The Ukrainian armed forces are also bombing Vladimir Putin’s troops in the Russian region of Kursk from the air, using a massive guided bomb.
Kursk – Weapons deliveries to Kiev in the Ukraine war are apparently uninterrupted. This time, the Ukrainians received “only” excavator wheel loaders from Germany.
Weapons for Ukraine: Will AASM guided bombs be used in the Kursk offensive?
But France has apparently delivered the next batch of AASM guided bombs to the Ukrainian armed forces, which, according to a social media video, are now also being used in the Kursk offensive in Russia. The widely shared X-account “Osinttechnical” (more than 955,000 followers) published the image sequences.
These are supposed to prove how such a massive AASM bomb weighing 340 kilograms hits a command post of the Russian army in the Kursk region. An impact and subsequent fire can be seen on the video, but the information as well as the location and time of the detonation shown cannot be independently verified.
Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive: Accurate Glide Bombs Against the Russian Army
The bomb, produced by the French arms manufacturer Sagem Défense Sécurité and first put into service by the French Air Force in 2006, is colloquially known as a “hammer” in military jargon. The military advantage of this weapon is its unusually high accuracy for a glide bomb.
Depending on the version, the “Hammer” has a GPS target location system, a seeker head for targets marked with a laser as an additional feature, or an infrared seeker head. This uses image recognition algorithms to compare a stored image of the target with the landscape or surroundings shown when approaching the target. The weapon’s radius of dispersion should be between ten and one meter.
Weapons against Vladimir Putin: Video supposedly shows bunker breakthrough in Kursk
What is striking about the video: Various Ukrainian military bloggers write that the AASM glide bomb shown broke through a Russian bunker in the Russian region of Kursk. The “Hammer” is not actually one of the classic bunker-busting weapons like the German Taurus cruise missile or the British Storm Shadow and the French Scalp-EG. Nevertheless, the military bloggers stick to their story. It is unclear from the video what exactly the bomb penetrated. In other words: whether the combat weight was still sufficient to break through the surface because it was not solid concrete.
In theory, the AASM guided glide bomb is otherwise used against moving targets such as tank units or against enemy positions in buildings. An example: a few days after the loss of Avdiivka, the Ukrainians dropped a French AASM-250 glide bomb on the former coking plant in the Donbass town, where they suspected a Russian shelter at the time – at the end of February and the beginning of March 2024.
Russia’s losses in the Ukraine war: Ukrainian pilots have to fly low
Another interesting thing about the video is that it shows the alleged approach of a Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jet. In the example mentioned, the aircraft approaches its target at low altitude, apparently to avoid the Russian radar, because its contours merge with the landscape and are no longer visible through the electromagnetic waves of the enemy radar. Only then does the aircraft climb in a steep flight to decouple the glide bomb.
Another finding: Since AASM bombs usually have a range of just over 50 kilometers and have to be dropped from a high altitude, the fighter pilot has to fly deep into the combat zone. It is not known why the Russian air defenses were unable to prevent the Ukrainian pilot from doing so in this case. What is known, however, is that in recent weeks the Kiev armed forces have taken out several of the Russian army’s air defense systems near the border through targeted air strikes. (pm)
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