Why Russia’s Glide Bombs are Almost Impossible for Ukraine to Stop | War on Tape | Daily Mail

Why Russia’s Glide Bombs are Almost Impossible for Ukraine to Stop | War on Tape | Daily Mail

what we’re looking at here is footage from the Russian Ministry of Defense which you can tell from the coat of arms up the top right of the screen what it’s showing us is an Su 34 fighter bomber preparing for takeoff at an Airfield in an undisclosed part of Russia and slung under its wings are the weapons it will use for this Mission Four Deadly little devices known as Glide bombs the bomber is headed for Ukraine to attack a command center somewhere in southern yet these weapons are the latest to be deployed in Russia’s war on Ukraine they can weigh up to 1 and 1/2 tons fly up to 40 Mi and explode with such force that they can level buildings blow up bunkers and leave survivors with brain injuries if we come in for a closer look we can see these actually aren’t brand new weapons at all they’re old weapons with a new piece of Kit attached the old bit is the bomb itself in this case an fa b500 m62 Fab is an acronym translating to high explosive Aviation bomb the 500 indicates the weight in this case 500 kg but they come in both smaller and bigger sizes the smallest weigh 250 kgs and the largest ones currently in use weigh 1,500 or 1.5 tons but Russia is working on even bigger ones up to 3 tons and 60 2 indicates the year it was made in this case 1962 when the Soviet Union was still in charge originally this was a dumb bomb which doesn’t mean that it came last in its class in school it means it isn’t guided like a smart bomb and was designed to be dropped from a bomber straight downwards onto a Target below but not anymore which is where the new part comes in because strapped to this bomb like a backpack is what Russia calls a universal planning and correction module or umk for short it contains a GPS tracker which allows the Russians to program it to hit targets that the bomber pilot cannot see fins on the tail to steer it and stabilize it and two pop out Wings which allow it to Glide for miles before smashing into the Target and exploding right now the bombs are strapped to hard points under the Jet’s wings with the umpk facing downwards but if you watch this moment the pilots release the bombs and they roll over so the kit is facing upwards the wings then pop out and the GPS takes over meaning the bombs will Glide to their Target in this case a Ukrainian command post before slamming into it that means the Russian Pilots Don’t Have To Cross into Ukrainian airspace during the bombing run where they might get shot down but you can see them firing flares here just to make sure because these bombs are packed with huge amounts of explosives the damage they cause when they hit can be extreme they’re not as accurate as guided missiles or artillery so they’re no use against mobile targets but they can easily demolish multi-story buildings and reinforce bunkers bombs just like these were used heavily in the final days of the fight for adiva which Russia eventually captured Glide bombs may be a new feature in Russia’s war in Ukraine but they’ve got a legacy that stretches all the way back to the second world war the very first Glide bombs to be used were developed by the Nazis the fritz X was a 1,400 kg armor piercing bomb that was converted into a guided Bomb by fitting a radio control unit to the tail and fins on the side it was designed to destroy ships which were so heavily defended the bombers couldn’t get near them but was slow and large enough for the Glide bombs to Target the USS Savannah was badly damaged by Fritz bombs during the Allied attack on Salerno in Italy in 1943 along with Brit HMS War spite an Italian warship Roma which was in the process of surrendering to the Allies at the time was blown to bits though the weapon did not prove decisive for the Nazis the idea caught on and by the end of the war America and Japan had their own versions while Britain and the Soviets were trying to develop them the role of attacking ships would eventually be taken over by missiles but Glide bombs found another use in attacking heavily defended ground targets one of the most common in use today is the Jade Dam which stands for joint direct attack munition because it was jointly developed by the US Air Force and navy it looks a little bit like the Russian umpk but more sophisticated and consists of a tail section which replaces the bomb’s old fins at the back and contains the GPS guidance system there’s also a stake kit which sits around the body of the bomb and helps stabilize it in the air it has been used in dozens of Wars including the Afghan war Iraq war Libya Syria and by the IDF against Hamas in Gaza all these conflicts have one thing in common they involve countries with large air forces attacking Terror groups with few anti-air defenses but which were hidden among civilians bombing was therefore a lowrisk high reward strategy but the bombs needed to be accurate enough to avoid the civilians missiles would have worked but they cost multiple millions of dollars each and a targeting equipment worth a fraction of that which is where the Glide bombs come in they proved Adept at destroying buildings bunkers and bases and did so at a