Russia is increasingly using “glider bombs” – cheap but highly destructive weapons – to advance its offensive in Ukraine.
More than 200 of them are believed to have been used in just a week to attack the city of Vovchansk in northern Ukraine during Russia’s current cross-border advance near Kharkiv.
Warning: You may find some of the details in this piece disturbing
President Volodymyr Zelensky said 3,000 such bombs were dropped on the country in March alone.
Vovchansk police chief Oleksii Kharkivsky saw the impact of the glide bombs up close.
“There are no words to describe the consequences of a flat bomb attack,” he says. “You arrive and see people lying there, broken.”
Russia’s mass use of glide bombs is a relatively recent development, which has proved devastating to Ukrainian forces in recent months.
Gliding bombs are built by adding folding wings and satellite navigation to old Soviet bombs. They are cheap but destructive.
A recent report by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) states that they were decisive in February’s capture of the once heavily fortified eastern town of Avdiivka.
Russian forces are now using glide bombs to attack the northern city of Kharkiv. So far, Ukraine has struggled to combat them.
The Vovchansk police chief has been helping to evacuate frontline border villages in the Kharkiv region, where Russian forces have been advancing recently.
Parked in his police car, he tells us that the scale of the attacks has increased dramatically.
“Over the last six months we’ve been hit by glide bombs quite frequently, maybe five to 10 bombs a week… but this month we’ve had a lot more than ever before,” he said.
Russia is able to store glide bombs in large quantities because they are easily produced.
“The explosive part is essentially a free-falling conventional iron bomb, of which Russia has had hundreds of thousands in storage since the Soviet period,” says Professor Justin Bronk, an expert in air power and military technology at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi ).
“They are equipped with removable wings that, after the bomb is released, open to allow it to glide much greater distances.”
Its satellite guidance system allows it to target a stationary position with relatively high accuracy.
According to Professor Bronk, the bomb mechanism gives the Russians much of the functionality of a multimillion-dollar missile, but at a fraction of the cost.
He says glide kits – which are mass-produced and quite simple mechanically – are added to Soviet bombs, of which the Russians have an abundant supply – meaning the cost per weapon could be “somewhere around $20,000 to $30,000 (£15,700).
The concept is not new. The Germans implemented the Fritz-X during World War II. In the 1990s, the US military developed the Direct Joint Attack Munition, or JDAM, which added steerable tail fins and GPS guidance to traditional free-fall bombs. They have been widely used since then, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The destruction that glide bombs create is extraordinary. The ordnance considered most commonly used for glide bombs is the FAB-1500, which weighs 1.5 tons.
For comparison, a Russian 152 mm projectile contains about 6.5 kg of explosive material. Even the smallest glide bomb, the FAB-500, contains more than 200 kg.
They turn even well-fortified Ukrainian positions into vulnerable targets.
Because glide bombs create much greater explosive power, they are more likely to cause collapses or deaths, even in well-fortified positions, explains Professor Bronk. The powerful explosions also have serious effects on the human body.
Gliding bombs “are making Ukraine’s defensive strategy more difficult because the Russians can continually bomb fixed positions until they disappear,” says Professor Bronk.
Ukrainian security analyst Mariia Zolkina told the BBC that the use of glide bombs is a worrying development and that the bombs are creating a “new era” for the military situation on the ground.
“They allow Russia to destroy Ukrainian defensive lines without using its infantry,” says Zolkina. “They have a completely different effect than artillery fire or even missile attacks.”
George Barros of the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says that while Ukraine’s situation is difficult, another worrying development could be just around the corner.
He notes that there is evidence that a factory about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Moscow is setting up a production line capable of producing glide bombs weighing more than three tons.
If glide bombs of this size began to be routinely dropped on Ukrainian positions, the impact would be vast – both on the fortifications and on the morale of the people trying to maintain them.
So what can be done to combat glide bombs?
Professor Bronk says that intercepting the bombs mid-flight is not a viable solution due to the large numbers the Russians have at their disposal. “You would run out of all available air defense ammunition very quickly,” he says.
The only solution, short of a ground incursion, is to hit the planes that launch them, whether in flight or on the ground.
But this carries significant risks.
The US Patriot surface-to-air missile launcher system can shoot down 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 Professor Bronk – something that happened with two launchers earlier this year.
This leaves the option 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 damaging eight other people at an airfield in the Rostov region of southern Russia.
This solution, however, is not without problems. The US – the largest provider of Ukrainian military aid – prohibits Kiev from using any of its weapons systems on internationally recognized Russian territory. While this does not include Crimea or occupied Ukraine, it does mean that airfields inside Russia are off limits.
So for now, it appears 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 military does not feel safe because their fortifications cannot protect them, while civilians living in Kharkiv, people used to living under bombings, cannot escape a bomb that could destroy a seven-story building.”
