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September 19, 2025: For decades, the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) was treated as something of an afterthought—a Cold War idea that never had its day. It was designed to provide an artillery punch for the AirLand Battle, hitting Soviet and Warsaw Pact units 150 to 300 kilometers away with cluster warheads or other types of advanced conventional munitions.

ATACMS' first combat mission came in Desert Storm when a Block I version (early operational model, 165-kilometer max range) struck an Iraqi SA-2 surface-to-air missile site. It was a joint Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) mission, and it worked. The missile was fired by a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) fitted with an ATACMS pod. Scratch one Iraqi SA-2 site, allowing Coalition aircraft to strike other targets unhindered.

The final after-action report captured several telling details. When the launcher received the emergency fire mission, it was part of a moving convoy. The MLRS crew took a hasty firing position. The battery had no pre-arranged launch points. The battery calculated the firing data, launched the weapon, and the ATACMS suppressed the SAM site. That was the AirLand Battle concept: a highly mobile missile weapon that could hit targets several hundred kilometers away within minutes. In this case, land-based missile artillery helped facilitate deep fixed-wing airstrikes.

But the 1991 recognition came a year later, in footnotes, not headlines. VII Corps reported it fired 32 Block I missiles at a wide array of target types. Ten of the missions were SEAD targets, six of which were completely destroyed. Other targets engaged included a multiple rocket launcher site, short-range surface-to-surface missile sites, refueling sites, and at least one bridge. Translation: enemy heavy fire support weapons and targets that reduce enemy mobility (fuel and bridges).

In Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003), U.S. Army V Corps Artillery fired 414 ATACMS missiles. Some of the missiles V Corps employed had unitary warheads (high-explosive, detonating on impact). After-action reports noted that ATACMS required minimal airspace deconfliction—clearing the attack zone so missile and artillery fire does not interfere with fixed-wing and rotor-wing air operations (and now, presumably, drone operations). The ATACMS’s trajectory, velocity, and steep rates of ascent and descent differ from the flight characteristics of conventional cruise missiles or MLRS rockets. This makes the missile an ideal weapon for deep attacks in campaigns where enemy air defenses and aircraft continue to contest airspace—meaning when the good guys don’t have air superiority.

In 2007, the Army terminated the ATACMS program and began developing its replacement—the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM). PrSM offers longer range, faster speed, and more explosive power. The first batch of operational PrSMs will have a range of 300 to 400 kilometers. PrSM is still in development but has been test-fired.

Belatedly, Ukraine received ATACMS, but Washington initially prohibited Ukraine from firing the weapon at targets inside Russia. Ukraine first used ATACMS in October 2023, hitting Russian airfields in occupied Berdiansk and Luhansk. The ATACMS that struck Berdiansk carried submunitions (cluster explosives). Several media outlets have reported that Russia has been unable to intercept ATACMS missiles. In late 2024, the U.S. granted Ukraine permission to hit targets inside Russian territory. (An ATACMS struck an S-400 air defense missile site in the Kursk region of Russia.)

Is ATACMS a game-changer, the war-winning tech? The current ATACMS certainly complicates Russian operations in Ukraine and threatens vulnerable logistical support operations within Russia. If Ukraine had had ATACMS with no restrictions in Summer 2022—a different question altogether. If Ukraine had three squadrons of F-16s supported by ATACMS providing SEAD, Ukraine’s 2023 offensive might well have reached the Don. (AB)