fraction of the cost of using guided missiles in late 2022 the jdam was also given to Ukraine the ukrainians got a version called the jdam ER or extended range which features pop out wings that triple the distance it can fly it was used for the first time in early 2023 during the Battle of bmot just like in the mid Middle East the bomb proved Adept at destroying hardened targets like bunkers and buildings the Russians were hiding in and it could do so with enough accuracy to avoid hitting people still in the city or nearby Ukrainian troops the tactic was not decisive and Ukraine eventually lost back moot but it was effective enough that Russia began copying it Putin’s generals are now using their own Glide bombs to demolish Ukrainian defenses and help their troops Advance all while trying to avoid the bloodbath that Bako became the bombs helped decide the Battle of adiva in favor of the Russians the question now is can Ukraine find a way to stop them or will they lead to yet more Russian advances that’s all the information I got from watching this tape but I wanted to know more so I brought the footage to an expert looks like four uh Fab 500 so 500 kilogram bombs with upm K uh Wing kits so Glide bomb kits attached to a suo 34m uh so this is um a Russian fighter bommer closest equivalent would probably be the the Western um f-15e Strike Eagle uh this is the kind of uh one of the two standard platforms that the Russians use regularly for dropping Glide bombs and also launching other uh standoff air to ground Munitions uh towards Ukrainian lines uh interestingly they’re they’re going at a seem to be going a relatively horizontal angle um so starting quite High suggests they quite a long way from the lines um so very high altitude uh the four bombs released there in a salvo deploying their wing kits looks like a UAV feed um for the impact Russians have essentially struggled to find a particularly impactful way to use their uh the majority of their fighter fleets since the start of the war because theyve not been able to gain their superiority over Ukraine um because they’ve not been able to um find suppress and destroy those those uh Ukrainian groundbased air defense systems so the Sam systems there’s limits to how many targets you can hit if they’re for example relying on uh air launched cruise missiles uh those are very very expensive they can only hit fixed targets Russia’s been using lots and lots of air launch cruise missiles from its bomber Fleet anyway uh so the fighters had a limited impact there in terms of closer range missiles with TV or or uh laser guidance that requires the launch aircraft to get close and therefore has led to losses in the for example their Su 34 Fleet from Ukrainian Sams what the Glide bombs have given them is a way to use a a a stock of Munitions of which they have huge quantities so the the Fab series of 500 kg and 1,500 kg very heavy uh demolition bombs essentially they they have you hundreds of thousands if not millions of these weapons dating back to probably prev Vietnam and so they’re they’re essentially free uh they don’t cost much by attaching these upm K wing kits to them uh and then launching from a high altitude and speed with a fighter or a fighter bomber they can essentially bombard fixed locations particularly in areas where the ukrainians are dug in in a Salient so for example as we saw in adiva before uh the withdrawal so where the Russians the mission planning is pretty easy they know exactly where they’re targeting so they can essentially just pump out sorties with these Wing kit equipped GL bombs at a low cost with a very heavy weight of explosive for each impact compared to an artillery shell launching these bombs back from the front line seems like a huge Advantage but what I wanted to know is what happens when the Glide kit fails over Russian territory the fuses on um the the the the Fab adaptations um will be pretty rudimentary so at the point where the bomb is released it will be live and so if the if the Glide kit fails where it doesn’t reach its Target and fall short uh yeah there will be a large hole somewhere possibly in Russian occupied territory and we have consistently seen um Russian air launched Munitions failures resulting in weapons dropping on Russian soil as well as Russian occupied territory so for example there have been a number of um KH 101 series uh air launch cruise missiles being dropped from Russian bombers fired from Russian bombers over Russia itself which have failed and have for fallen in Russian territory and been photographed and released on Telegram and things um that’s one of the reasons why particularly early on in the war Uh Russian bombers were often flying a very long way to launch over the Caspian Sea uh and flying these longer routes for the missiles uh presumably so that if the motor didn’t fire on the on the cruise missile then it was going to fall into the sea rather than fall on land it’s possible to overstate these difficulties partly because the Russians don’t really care if a few bombs fall in the wrong place even if they were to kill a few Russian soldiers or or Ukrainian civilians in Russ occupy territory that’s not going to result in any inquiries in the Russian system they don’t really mind unfortunately it’s very