The United States is moving as quickly as possible to provide Ukraine with long-range fire capabilities.

Lloyd Austin, U.S. Secretary of Defense stated this during a joint briefing with the Secretary of Defense of Canada on April 28, 2022.

According to Austin, long-range fires will be decisive in this next stage of the fight with Russia.

“We need not only to get the capability there to them quickly, but it needs to be the right kind of capability. So what will be decisive in this next fight is long-range fires and as we interact with the Minister of Defence on a routine basis. These are the kind of things they are requesting. They (Ukraine-Ed.) believe that long-range fires will be key in our efforts going forward. We are moving as quickly as can to provide those capabilities,” said the US Secretary of Defense.

The US Secretary of Defense did not specify which systems were meant under this description.

As of now, the most long-range weapons for ground operations in the arsenal of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are the Tochka-U surface-to-surface short-range ballistic missiles and the Vilkha heavy multiple rocket launcher designed on the basis of the Soviet Smerch heavy multiple rocket launcher.

However, the maximum range of fire of those systems is 120 kilometers which basically only provides the limited opportunities to hit enemy military infrastructure on the territory of Russia or the occupied Crimea.

Ukraine might be interested in a number of American weapons that could hit targets at a much greater distance. In particular, in the MGM-140 ATACMS army tactical missile system. Various missiles of this system have a range between 165 to 300 km.

It should be noted that ATACMS missiles can be launched from the adapted launchers of the M142 HIMARS multiple rocket launchers (one missile) and the M270 MLRS (two missiles).