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Why Russia’s glide bomb assault is changing the war in Ukraine (www.thetimes.co.uk)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Powerful Soviet-era weapons

Russia’s newest weapon

There are four lines of text and photo separating these two statements at the very beginning of the article. And they're both talking about the same thing.

reads the comments to my comment, laughs

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Let’s be fair here, it said:

Powerful Soviet-era weapons modified with fins and sat-navs

i.e., taking old Soviet-era dumb bombs and installing new flight control kits on them and converting them into glide bombs, which is now a new type of weapon. Kinda like JDAM but much cheaper.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I'm no ordinance nerd so feel free to correct me.

I was under the impression that JDAMS were just dumb bombs that were dropped above their target (more vertical than horizontal from target) with some ability to adjust their fall to stay on a target.

Glide bombs seem like cheaper versions of the Cruise Missile idea, no? (Explosive payload delivered at lower altitude and high rate of speed from a platform that is farther away on the horizontal than the vertical axis from a target.)

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

They are talking about KAB series bomb, which is modification of WW2 era FAB bomb. It's been in service since 1975, though it's more effective now since guidance systems were improved but it's essentially still a 50 year old modification of a over 80 year weapon.
If Ukraine thinks it's a wunderwaffe it only means they don't have any anti air capablity since plane using those would be pretty vulnerable to modern systems.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

I mean, most modern Russian weapon systems are based on the soviet design. There are some cutting edge doohickeys that probably aren't - such as Su-57, Kinzhal missile - but the stuff normally getting used - Su-25s, Grads, T-72 of whichever modifications there are - are at their core soviet systems