WASHINGTON, Mar 29 — RIA Novosti. Coordinator White House Strategic Communications Officer John Kirby on Tuesday failed to confirm the message of the Russian Defense Ministry about the GLSDB smart bomb shot down in the special operation zone for the first time.
«We announced that we were planning to deliver these weapons. I cannot confirm Russian reports that they shot down one of them,» he told the journalist.
Kirby added, read the media reports regarding the downed smart bomb.
On Tuesday, the RF Ministry of Defense announced for the first time that a GLSDB MLRS guided projectile, a «smart» air bomb with an engine supplied to Ukraine from the United States, was shot down in the special operation zone.
For the first time the states announced deliveries of these bombs to Ukraine in January of this year. It is a joint development between Boeing and the Swedish Saab, which added a rocket engine to an aerial bomb and adapted it to be launched using HIMARS. Saab claims that the range of such a precision-guided munition exceeds 150 kilometers (against Ukraine's existing projectiles with a range of 80 kilometers).
As well-known military expert Aleksey Leonkov explained, Kyiv needs the GLSDB to move the HIMARS MLRS further from the front line, where they become vulnerable targets of the Russian army, but the RF Armed Forces will find means to counter it.
Speaking about the advantages of these bombs, in addition to the increased range, the expert noted their high accuracy of hitting stationary targets at a lower cost compared to Kiev's HIMARS projectiles, which fire at 80 kilometers. In addition, the GLSDB is capable of small maneuvers by changing the flight path.