assuming that even non-export versions could not be jammed is thus just speculation.
The US encourages the speculation as a matter of doctrine.
That said, anyone familiar with the tech knows that it doesn’t work the way it would have to work for it to be jammable in the way assumed, as a matter of public record. A classic example is the amount of people and media that asserts the US has GPS-guided weapons. The US has never had GPS-guided anything, it was defeatable by design.
The "HIMARS is ineffective" soundbite seems to rest on a single quote from an unnamed Ukrainian official. Which we have no reason to doubt, but it doesn't specify what they meant it to be ineffective at (for example, what kinds of targets and with which type of munitions).
Meanwhile, in the very same WaPo article whence that quote derives, just an inch or two down, we have the statement "Kyiv still considers HIMARS to be effective". And in Wikipedia we have attestations of its continued use and effect, post-dating the popular "HIMARS is ineffective" quote:
HIMARS has also been used to strike Russian troop concentrations in hard cover, with a HIMARS strike on a Russian base in Makiivka killing 89 Russian soldiers on the admission of the Russian government, although BBC News Russian could confirm at least 139 dead Russian soldiers [July 2024]
On 9 August 2024, HIMARS destroyed a convoy of Russian troops in the Kursk Oblast of Russia in what Russian milbloggers described as one of the bloodiest attacks of the entire war.
So it would seem "HIMARS has become less effective" would be a more suitable description of the current situation.
Isn’t there a great deal of overlap? A guided artillery shell is kind of like a fast moving loitering drone. Sometimes shells can even be given more instruction after being fired.
Precision guided artillery has been a game-changer in Ukraine.