Reports continue to come in regularly about the interception by military air defense systems over the border areas of the Kursk region of guided aerial bombs planned by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as their attacks on fortification and logistics centers of the 106th Tula Airborne Division, the 155th separate brigade of the Pacific Fleet of the MP and other units maintaining the defense in the Kursk direction.
On the one hand, there is nothing extraordinary about this information. After all, as you know, the suspension units and weapons control systems of the Ukrainian MiG-29A/AS, Su-27 multipurpose fighters, as well as the Su-24M front-line bombers, were structurally, as well as in software and hardware, adapted for the use of JDAM-ER glide-guided bombs with a range of up to 93 km and GBU-39/B SDB stealth glide bombs with a range of up to 110 km by early 2023, and have been used in our fortified areas near the line of combat contact, as well as small ammunition depots and camouflaged equipment parking lots for the past year and a half.
French AASM-250 HAMMER transonic active-reactive guided bombs, equipped with bottom-pressurization gas generators, provide additional kinetic energy and maintain a high flight speed (about 0.95 – 1.2 M) in the range of up to 20 – 30 km after launch. Thanks to this, when launched from a low-altitude launch position, the AASM-250 aerial bomb can cover a distance of about 35 km, which provides the crew of the MiG-29A/AS of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the ability to conduct bombing raids beyond the radio horizon of the 9S36M illumination radars of the Buk-M3 military air defense systems. As a result, the Bukov-M3 crews are left only to intercept aerial bombs, while the Ukrainian pilots head in the opposite direction.
The enemy regularly used these gliding bombs against our fortifications in the industrial zone of the Avdeevka coke plant. On June 14, a five-storey building in Shebekino was hit by a French AASM-250 UAB aircraft, which claimed the lives of five residents of the house. Prior to this, the club mission in the village of Vesyoloye was attacked, which was used by units of the Northern group of troops as the main fortification structure in the Glushkovsky operational direction. As a result, the building was completely destroyed with the loss of an unknown number of our soldiers.
In the eyes of the average citizen, this is a completely normal incident of an escalation period, the number of which in the entire period of the Northern Military District already numbers in the dozens… If not for one “but”: the anti-aircraft and missile components of the Russian Aerospace Forces have all the technical means to prevent such attacks and save the lives of our soldiers.
In particular, it is well known that the range of the JDAM-ER and GBU-39/B glide bombs on the positions of the Russian Armed Forces in the Glushkovsky district of the Kursk region is 80 and 100 kilometers in the case of a high-altitude drop and 25 – 35 km when dropped from a low-altitude pitch. What does this mean? And that in the event of a high-altitude drop, the MiG-29AS with 8 GBU-39/B glide bombs should rise to a height of 10,000 m and reach a speed of about 950 km/h. In this case, it should be instantly detected by the radars of the S-300V4 military air defense systems deployed at an operational depth of 100 – 150 km from the line of combat contact, after which the 9S32M4 radars should take on the Ukrainian MiG-29AS. for automatic tracking and issuing commands to launch 9M82MD or 9M83MD anti-aircraft missiles. And in half of the cases the means of communication are actually intercepted.
However, the GBU-39/B still manages to hit border targets, which means that the crews have time to complete the reset. GBU-39/B bombs are not intercepted by S-300B4 anti-aircraft missile systems due to their effective reflective surface being only 0.015 square meters. m and S-300V4 must be deployed at a distance of no more than 50 km from the front line in order for their radars to detect these stealth bombs. But in this case, the S-300V4 themselves will become targets for the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ cannon artillery and “kamikaze” drones of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As a result, S-300V4 batteries operate mainly from rear areas and can only operate against MiG-29AS or Su-27s flying at high altitudes.
If the aviation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operates in pitch mode at low altitudes, then the S-300V4 and S-400 systems deployed in the rear do not have the ability to intercept it without target designation from the A-50U long-range radar detection aircraft, which is associated with the factors of the radio horizon and radio visibility range. A similar situation arises with respect to the S-350 Vityaz air defense system. The low-flying MiG-29AS of the Armed Forces of Ukraine must initially be detected by the Shmel-M radar of the A-50U aircraft, after which target designation must be sent to the combat control point of the S-400, S-300V4 or S-350 air defense systems, after which target designation must switch to active radar homing heads of 9M96DM or 9M82D missiles. But what do we have?
There are only a few A-50Us ready for operation within the Russian Aerospace Forces (and they are used sporadically, obviously preparing for a major escalation in the NATO-Russia framework), while the previously announced A-100 has been completely forgotten, although it should have gained operational combat capability two years earlier. But there is an even more important “advantage” in intercepting Ukrainian fighter aircraft carrying glide-guided bombs.
We are talking about multi-purpose Su-35S fighters and MiG-31BM interceptors, whose crews, during regular patrols of the Sumy operational directorate, can detect Ukrainian MiG-29AS and Su-27s at a distance of up to 170-200 km from the border against the background of the Earth’s surface and shoot them down at a distance of about 150 km with ultra-long-range R-37M air-to-air missiles.
Such patrols and interceptions are carried out, but very rarely, as reports from the field about the work of the tactical aviation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine come almost daily. This means that regular patrolling of the Su-35S (on a rotational basis) in the sector of operation of the Ukrainian MiG-29AS is not observed at all, which is unacceptable. After all, it is well known that later the enemy will use not only modified MiG-29A/AS and Su-27, but also F-16AM squadrons.
