在同类/可比较、能起重要作用并有绝对数量优势的武器中，俄军除了有lancet和geranium，
还有1个
它对最前线正起着非常重要的作用
they are also very very cost effective comparing with their defensive weapons
https://www.ft.com/content/0d6612f2-5d5 ... 2309991430
The guided weapons are commonly referred to as “glide bombs” and consist of decades-old projectiles that would typically be dropped from Su-34 and Su-35 warplanes directly over targets. By adding cheap pop-out wings and a satellite navigation system, these former “dumb bombs” can now be launched by Russian bombers deep behind the front line and out of reach of Ukraine’s air-defence systems.
“For them, it is much cheaper than using hundreds of thousands of artillery shells, when one of these bombs will demolish several buildings,” said Vlad, a 27-year-old soldier serving in the eastern Donetsk region.
The glide bombs can carry between 500kg and 1.5 tonnes of explosives for over 60km, leaving craters up to 20m wide and 6m deep.
“They are very scary, very lethal,” said Bohdan, another soldier in Donetsk. “Even a kilometre away, the blast rips the doors of buildings off their hinges.”
They are so destructive that Ukrainian analysts with Deep State, a group close to the defence ministry, have called them a weapon for which Kyiv’s forces have “practically no countermeasures”.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told the Financial Times that his country’s soldiers “are being massively and I would say even routinely attacked by guided aerial bombs that wipe out our positions”.
The Russians have attacked Ukraine with around 3,500 such guided aerial bombs just this year, according to Ukrainian defence officials, a 16-fold increase over 2023. In the third week of March alone, Russia “launched over 700 guided aerial bombs,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
“They are very simple in essence, so you cannot jam them, you cannot hide from them — the only way to protect yourself from them is to shoot down the bomber that carries this bomb,” explained Kuleba.
Yet to achieve that, Ukraine needs significantly more modern air defence systems.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think-tank, said in a report published this month that “the growing number of glide-bomb attacks are indicative of the scarcity of air defence weapons”.
。。。And Ukrainian officials told the FT that Moscow’s glide bombs would probably be used to blast paths through the new fortifications Kyiv is rushing to build to stave off the advance of Russian forces.
In the last week of March, Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was hit by two “unified multipurpose” gliding bombs which have a range of up to 90km. It was the first time Kharkiv had been hit by aerial bombs as opposed to missiles and drones since the full-scale invasion.
。。。
Now Russia’s air force is beginning to play a pivotal role and turning the tide of the war in its favour, experts say. And it is the development of glide bombs that has opened the door to do so.
The Institute for the Study of War wrote in a recent assessment that the Russian military had used “mass glide-bomb strikes to tactical effect in their seizure of Avdiivka in mid-February”. Hundreds of glide bombs razed the town in Donetsk region and forced Ukrainian troops to retreat.
“These bombs completely destroy any position. All buildings and structures simply turn into a pit after the impact of just one,” Egor Sugar, a Ukrainian soldier who fought in Avdiivka, wrote on X. “And they drop 60-80 on us in one day.”
Michael Kofman, a military analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that the sheer number of glide bombs together with their destructive force had an impact on soldiers’ morale.
“If you see the crater that two 500-kilogram bombs make, they will make an impression on you,” he said.
The head of the armed forces has also cited glide bombs as a major reason for ordering his troops to retreat from Avdiivka, which handed Moscow its first notable battlefield win in nearly a year.
“Due to constant bombardment by guided aerial bombs, the integrity of our defence was broken, which gave the enemy the opportunity to gradually advance,” Syrsky said.
Russia is now ramping up production of glide bombs and updating the 500-kilogram FAB-500 and the 1,500-kilogram FAB-1500 bombs.
Earlier this month, Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu visited a plant in Nizhny Novgorod region where he inspected production lines. The defence ministry said that the factory had “increased the production of FAB-500 aerial bombs many times over [and] doubled the production of the FAB-1500.”
The ministry said it had also begun the “mass production of the FAB-3000,” an even larger, 3,000-kilogram bomb that can also be fitted with wings and guiding systems.
However, western experts and even popular pro-Kremlin military bloggers on Telegram who operate channels dedicated to Russia’s air force have expressed scepticism about the FAB-3000. Some have called it impractical, as it could be carried only by Tupolev Tu-22M bombers.
