- Russia is increasingly using its new 6,600-pound glide bomb in Ukraine.
- The massive FAB-3000 bomb is a highly destructive weapon that's hard for Ukraine to stop.
Russia has increasingly been striking Ukrainian positions with its new 6,600-pound glide bomb, a highly destructive weapon that's notoriously difficult to defeat.
The massive FAB-3000 M-54 glide bomb made its combat debut last month. These weapons have special kits that convert them from dumb bombs into precision-guided munitions, enabling Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers to launch these weapons from a safe distance beyond the reach of Ukraine's top ground-based air-defense systems in their current positions.
Warfare and airpower experts say Ukraine has very limited means to defeat this threat. Moving its best air-defense systems closer to the front lines makes them vulnerable to attacks, and Kyiv can't use long-range Western weapons to strike the Russian bases from which the glide bombs are originating.
Russian glide bombs have been problematic for Ukraine throughout much of the war, although the pace of attacks has significantly jumped this year, especially around the embattled northeast Kharkiv region.
In March, the Russian defense ministry announced increased production of the enormous FAB-3000, which Moscow can modify and turn into a glide bomb by outfitting it with a unified planning and correction module. This configuration gives the munition GPS guidance and pop-out wings for increased precision and range.
The new FAB-3000 glide bomb's first known combat usage was in June, and it has been used extensively in the weeks since. Video footage that has circulated around social media shows the bomb's tremendous destructive power and significant blast radius, which can obliterate everything in its path.
A weapon that's hard to stop
Conflict analysts at the Institute for the Study of War warned last month that the employment of the FAB-3000 was a "significant development" that could have devastating implications for Ukrainian military positions and civil infrastructure. To make things worse, defeating the bomb is no easy task.
Justin Bronk, an airpower and technology expert at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in the UK, told Business Insider that the Russians had modified the glide-bomb kits to be highly resistant to GPS jamming, eliminating one way to interfere with these problematic weapons.
More videos of reported Russian FAB-3000 bomb strikes posted over the past month. 11/https://t.co/iZb2JA83SLhttps://t.co/qaPXwyYNPshttps://t.co/6dfUkJjirdhttps://t.co/g2aH7sKV3d pic.twitter.com/TwR02gvm0X
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) July 22, 2024
Once released from an aircraft, glide bombs have short flight times, generate small radar signatures, and travel on non-ballistic trajectories. These characteristics make them difficult to spot and intercept. And Ukraine can't really afford to waste its already strained inventory of air-defense missiles trying to shoot down these munitions mid-flight.
So Ukraine's only option is to catch the aircraft before launch. To get the Su-34s, it has to either knock them out on the ground or take them out in the air before they drop their payload.
To intercept the planes in the air, Kyiv would have to push its most advanced air-defense systems closer to the front lines. The US-made MIM-104 Patriot is far and away the best system for the job, but Ukraine has only a few batteries and a limited supply of interceptor missiles. These are valuable assets and not easily expendable, so putting them closer to the front lines within range of Russian fires is a huge gamble.
George Barros, the geospatial-intelligence team lead and a Russia analyst at ISW, told BI, "There's an implicit requirement here that the Ukrainians must be allowed to — and they must have the capability to — destroy those Russian artillery assets so that you actually can protect your Patriot and forward deploy it."
"It's an inherently risky thing to forward deploy such an advanced asset that close to the front line," he said.
Holding Ukraine back
For the Ukrainians, that leaves trying to strike the air bases inside Russian territory from which the Su-34 fighter-bombers carrying the FAB-3000 are taking off, which could disrupt combat sorties.
Ukraine is already doing this to a certain extent by using homemade long-range drones. More could be done, but the war-torn country has been hamstrung by restrictions on using Western weapons to strike inside Russia.
Experts say the US specifically is standing in the way here by denying Kyiv the ability to use its arsenal of powerful MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems to hit Moscow's air bases.
"Attacking bases cannot completely eliminate the threat but can force sorties to be flown from further away bases, which will reduce the effective attack rates possible for the VKS," Bronk said, referring to the Russian Aerospace Forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly appealed to the Biden administration to drop all restrictions on using long-range weapons such as ATACMS to strike inside Russia, arguing that this is essential for mitigating the glide-bomb threat.
As the FAB-3000 becomes a more common sight on the battlefield, his plea could become even more critical.
"When Russian aviation launches more than a hundred guided bombs against our cities, villages, and frontline positions every day, we need reliable protection against them," Zelenskyy said this week.
He said Ukraine needed to be able to "destroy the carriers of these bombs — Russian military aircraft — wherever they are," adding, "Our sufficient long-range capabilities should be a fair response to Russian terror."