- Ukraine has put US-supplied rocket artillery systems to effective use against Russian forces.
- Modern rocket artillery, like the HIMARS in use in Ukraine, have a long history on the battlefield.
The US-made rocket artillery that Ukraine is using to destroy Russian ammunition dumps and command posts has been called "a game changer," but the weapon is a descendent of the legendary "Katyusha" rocket launcher that Soviet troops used against Nazi invaders in World War II.
In fact, Katyusha is more than a World War II-era weapon. It became an icon that evokes images of salvoes of howling, fiery rockets streaking into the sky. Since World War II, media reports frequently refer to multiple rocket launchers as "Katyushas" (perhaps because many were copies of or indeed supplied by the Soviet Union).
Military rockets themselves have a long history. The Chinese used rockets as far back as AD 200. Indians used them against the British in the 1700s, and the British stole the idea to use against Americans in the War of 1812 — the "rockets' red glare" of the Star-Spangled Banner.
But these early versions inflicted more psychological than physical damage, like big firecrackers rather than deadly weapons.
Strangely, while Russia tends to lag the West in technology, it has long displayed a flair for rocketry. Russia employed rockets in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828 and developed the first rocket-firing submarine in 1834.
Nonetheless, rockets were inaccurate and propelled by gunpowder and could be as dangerous to the operator as the target. They remained a military novelty until World War II.
By the 1930s, advances in solid propellants spurred the development of Soviet battlefield rockets launched from rails mounted on a variety of platforms, including Soviet ZIS-6 trucks, clumsy tracked carriers, and even sleds.
The classic Katyusha 132mm rocket was the M-13: derived from the RS-132 aircraft-launched rocket, it was almost 3 feet long, weighed 93 pounds, had a range of about 5 miles, and packed an 11-pound warhead.
"The fin-stabilized rocket was simple to produce, but relatively inaccurate," noted author James Prenatt in his book "Katyusha." Katyushas eventually came in several calibers, from lighter 82mm rockets to heavy 300mm projectiles, launched from trucks that could fire 12 to 48 rockets a minute.
Initially treated as a secret weapon forbidden to fall into enemy hands, the BM-13 multiple rocket launcher made its combat debut at the Battle of Smolensk on July 14, 1941.
Three weeks into the Nazi invasion of Russia, which had left a trail of shattered Soviet armies and long columns of prisoners, German troops were confident that they could conquer the "primitive" Soviets before the winter snows fell.
Instead, as the ground erupted in waves of explosions, Germans soldiers fled in terror from a weapon their enemies weren't supposed to be capable of inventing.
The Soviets nicknamed the weapon Katyusha, or "Little Kate," after a popular song. The Germans called it "Stalin's Organ" from the howl of its launch. Either way, the bloody road from Moscow to final victory in Berlin was paved by Katyushas.
Cheaper and more mobile than towed howitzers, Katyushas were organized in special rocket brigades and divisions, which massed at key points to blast holes through German entrenchments, allowing infantry and tanks to advance across a cratered moonscape.
Ironically, the Soviets' uneasy alliance with the US produced a perfect marriage for the Katyusha: The rockets were mounted atop US-made Studebaker 2.5-ton trucks. The Soviets adored their American trucks for their ruggedness, reliability, and all-wheel drive — all superior to smaller Soviet trucks.
The Katyusha did have limitations. The rockets were notoriously inaccurate and reloading a full salvo could take up to an hour. But Soviet doctrine called for pulverizing German defenses under a deluge of rockets and artillery shells, and accuracy was less important than massing firepower to destroy or stun the defender.
A single Katyusha brigade could lay down 1,152 rockets across a square kilometer (0.4 square miles) in five minutes, according to a 1944 Soviet manual.
The Germans soon deployed their own multiple rocket launcher: the Nebelwerfer ("smoke mortar"), nicknamed "Moaning Minnie" by US soldiers because of the sound it made.
The Nebelwerfer typically consisted of six tubes — firing 150mm, 210mm, and 300mm rockets — mounted on a light two-wheeled trailer. Like the Katyusha, it was light, mobile, and fairly simple compared to howitzers. However, it also suffered from poor accuracy, while the smoke trails disclosed firing locations to Allied aircraft and artillery.
After World War II, Soviet multiple rocket launchers became popular with militias, warlords, and terrorists across the globe, from Vietnam and Lebanon to Angola and Congo. In conflicts where civilian casualties were usually not a concern, the Katyusha's inaccuracy counted less than its devastating firepower.
Perhaps because multiple rocket launchers tended to be perceived as low-tech and inaccurate, they were slow to be embraced by Western militaries.
In 1980, the US adopted the M270 Multiple Rocket Launch System, which is mounted atop a tracked launcher. In 2010, the smaller truck-mounted M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System entered service with the US military. HIMARS is now being shipped to Ukraine.
MRLS and HIMARS — and newer Russian models such as the BM-30 Smerch — are the Katyusha's smarter cousins. Today's multiple rocket launchers are sophisticated, highly computerized, and more accurate. Equally important, the rockets they fire are no longer metal tubes with warheads but precision munitions with GPS and inertial guidance.
A HIMARS may only have six launch tubes, but a single rocket can hit a pinpoint target — like a Russian ammunition dump — that dozens of old-fashioned Katyusha rockets might either miss completely or hit with massive collateral damage to nearby civilians.
A HIMARS rocket can strike targets up to 40 miles away, farther than the 20-mile range of a US M109A6 Paladin 155mm howitzer firing conventional shells. In turn, the US Army has developed rocket-assisted howitzer shells for extra range, which effectively turns the howitzer into a sort of rocket launcher.
Nonetheless, all of these modern weapons trace their lineage to Katyusha in some way. The legacy of Little Kate lives on.
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy Magazine and other publications. He holds a master's in political science. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.