Oleksiy Melnyk, a retired Ukrainian air force commander and now co-director of foreign policy and international security studies at the Razumkov Centre, a Kyiv-based think-tank, said the Russian modernisations are inexpensive compared to the high cost of many modern weapons, especially cruise missiles, which can cost several million dollars each.
While glide bombs are not as precise as ballistic cruise missiles, they can still hit “within 10 or 20 metres” of their target and cause severe damage, Melnyk said.
Experts believe Kyiv’s future successes on the battlefield may depend on its ability to defend against glide bombs. That means getting more western help, and fast.
“Kyiv is confronted by the threat that an attritional war in the air domain will increasingly favour Russia without adequate support from the US and its allies,” the IISS said.
“Ukraine’s ability to continue to counter Russian air threats and impose costs on [Russia’s air force] remains important to the outcome of the war.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2 ... d898a55182
The Russian air force is lobbing a hundred glide-bombs a day
The KAB glide-bombs are a “miracle weapon” for the Russians, Ukrainian Deep State noted. And the Ukrainians have “practically no countermeasures.”
To put into perspective how dangerous the situation is for Ukrainian brigades right now, consider that it took just 125 KABs a day for several days finally to make the defense of Avdiivka, a former Ukrainian stronghold in eastern Ukraine, untenable for the Ukrainian army’s 110th Mechanized Brigade.
The brigade had other problems, of course—specifically, a desperate shortage of artillery ammunition that became inevitable once Russia-friendly Republicans in the U.S. Congress cut off aid to Ukraine in October.
But the KABs were the final straw. “All buildings and structures simply turn into a pit after the arrival of just one KAB,” wrote Egor Sugar, a trooper with the Ukrainian 3rd Assault Brigade, which covered the Avdiivka garrison’s retreat in mid-February.
The pace of the glide-bombings may have ebbed somewhat as the shoot-downs spiked. But then, around March 8, a Russian drone spotted the Patriot battery on the move 20 miles from the front line—and cued an Iskander ballistic missile that blew up two Ukrainian launchers.
The Ukrainian air force has just three batteries of American-made Patriots, altogether with around three-dozen launchers. Cut off from further U.S. aid, the air force couldn’t risk losing more Patriots—not when the service also was trying to defend Ukrainian cities against Russian missiles.
So in mid-March, the glide-bomber shoot-downs ended—and the glide-bombings resumed at a rate of a hundred per day. Standard Russian tactics right now are for the Sukhois to, according to Deep State, “water” a Ukrainian garrison with KABs—and then for Russian infantry to attack in small but frequent “banzai charges.”
“Despite a certain stabilization of the front at the beginning of the month, the enemy has been carrying out a large number of rollbacks and banzai attacks for the past 10 days,” Deep State reported Saturday.
It’s unclear how the Ukrainians might end the KAB crisis. Ukrainian lieutenant general Ivan Gavrylyuk said the belated arrival of the Ukrainian air force’s ex-European Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters should help.
And yes, that’s possible. The F-16 has better sensors, self-defenses and missiles than the air force’s current Sukhoi and MiG fighters have. If Kyiv is willing to risk its precious F-16s—just 50 or 60 of which it’s set to receive starting this spring or summer—it might succeed in beating back the glide-bombers.
But it could be a while before the F-16s are in country in sufficient numbers to make much of a difference. In the meantime, the Ukrainian air force only can deploy ground-based air-defenses against the Russian bombers.
Leaving aside the risk to the air-defense crews, these crews also are low on certain types of missiles, Gavrylyuk said.
That’s an obvious reference to the air force’s best Patriot missiles, which mostly are made in the United States. Unless and until Republicans relent and approve $61 billion in long-delayed funding for Ukraine’s war effort, the Ukrainians might never have enough Patriots to fight back against the glide-bombing that now is the key to Russia’s battlefield gains.
“These and other factors make it difficult for the defense forces of Ukraine to carry out the tasks of repelling the aggressor,” Gavrilyuk said.
According to the collected statistics on the use of Lancets since July 2022, 32% of the targets were destroyed. Another 52% were damaged or incapacitated.
