WASHINGTON – Light and easy to handle, the US Javelin anti-armour missile has become the weapon of the Ukrainian resistance against the Russian invasion, and has even been has dedicated “a saint”, with a meme of Mary Magdalene with one of these projectiles, which has gone viral on the networks.
Since 2014, after the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, Washington has supplied 1,552 “Javelin anti-armor systems” to Ukraine, to which are added another 2, announced in the middle of this month, along with 7,000 anti-tank missiles of other types, according to White House data and the Pentagon.
And it seems that they are working together with the rest of the weapons delivered to Ukraine, given that, according to the US and its allies, Russia’s advance , which above all is using armored cars, has been staking since the beginning of the invasion on 24 February thanks to the Ukrainian resistance and other factors.
“Quite simply, Javelin is the best missile system in the US and probably in the world,” summed up retired Col. Liam Collins, executive director of the Madison Policy Forum think tank.
Javelin vs latest generation Russian tanks
Collins recalled that in 2014 T-tanks 90 Russians who crossed the border in support of the separatists in the Ukrainian region of Donbas were “impenetrable” against the anti-armor defenses available to the Ukrainians.
“It is that’s why we had to supply them (the Ukrainians) with the Javelins, capable of eliminating the ru tank I am more modern, with the largest armor and that is reactive, to leave them out of the game”, he explained.
Javelin, which means javelin, is a missile of the type “fire and forget”, as it is known in military jargon, which means that once it is launched, it does not need any additional guidance -such as target lighting or a cable- to hit its target , nor that its shuttle is fixed.
Consequently, the person firing the missile, which can be carried on the shoulder, does not have to expose himself, as was the case with anti-tank projectiles old, which “had to remain locked at all times with a heavy cable used to guide the missile,” said Colonel Collins.
Before, if the cable was cut for any reason, the missile could adopt an erroneous trajectory, apart from exposing the author of the shot.
In this regard, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Michael Patrick Mulroy (2017-2019) said that Javelins allow the person who shoots “hide in a ditch, start running or do whatever you need to not die, while the missile is tracking with the infrared images”.
Hit where it hurts more
Also, it is light and hits the target from above, not from the side like other missiles, so it hits armored cars directly at its point weak and can do so from up to 2 miles (4 kilometers) away.
A Ukrainian military man holds an FGM-80 Javelin, a US-made man-portable anti-tank missile. /Photo: SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty ImagesMulroy, who is also the founder of the Lobo Institute, a retired marine and former CIA paramilitary operations agent, pointed out another quality: it costs about $200,000 dollars vs. about $20 millions of dollars that a last generation tank can be worth.
Both retired soldiers highlighted that in addition to all these advantages it is quite easy to learn how to operate it, “it will probably take five or ten minutes ” in learning how to handle it, calculated Collins, who compared it with another anti-armor projectile, the AT-4, which are more complicated to use.
Despite having been in service since 1996, Javelins have been used to a limited extent in conflicts in which the US. The US has been involved Ukraine, like the one in Afghanistan. However, they are proving very useful for the Ukrainian resistance, due to the characteristics of this war.
Mulroy pointed out that the US has used it in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, although this kind of weapon was not really so necessary against adversaries such as the Taliban or the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, which fundamentally use vehicles ” pick up”.
“But I think -he added- that they have really shown their value in this (the war in Ukraine), because the Russians have essentially brought armored regiments”.
Entrusted to “santa Javelin”
The Javelins, developed and produced by US firms. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have achieved such notoriety that a meme created by the Ukrainian-Polish-Canadian marketing specialist Christian Borys of “holy Javelin”, a Mary Magdalene carrying this missile, has gone viral in recent weeks.
Borys has even created a website where he sells stickers and other products with the image of “holy Javelin” and other motifs to raise funds to give humanitarian aid to Ukrainians.
“That’s why it’s such a great weapon, it has extremely high odds of success because it’s a superior attack weapon that hits the weakest point,” Collins remarked.
By Susana Samhan
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