Russia is increasingly using ‘slide bombs’ – cheap but highly destructive munitions – to further its offensive in Ukraine.
More than 200 of them are believed to have been used in just a week to bomb the northern city of Vovchansk in Ukraine during Russia’s current cross-border push towards Kharkov.
Warning: You may find some of the details in this piece disturbing
President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 3,000 such bombs were dropped on the country in March alone.
Vovchansk Police Chief Oleksii Kharkovsky has seen the impact of slide bombs up close.
“There are no words to describe the aftermath of a glide bomb attack,” he says. “You arrive and see people lying there, torn apart.”
Russia’s massive use of glide bombs is a relatively recent development, which has proven devastating to Ukrainian forces in recent months.
Glide bombs are built by adding deployable wings and satellite navigation to old Soviet bombs. They are cheap, but destructive.
According to a recent report by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), they were decisive in capturing the once heavily fortified key eastern city of Avdiivka in February.
Russian forces are now using glide bombs to attack the northern city of Kharkov. Ukraine has so far struggled to counter this.
The Vovchansk police chief has helped evacuate border villages in the Kharkov region, where Russian troops have recently advanced.
Parked in his police car, he tells us that the scale of attacks has increased dramatically.
“Over the last six months we have been hit by hover bombs very frequently, maybe five to 10 bombs a week… but this month we have had many more than ever,” he said.
Russia is able to stockpile large quantities of glide bombs because they are quite easy to produce.
“The explosive part is essentially a conventional free-fall iron bomb, of which Russia has hundreds of thousands in stock from the Soviet period,” said Prof. Justin Bronk, a specialist in air power and military technology at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).
“They are equipped with deployable wings that, after the bomb is dropped, move outward, allowing it to fly much longer distances.”
Their connected satellite guidance system makes it possible to determine a stationary position with relatively high accuracy.
According to Prof. Bronk, the bombs’ mechanism gives the Russians much of the functionality of a multi-million dollar missile, but at a fraction of the cost.
He says that glide kits – which are mass-produced and quite mechanically simple – are being added to Soviet bombs, of which the Russians have an abundant supply – meaning the cost per weapon “could be somewhere in the region of $20,000 to $30,000 (£15,700) lie. -£23,600)”.
The concept is not new. The Germans put the Fritz-X during the Second World War. In the 1990s, the US military developed the Joint attack Direct ammunition, or JDAM, which added steerable tail fins and GPS guidance to traditional free-fall bombs. Since then they have been widely used, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The destruction caused by the glide bombs is extraordinary. The ammunition believed to be most commonly used for glide bombs is the FAB-1500, which weighs 1.5 tons.
For comparison, a Russian 152 mm grenade contains approximately 6.5 kg of explosive material. Even the smallest glide bomb, the FAB-500, weighs more than 200 kg.
They turn even well-fortified Ukrainian positions into vulnerable targets.
Because glide bombs create a much greater explosive force, they are more likely to cause collapses or fatalities, even in quite well-fortified positions, explains Prof. Bronk. The powerful explosions also have serious consequences for the human body.
Glide bombs “make Ukraine’s defensive strategy more difficult because the Russians can continuously bomb fixed positions until they are gone,” says Prof. Bronk.
Ukrainian security analyst Mariia Zolkina tells the BBC that the use of glide bombs is a worrying development, and that the bombs herald a “new era” for the military situation on the ground.
“They are allowing Russia to wipe out Ukrainian defense lines without using their infantry,” Zolkina said. “They have a very different effect than artillery fire or even rocket attacks.”
George Barros of the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says that while the situation in Ukraine is difficult, a new worrying development is looming.
He notes that there is evidence that a factory about 400 km east of Moscow is setting up a production line that can produce glide bombs weighing more than three tons.
If glide bombs of that size were routinely dropped on Ukrainian positions, the impact would be enormous – both on the fortifications and on the morale of the people trying to hold them.
So what can be done to counter hover bombs?
Prof Bronk says intercepting the bombs in flight is not a viable solution due to the large number the Russians have at their disposal. “You would be blowing through all available air defense munitions too quickly,” he says.
The only solution, short of a ground raid, is to target the planes they drop, both in flight and on the ground.
But that comes with significant risks.
The US Patriot surface-to-air missile launcher system can shoot down the fighter-bombers, but only if it is positioned close to the front lines. This carries the risk of being spotted by Russian drones and hit by ballistic missiles, says Prof. Bronk – something that happened to two launch vehicles earlier this year.
This leaves open the possibility of using long-range missiles or drones to target Russian air bases.
It is a method that Ukraine has used. In April, Kiev claimed to have used a barrage of drones to destroy at least six military aircraft and seriously damage eight others at an airfield in Russia’s southern Rostov region.
However, this solution is not without problems. The US – the largest provider of Ukrainian military aid – bans Kiev from using its weapons systems on internationally recognized Russian territory. While this does not include Crimea or occupied Ukraine, it does mean that airports in Russia are off-limits.
So for now it seems that there is no easy answer for Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly called for more air defense missiles and the supply of modern fighter jets.
But for now, Mariia Zolkina says morale has been affected by the increased use of glide bombs.
“The army does not feel safe because their fortifications cannot protect them, while civilians living in Kharkov, people who were used to living under shelling, cannot escape a bomb that can destroy a seven-story building.”
