The Russian air force pummels Ukrainian forces with as many as 3,000 KAB glide bombs every month. Which is why, on Saturday, the Ukrainians launched dozens of long-range drones at an air base in southern Russia—and blew up a shed full of KAB kits.
Video and satellite imagery from the aftermath of the attack on Kushchyovskaya air base, 120 miles from the front line in southern Ukraine, depict burned-out buildings and heaps of wrecked KABs. The overhead imagery may also hint at the destruction of at least one Sukhoi Su-34 fighter bomber—the Russian air force’s primary KAB carrier.
It will take much more than one raid on one base hosting one shed full of glide bombs to tilt the firepower balance in the Russia-Ukraine war.
But it’s worth noting the Ukrainians are at least trying to disrupt the basic infrastructure of Russia’s glide-bombing campaign. “Ukraine’s ability to disrupt Russian tactical air, particularly glide-bomb usage, is key to the wider defense of the front line,” the U.K. Defense Ministry explained.
Since the middle of last year, the KAB has been the Russian air force’s primary aerial munition. The bombs, rough analogues of the U.S.-made Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range and French-made Hammer glide bombs—both of which arm the Ukrainian air force’s own fighter bombers—range 25 miles on pop-out wings. They help keep Russian jets outside the range of Ukrainian air defenses.
Once assembled, each KAB packs hundreds of pounds of explosives—enough to dig a crater dozens of feet deep. “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.
The KAB is a “miracle weapon” for the Russians, Ukrainian analysis group Deep State noted. And the Ukrainians have “practically no countermeasures.” Except, perhaps, to blow up the sheds where the Russians store the bombs before loading them four apiece onto their Su-34s.
It’s unclear exactly which drones the Ukrainians flung at Kushchyovskaya. They’ve got options, including ex-Soviet spy drones with warheads in the place of their cameras, modified hobby drones packing pounds of TNT and pilotless sport planes with bombs under their bellies.
Whichever drones struck Kushchyovskaya, they did so in huge numbers. The weekend attack was one of the biggest of Russia’s 27-month wider war on Ukraine. The Kremlin claimed its troops shot down 66 drones, “illustrating the scale of the raid,” the ministry in London noted.
The Russians didn’t shoot down every drone, however. At least one of them struck the likely main target of the raid: that shed full of KABs. In destroying potentially scores of glide bombs, the Ukrainian drone operators may have given some of their comrades on the front line a short reprieve—a day or so—from the Russian glide-bombing campaign.
It will take many more raids on many more bases to significantly constrain the bombings over the long term, however. And it’s an open question whether planners in Kyiv will add the KAB infrastructure to the list of repeat targets for Ukraine’s strike drones. Those same drones are already targeting Russian oil refineries and weapons factories.
The big unanswered question is just how many long-range drones Ukraine can produce. Mykhailo Fedorov, who oversees Ukraine’s high-tech war industries, recently told Reuters that there are 10 companies producing thousands of long-range drones annually—potentially enough for weekly raids on the scale of the Kushchyovskaya attack.
But drone production could expand. “We will fight to increase the financing even more,” Fedorov said.
Sources:
1. U.K. Defense Ministry: https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1785224494182797428
2. Brady Africk: https://twitter.com/bradyafr/status/1784582551736033568; https://twitter.com/bradyafr/status/1784582784176066763
3. Egor Sugar: https://twitter.com/SugarEgor/status/1758538023539556496
4. Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-produce-thousands-long-range-drones-2024-minister-says-2024-02-12/
5. Deep State: https://t.me/DeepStateUA/19104
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