difficult to effectively defend against these Glide bombs on the front lines because the Russians can launch from far enough back while Ukraine has had some successes in essentially ambushing these high level Glide bomb attacking uh flights with putting Patriot launchers very close to the front lines uh and the radar relatively close to the front lines in order to essentially come on at the right moment and rapidly engage uh those those those Russian aircraft as they come in at high level quite far back where they think they’re safe uh Ukraine has also lost two Patriot launchers uh which you know to a UAV which found them and directed a ballistic missile in um essentially it is very risky with extremely scarce assets that are desperately needed to defend Ukrainian Cities Power infrastructure um factories uh so it’s not a sustainable answer across the front it’s a way to impose some losses on the Russians sometimes and keep them relatively far back but it’s not the answer the only other real answers are to go after the aircraft on the ground so to conduct attacks on Ukrainian air on Russian air bases sorry um with you know uav’s Special Forces um much more easily said than done other way of approaching this and I think this is where probably woron efforts should focus if they’re looking specifically countering Glide bombs because it will also help counter aad of other things uh is more operational level or even tactical level electronic warfare equipment to essentially jam and degrade the GPS and glas uh signals which the bombs rely on for their for their guidance it won’t stop the bombs but you can significantly degrade their level of accuracy to the point where they’re not particularly effective but did the Glide bombs decide the Battle of aiva in of the Russians I don’t think that the Glide bombs were decisive in in the Ukrainian decision to withdraw from Riva I mean the the biggest problem that they’ve had is simply shortage of ammunition for artillery um and barrels and that fundamentally comes down to the freezing of us um large scale Aid and the failure of European countries to invest in sufficient production capacity for ammunition in 2022 but essentially the shortage of artillery ammunition led to far more of the Russian infantry assault and mostly it was mostly Vehicles taking infantry to kind of step off points relatively close to Ukrainian lines and then infantry making those assaults if you have lots of artillery ammunition as Ukraine had through most of last year then you can break up those assaults inflict huge amounts of casualties but also crucially suppress and kind of force them to spread out what was happening for most of the beginning of this year January February and through a lot of March is that a lot more of those Russian infantry were having to be repelled essentially hand to hand With Grenades and Small Arms that’s massively more costly way of Defending territ defending defense lines in terms of Ukrainian casualties the decision to withdraw from a when it was made was entirely the right one because it was becoming disproportionately costly to hold and the big question Aly bombs going to win the war for Russia that will essentially still come down to um two things one can Ukraine continue to mobilize and train enough people to replace losses um currently the line is very thinly held because losses have been high and training and and mobilization has not kept pace um over the last 6 months but also artillery ammunition it it’s amazing with all of the kind of innovative technology Innovative approaches to everything from uavs training employment of Glide bombs air power standoff Munitions air defense all of these things are important but ultimately the war seems to be being decided at the moment one way or the other by howt of shells and barrels to fire them that’s where this tape stops but we’ll be back soon to play you through another episode of War on tape hey everyone thanks for watching if you want more videos like this in your feed don’t forget to hit like And subscribe to our YouTube channel

Why Russia’s Glide Bombs are Almost Impossible for Ukraine to Stop | War on Tape | Daily Mail

Glide bombs are the latest terrifying weapon Russia is using in its war on Ukraine. By strapping wings and GPS kits to Soviet bombs weighing up to 1.5 tons, Putin’s warplanes are now able to demolish Ukrainian defences and help their troops advance. With the help of air power expert Justin Bronk of the RUSI think-tank, we uncover how these new weapons work, why they are almost impossible for Ukraine to stop, and why – despite that – they probably won’t win the war for Moscow.

0:00 Glide bombs: Russia’s deadly ‘little’ devices
3:00 The damage Russia’s glide bombs can cause
6:42 Military expert breaks down Russia’s glide bomb footage
8:35 How glide bombs helped Russia compensate for lack of more expensive bombs
9:40 What happens when the bombs fail?
12:55 Did the glide bombs decide the battle of Avdiivka in Russia’s favor?
14:13 Are glide bombs going to win the Ukraine war for Russia?

The War on Tape: A foreign correspondent sifts through tapes from to reveal a closer look at the often overlooked features of war.

#WaronTape #Russia #Ukraine #Explainer

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