Will resolve YES following confirmation by any of: the US government, the Ukranian government, the government that donated the HIMARS, NATO, Economist, WSJ, NYT, FT, or other highly credible source.
The definition of "disabled" is fairly generous. For example, damage that prevents a HIMARS from firing, reloading, or moving 5 km under its own power resolves YES (even if it is later repaired and returned to service). The damage must be caused by enemy fire. If qualifying sources report that a HIMARS has been disabled but the source of the damage is unknown, this market will remain open until the cause is established to be enemy fire or I see clear evidence that it was.
As I understand it, up to January 2 2024, no HIMARS has yet been disabled by enemy fire in Ukraine.
Resolves 11:59 PM on Dec 31 2024, Kyiv time.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/us/politics/russia-momentum-ukraine-war.html
This article contains a paragraph confirming the destruction of HIMARS launchers: "Those launchers are scare, but the Russians have grown more successful in tracing their movements, and in some cases destroying them"
Does anyone see confirmation from the listed sources yet?
Newsweek and Forbes quickly confirmed the HIMARS strike, but neither is equivalently credible to the listed sources (independent of my judgement, ChatGPT and ground.news agree with this assessment of credibility). Oryx also added it to their list of losses, but my understanding is that they are an aggregator for photographic/videographic evidence and don't independently validate the claim.
I've been checking the listed sources regularly. An NYT article on Mar 9 (after the HIMARS strike video) talked about equipment losses, mentioning Ukraine losing 3 Abrams tanks but nothing about HIMARS. And there's an ambiguous statement made by a member of the UA government saying that the video needs to be investigated.
I wrote these resolution criteria pretty strictly so I'm holding myself to them. I'm also not betting in this market. My personal opinion is that the video is legit and a HIMARS was destroyed, and I expect this will resolve YES before the end date. But please let me know as soon as possible if one of the listed sources confirms it.
@pierrebezukhov Thanks for the report. I’m seeing this percolate up to more reputable news sources, will resolve when one of the listed ones confirms it.