According to Ukraine’s estimates, Russia dropped more than 900 gliding bombs along the 800-mile front line with Ukraine in a week in September 2024.
Ukraine is almost powerless to stop long-range weapons – the consequences are devastating.
Glide Bombs, known as Russia’s “miracle weapon”, are often used to eliminate key Ukrainian targets from logistics bases to army headquarters. It is equipped with wings and satellite-assisted navigation, each weighing three tons.
However, 12 months later, the Russian glide bomb was actually useless due to the sudden success of the Ukrainian radio jammer.
Telegram channel Fighterbomber, run by anonymous Russian pilot, said Ukrainian jamrs “saturated the frontline” and blocked Glide Bombs’ internal navigation system.
“All satellite-guided correction systems are out of the chat,” the pilot said.
Credit: Russian Ministry of Defense
This does not mean that Russia has stopped dropping gliding bombs. But they often turn into stupid people, landing in fields far from their intended targets, rather than crashing into the headquarters of Ukrainian reserves or the Army department.
Jammers can take the form of a single bait or like the F16 made in the West, which can block enemy systems by sending jamming signals.
According to fighters, up to 16 taxi bombs are now usually required to reach a target.
Just a few months ago, Kyiv seemed to have no help in stopping the bomb. “You can’t block it,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the Financial Times at the end of 2024. [glide bombs]you can’t hide from them.”
Mr Winton told the Telegraph that the Russian glide bomb “should be designed and equipped with a powerful global navigation system that receives encrypted signals and should resist blockages.”
“Frankly, Russian gliding bombs should not be bothered,” explained Tom Withington, a weapons expert at the Royal Joint Service Academy think tank.
This means that Russian gliding bombs are so poorly designed that they are susceptible to interference, or that Ukraine has found a way to overcome the built-in protection of weapons.
Given that Russia has been successfully using the Glide bomb for several months, it is more likely that it is the latter.
This is a major development given the devastating nature of the bomb, which caused November, helping the Russian army make the fastest progress since the war began. Their new ineffectiveness could help Russia slow progress for the third straight month.
The news will challenge Donald Trump and JD Vance’s belief that Kyiv has no chance to postpone Russia or maintain its current position.
And the impact on the frontline could be significant, which reduces Russia’s ability to attack Ukraine in its rear, which has been a key part of the Kremlin’s loss strategy.
Before sending out hordes of soldiers, Russian troops launched a strong bombing to weaken Ukraine’s stance, causing chaos and causing initial casualties along the frontline.
“Now, Ukraine prevents Russia from being able to reliably hit the frontline. [Moscow] It cannot affect Ukraine’s command and control, nor will it damage logistics, which means that their troops cannot move in the way they desire on the battlefield in a way that they are. ”
There are concerns that Ukraine’s interference and progress on the battlefield as a whole may be undermined by Trump’s recent decision to stop all military aid and intelligence in Kiev.
Europe vowed to fill the gap when necessary, but experts say it will be difficult for Ukraine to fight effectively after this summer without the support of the United States.
But a source told the Telegraph that Ukraine’s European allies have interacted with electronic warfare companies to ensure whether they can ensure that they maintain the barrier capacity of Kiev.
The pause in U.S. aid and intelligence comes as reports that Ukraine recently discovered success on the Eastern Front, retracted its key stance and caused “unsustainable losses” to Russia.
According to Ukrainian military estimates, on March 1 alone, Russia was believed to have lost 1,340 soldiers dead or injured.
The war blogger said the Ukrainian army had made progress on the Russian army near the major eastern cities of Pokrovsk and Toledsk and had retracted some important positions.
However, the interference of gliding bombs is not a silver bullet, nor is it necessarily the main reason for Russia’s slowing progress or Ukraine’s increasingly successful success.
“Any tactical advantage is the climax of multiple factors… All such technological advancements are usually temporary,” Mr Winton said.
Not only Ukraine has achieved success in weapons production. Ruslan Leviev, a military analyst for the conflict intelligence team, told the Telegraph that Russian interference forced Ukraine to stop using multiple weapons.
“In this war, the impact of Russian jamming systems has been many times. Because of them, the supply of high-precision Excalibur shells has stopped.” Excalibur is a GPS-guided shell provided by the United States.
Ukraine’s success in one form of electronic warfare (EW) is not limited to Glide bombs, but also for drones.
Ukraine is increasingly able to intercept shahed’s drones and turn them back to Russian or Belarusian airspace.
Innovation in Ukraine’s EW intervention means that, according to the US think tank War Institute, most Russian drones are intercepted, lost or misguided.
On November 25, about 38 Russian Shah drones entered Belarusian airspace, forcing Minsk to compete for several fighters.
Ukrainian military expert Petro Chernyk said that among the 110 Shahed drones and baits launched in Ukraine on December 1 and December 2, 50 people were lost due to EW interference and 52 more shot down.
