New bombardment technologies

The Russian army is shelling the frontline regions with artillery, aerial bombs, missiles from S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems, as well as Shahed kamikaze drones. Long-range cruise and ballistic missiles are also used by the Russia.

It is aerial bombs that have recently seriously worsened the situation for the Ukrainian military at the front, and for civilians in the settlements near it, notes David Sharp, a military observer from Israel.

In the first half of 2023, aerial bombings were isolated, and in the fall, Russia sharply increased their use to 50 per day, said Yuriy Ignat, the spokesman of the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. According to the calculations of Western and Ukrainian experts, in October and November, Russia already dropped more than a thousand bombs per month. In the spring of 2024, the number of launched aerial bombs began to exceed three thousand per month, said the President and the head of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

As Sharp explains, the appearance of aerial bombs in large numbers in the war happened due to the fact that Russia mastered the mass production of universal planning and correction modules (UMPK), which are attached to ready-made aerial bombs of the FAB and ODAB types. i UMPK allows the bomb to fly several tens of kilometers, depending on the weight and other conditions – the speaker of the Ukrainian Air Force called the range 20-70 km, which allows launching bombs from Russian territory. Before this innovation, Russian front-line (tactical) aviation was of minimal importance, says Sharp. The Air Force of the Russian Federation avoided using it, because in order to drop a bomb, it was necessary to fly close to the target – and the bombers often shot it down.

According to Sharp, the Russian UMPK is a “semi-artisan” copy of American JDAM-type technologies and they are far from Western standards of high-precision weapons. “At the same time, the bombs [still] fly somewhere in the area of ​​the targets, without exposing the bombers to great danger,” he says.

The threat from Russian tactical aircraft continues to grow, which is why Russia is rapidly improving technology, using it more actively and increasing the number of ammunition, Sharp says. Separately, the expert emphasizes that the power of the bombs used with the UMPK has been increasing all the past months: from 250-kilogram to 3-ton.

In the Kharkiv region, air bombs were initially used in the front-line territories. In March of this year, the Russian Federation first hit the capital of the region with an aerial bomb from the UMPK. According to CIT calculations, at the end of the month, the Russian Federation launched two such attacks, five in April, twelve in May. In June, Russia dropped 19 aerial bombs on the city, said the chairman of Kharkiv Igor Terekhov.

The tactical aviation of the Russian Federation managed to reach Kharkiv thanks to the new, more advanced UMBP D-30SN ammunition – this is the development of UMPK technology. Ukrainian military and officials described the new munition as “something in between a missile and a KAB” and estimated its range at 90 km. Compared to the UMPK, the new ammunition has an engine, satellite guidance, and the ability to launch from ground installations.

Until the beginning of June, the Soviet Union actively bombarded the Kharkiv region with S-300 air defense systems. But after the permission of the US to strike with HIMARS complexes on the border territory of Russia, the attacks on the capital of the region with the help of S-300 stopped, the Ukrainian authorities said. CIT points out that the cessation of shelling also coincides with the defeat of the S-300 complex in the Belgorod region.

Military researcher Kyrylo Mykhaylov confirms that the permission to use HIMARS on the territory of the Russian Federation is the most important factor in reducing missile attacks on Kharkiv.

In June, the authorities of the Kharkiv region reported only two cases of shelling from the S-300 in populated areas of the region. In such a situation, aerial bombardment is more convenient for the Russian Armed Forces, as the planes are more mobile and do not come so close to the front, Mikhailov notes.

In order to combat airstrikes, V. Zelenskyi asks the USA to also allow ATACMS missiles to be used at airfields deep in Russian territory. Missiles of Patriot air defense systems will simply not be enough against such a large number of aerial bombs, and besides, Patriot missiles are much more expensive than aerial bombs, the president explained.

Moving the Patriot closer to the border and the front to attack the planes themselves could also hinder the tactical aviation of the Soviet Union, but in this case they would already be at risk of coming under Russian fire, says Mykhailov. He adds that Russian bombers could also be attacked by F‑16 fighters when they start to be used in Ukraine, but they will also be at risk of defeat: for example, by air-to-air missiles of Su-35 fighters.