The TOW Missile might be old, but it can kill lots of modern main battle tanks in Ukraine.
What makes this missile so dangerous is the sheer amount of them still around and available to send to Ukraine to fight Putin.
Combine that with modern Javelin and new anti-tank weapons, which can only mean trouble for Russia in the weeks and months to come.
See Ukraine Fire Two Anti-Tank Missiles
Video footage shared by Ukrainian Telegram channels back in April shows two examples of the BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missile system being used in combat against invading Russian forces.
The two videos appear to have been recorded in the Bakhmut region, offering an insight into the kind of warfare Ukrainian soldiers have faced for more than a year now and for the last several months in Bakhmut, where Russian Wagner Group forces have focused a huge amount of resources.
Russia would eventually take the city, but the cost was insane.
In the first video, shared by the OperativnoSZU Telegram channel, the missile system can be seen mounted on a military vehicle and pointing at the enemy.
A Ukrainian soldier is seen next to the vehicle, hiding behind a mound of earth. A missile is then seen being launched into the distance as several Ukrainian soldiers are heard celebrating. The rocket appears to strike something far into the distance.
Military analyst Rob Lee also shared the video on YouTube, noting that at least the first video appears to have been recorded in Bakhmut.
Other users, meanwhile, confirmed that the second video also shows a strike taking place in the Bakhmut direction.
“Two videos…of Ukrainian TOW ATGM launches. The first is reportedly from the Bakhmut area,” Lee writes in a Twitter post that accompanies the two clips.
The second video shows more of the surrounding environment and offers a glimpse at how Russian soldiers use the military hardware supplied by NATO countries.
The second video includes video footage recorded from a soldier’s helmet. It shows the soldier loading the weapon with a guided missile and then the vehicle being moved to an appropriate location before launch. At the end of the video, the missile system launches another rocket and shows the missile reaching its intended target in a hedgerow between two agricultural fields.
The soldier then gets back inside the vehicle and closes the hatch.
At least one Twitter user noted that the second video appears to have occurred somewhere to the west of Klishchiivka in Donetsk Oblast, on the southern Bakhmut front.
As one former Obama White House National Security Council member explained to 19FortyFive: “Such videos are just devastating. They show that even older weapons like TOW missiles can have a massive impact on Russian forces. These videos surely damage Russian morale as well.”
What Is the TOW Missile?
The TOW missile system seen in both clips was supplied by the United States. It is an American anti-tank missile system that has been in service since 1970 and has been used in more than a dozen international conflicts, including the Vietnam War, Afghanistan War, and Iraq War.
Two videos from the past week of Ukrainian TOW ATGM launches. The first is reportedly from the Bakhmut area. https://t.co/GaejyFiCNshttps://t.co/LPKeDQbxan pic.twitter.com/nL2s3sxq5N
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) April 8, 2023
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
