Ukraine has deprived Russia of one of its main advantages on frontline: it disrupts Russian GAB strikes - Forbes
Ukraine is disrupting Russian guided bomb strikes along the entire front line, depriving Russia of one of its main advantages on the battlefield. A year ago, Russian fighter-bombers launched about a hundred guided bombs along the 1,287-kilometre frontline in Ukraine every day.
According to Censor.NET, Forbes analyst David Axe writes about this.
He notes that the GABs were a ‘miracle weapon’ that Ukrainians had no way to counter. It was thanks to the ‘bomb-first, assault-next’ tactic that the Russian army was able to capture Avdiivka and advance to Pokrovsk.
However, the situation has changed now. The Russians continue to attack with GABs, but the front line has already been saturated with ‘radio jammers’. Ukrainian defenders are using them to counter these bombs. So 'the golden era' of the divine UMPK turned out to be short-lived. Through the massive use of electronic warfare (EW) systems, Ukrainian defenders disrupted the communication between the GABs and the Russian GLONASS satellite system.
"Without a steady connection for course correction, the glide bombs tend to stray and harmlessly explode on some fields," Axe writes.
Now the occupiers have to launch 8 or even 16 bombs to hit one target. At the same time, the analyst points out, the planning bombs themselves are quite inexpensive, but the fighters that drop them two or four at a time are not cheap. Thus, it is risky and inefficient to launch four aircraft to hit a single target.
The intensive Ukrainian jamming has also 'grounded' many of Russia’s drones, Axe says. This forced the enemy to switch to pricier fiber-optic drones.
The jamming has effectively accomplished what the Ukrainian air force struggled to accomplish with its expensive, vulnerable S-300, Patriot and SAMP/T surface-to-air missile batteries, which can hit Russian jets from scores of miles away but were always too few in number to fully protect the front line and safeguard Ukrainian cities. The Russians use EW too, but, Axe writes, their 'jammers' are badly made and ineffective.
"Filling the air with radio noise, the Ukrainians may have erased one of Russia’s main battlefield advantages," Axe writes.
As a reminder, the Ukrainian Air Force reported that on 6 February, experimental weapons were used against the Russian GAB in Zaporizhzhia.
