Ukraine Claims That Russia May Have Used Tornado-S To Target Zaporizhzhia

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Note: The following text was originally posted on my X/Twitter account.

The Ukrainian Air Force's latest daily press release notably reports Russia's use of ten artillery rockets—the press release tentatively characterizes these as 300 mm diameter rockets, presumably guided, associated with the Tornado-S system—to target Zaporizhzhia. This appears to be the first (tentative) mention of the Tornado-S in the Ukrainian Air Force's daily press releases since 2022.

The 300 mm diameter guided rockets/missiles used with the Tornado-S are significantly larger, heavier, and heavier analogues to the American 227 mm diameter GMLRS guided rockets used with the tracked M270 MLRS and wheeled M142 HIMARS launchers. While Russia developed 300 mm diameter guided rockets/missiles before February 2022, Russia's inventory and production capacity over the course of the war appear to have been and remain very limited.

One of the more striking aspects of Russia's wartime industrial mobilization is the apparent non-prioritization of guided artillery rockets to support Russian ground forces. The Russian Army operates the Iskander-M ballistic missile. Unlike the OTR-21 Tochka short-range ballistic missiles that it directly replaced, the Iskander-M is not optimized to offer long-range, high penetration, and short time-to-target fire support to division and corps-sized ground combat units. The 300 mm guided rockets/missiles used with the Tornado-S system are far better suited for that role, but the apparent limited availability of such munitions and similar has resulted in the repeated use of Iskander ballistic missiles to attack fairly minor targets located within 50-100 kilometers of the frontlines/international border.

Should Russia come to have a large number of 300 mm guided rockets/missiles, which have a maximum range of over 100 kilometers, or similar at its disposal, it will be able to regularly attack high-value targets that are beyond the maximum practical range of its UMPK and UMPB guided glide bombs (for as long as the Russian Air Force does not dare to attempt operating in the airspace behind the frontlines/international border). While Russia can use its Shahed-136/Geran-2/Garpiya propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones to attack targets located further from the frontlines/international border, these have a fairly limited destructive radius/destructive effects, have a low penetration rate, and a high time to target. As a result, Russia is forced to use its Iskander-M ballistic missiles or air/sea/ground-launched land-attack cruise missiles—all of which remain fairly scarce and, as such, quite precious despite over three years of wartime industrial mobilization—to attack such targets. In practice, this has resulted in a situation in which an incredibly large number of potential targets located within 100-150 kilometers of the frontlines/international border have been essentially untouched throughout the Russia-Ukraine War. It remains to be seen whether the possible use of ten 300 mm artillery rockets/missiles to target Zaporizhzhia is a sign of things to come.