During the war in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces have utilized a variety of Precision Guided Munitions (PGM) requiring high-tech components. One such weapon is the Izdelie 305 (also known as “LMUR”) guided missile, produced by Rostec subsidiary KB Mashinostroyeniya.

This analysis will solely utilize data from visually confirmed usages in the Ukraine war compiled by the “Oryx Spioenkop” authors. The article is called Tracking The Threat: Russia’s Izdeliye 305 (LMUR).

Taking each instance of a strike and extracting the date when a recording of the usage was (re-)posted to social media, one can plot the number of strikes each month. Because there exists a delay between when the strike actually occurred and the date of publishing the footage, a constant of 3 days is subtracted from post dates.

The first published strikes occurred in June of 2022 and the data stretches to October of the same year. Published strikes peaked in July 2022 and fell to their lowest in September 2022. With a reported price of 14.2 million roubles, or $227,000, as well as limited stockpiles, Russian forces might be hesitant or simply unable to sustain usage of this comparatively advanced anti-armor weapon as their failed invasion drags on.

Caveats apply; the Russian MoD might have decided to reduce publishing strike footage while actually ramping up strikes and the Oryx authors might not have compiled all available footage (or have some still pending review).

A cursory search of Twitter suggests newer posts of LMUR strikes, but these might in reality be reposts of old footage. Further research is certainly welcome.