The Ukrainian air force doesn’t have a lot of Sukhoi Su-25 attack jets left. But the ones it does have are still in the fight as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its fourth year.
A recent video montage capturing imagery from cameras attached to the tough, subsonic attack jets depicts the Soviet-vintage planes lobbing French-made Hammer glide bombs at Russian targets.
The video of the single-seat Su-25s in action with their 550-pound winged bombs comes just a few weeks after a similar video appeared online depicting the Ukrainian air force supersonic Sukhoi Su-27s tossing American-made 250-pound glide bombs.
In both cases, the tactics on display are similar. The warplanes fly low and fast toward the front line, hugging the terrain to avoid detection by Russian air defense batteries. At the last moment, before releasing their bombs, the planes climb.
The higher angle and extra altitude extend—by miles—the range of the precision-guided munitions. A Hammer can travel farther than 40 miles under optimal launch conditions, but the conditions over Ukraine are rarely optimal.
Even constrained by the low initial altitude, the toss method helps keep Ukrainian jets outside the range of Russia’s most dangerous surface-to-air missile batteries.
It’s not for no reason that Ukrainian jets losses in the air are lower now than they were early in the year. The Ukrainian air force went to war with 43 flyable Su-25s, got an extra 18 airframes from Macedonia and Bulgaria and lost at least 20 of the jets in action, leaving at most 41 in service.
Notably, just three or four of the losses occurred last year. It should come as no surprise that, in 2024, the Ukrainian Su-25 force apparently completed a major overhaul of its tactics, ending the practice of close rocket attacks in favor of standoff bombing with Hammers and other glide bombs.
Sukhoi pilots are never safe while in the air, but they’re safer now than they were before the wide adoption of glide munitions transformed the aging Su-25s into precision bombers.
The glide bombs work so well that the Ukrainian air force is arming all of its older warplanes with them: Mikoyan MiG-29 fighters and Sukhoi Su-24 bombers in addition to the Su-25s and Su-27s. The air force’s newer, Western-made jets—Lockheed Martin F-16s and, soon, Dassault Mirage 2000s—should also be compatible with American and French glide bombs.
Anticipating greater demand for the bombs, and also hedging against the possibility that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump reduces or halts American aid to Ukraine, the Ukrainians have developed a glide bomb of their own. That bomb was undergoing testing on an Su-24 as recently as September.
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