“These bombs completely destroy any position. All the buildings and structures are pulverized after the impact of just one of them and they drop sixty to eighty on us in a single day. I’ll let you imagine the conditions in which our soldiers fight.”wrote on February 16 on Egor Sugar, one of the Ukrainian defenders of Avdiïvka, a few hours before retreating with his comrades.
It was a field of ruins that Russian forces invaded the next day, after four months of siege and bombing of unprecedented intensity. But the capture of this locality in the Donetsk oblast, which could open the way to the large cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, is one of their most resounding victories. The so-called hover bombs, of which Egor Sugar speaks, played a decisive role in this battle, and they have since continued to sow such terror in the Ukrainian trenches that many observers see in them the weapon best able to tilt the balance in favor of Moscow, after months of inaction. The Russian army is now dropping in large numbers on Chassiv Yar, one of the last ramparts on the road to Kramatorsk.
Their destructive power, associated with the numerical superiority of the Russians, will probably allow Russian troops to break through the defense lines built at great expense since the failure of the Ukrainian offensive in the summer of 2023, several officers warned at the beginning of the month high-ranking, interviewed anonymously by the American newspaper online Politico.
Up to three tons
Two years after the start of hostilities, the Russian army would have found with these hovering bombs a way to make a difference. However, its arsenal has been full of them for decades, since they are “smooth bombs” from the Soviet era called FABor highly explosive bombs, which the Anglo-Saxons call “dumb bombs” (“idiot bombs”), that is to say bombs without guidance, to which unfoldable wings have been added after release, which allow them to hover, and a satellite piloting system.
This kit, called the “unified planning and correction module” (UMPK in Russian), transforms them inexpensively into KABs, or trajectory-corrected aerial bombs, weapons that are both precise and devastating with their 500 to 1,500 kilograms. explosive. The Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, even unveiled a three-ton version on March 21, or six times the load of a Franco-British Scalp-Storm Shadow missile, at a cost that is incommensurate.
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