Russia is pounding Ukraine with powerful glide bombs, hitting a single Ukrainian region with 40 of the weapons in one night this week, Hans Petter Midttun, a nonresident fellow at the Centre of Defence Strategies, wrote for the Euromaidan Press.
“First employed in early March, the Russian-winged UPAB-1500 and FAB-500 glide bombs are being used in increasing numbers,” the military expert wrote.
“On the night of 2 October, 40 of them were used against military and civilian targets in one Oblast only,” he said, adding that the Russian Air Force had ramped up its airstrikes by just over 36% in the last four months and that it was suffering less losses.
To make the weapons, Russia is equipping old Soviet bombs like the FAB-500, which it has a large supply of, with a simple satellite guidance system and “wings,” Insider previously reported. It then fires them from fighter jets like the Su-34 and Su-35.
The bombs can be fired from longer distances, reaching targets up to 30 to 45 miles away, The Telegraph reported.
The bombs are also much more precise than freefall versions, and the payloads are so huge — some can weigh as much as 3,300 pounds, Forbes reported — that they can cause substantial damage.
Oleksiy Melnyk, from the Kyiv-based think tank Razumkov Centre, told Insider the bombs showed Ukraine was facing “a ruthless enemy, especially when we talk about collateral damage.”
Much of the damage inflicted by these bombs has been on civilian infrastructure and many casualties have been civilians, which has “huge psychological effects” on the population, he said.
A dispatch from The Times of London said “the word on every soldier’s lips here on the Zaporizhzhia front is KAB, the Russian acronym for guided aerial bomb.”
Zahar, a soldier in a mortar unit, told the outlet that Russian guided bombs were wreaking havoc on Ukrainian forces.
“They make a crater big enough to bury a tank or four cars,” he said.
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