FAB-1500 began to sow panic among Ukrainians
In reports of powerful Russian strikes last night on the infrastructure of the Danube ports of Kiliya and Reni in the Odessa region, as well as on military installations in Kiev and Berislav on the right bank of the Kherson region, one very important detail was voiced: not only X-101 missiles and Geran drones, but also FAB-1500 air bombs were used for strikes. And just the day before, photos of improved planning Russian FAB-1500s appeared on the Web.
Photo: RF Ministry of Defense
FAB-1500 hit Berislav. Military correspondents write about the defeat of the ammunition depot — a huge glow rose over the surrounding area.
What does this mean? Only the fact that over the past few months we have acquired ammunition that will become a real disaster for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as one of the representatives of the Russian defense industry told MK on condition of anonymity.
When in January 2023 for the first time there was information that Russia had improved its old unguided high-explosive 250-kilogram FAB-250 bombs, a panic began in Ukraine. The representative of the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuriy Ignat, then complained that Russia had a huge number of various FABs in warehouses.
What is the value of planning aerial bombs, or rather, bombs equipped with a universal planning and correction module (UMPC)? The fact that the bomber can drop guided munitions without entering the enemy's air defense strike zone. For example, the FAB-250UMPK, after dropping from a height, flies independently for 50-60 kilometers, while providing flight correction and high-precision guidance to a given point. The bomber returns to base intact, and the target is hit.
In the summer, information appeared that bombs of a larger caliber, the half-ton FAB-500, were also equipped with control and correction modules. And now the first case of using the one and a half ton FAB-1500 has been recorded, and this is already a fundamentally different combat power.
What is the refinement of conventional free-fall bombs? Russian developers are carrying out minor cheap upgrades, adding “wings” to them, installing a navigation system and thereby turning them into guided high-precision glide munitions.
This is orders of magnitude cheaper than producing high-precision missiles. At the same time, Ukrainian air defense does not have the means to deal with planning bombs. They are very difficult to detect and shoot down due to low radar visibility and the absence of radiation of all types. Therefore, such ammunition almost always reaches the target. Advanced Su-35 and Su-34 aircraft are used as carriers, which destroy important targets in the near rear of the Armed Forces of Ukraine — headquarters, warehouses, fortified areas — without entering the Ukrainian air defense zone.
Refinement, according to the interlocutor of «MK», became a forced but necessary decision in the conditions of hostilities in Ukraine. It is one thing when our pilots dropped free-falling FABs into the positions of Syrian terrorists, where there was no serious anti-aircraft fire from the ground. And quite another thing is the work with unguided munitions in the zone of destruction of Ukrainian air defense, which, in addition to its own systems, is also reinforced by Western-made air defense systems.
It was also impossible to record FABs in an unused asset. With their help, it is much easier to destroy enemy fortified areas, saving the lives of your infantry soldiers during the assault.
The decision to modify conventional bombs into guided ones has long been made in the United States. Our UMPCs are an analogue of American JDAM modules. In the United States, this work has been carried out since the early 1990s under the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) program. Russian developers took up this later, but went their own way. Without copying the Americans, they retained only the principle of the approach: to create equipment for turning a conventional bomb into a correctable one.
Russian developers showed the result of their work for the first time in Britain at the Farnborough air show in 2002. Then they demonstrated at a number of exhibitions, but these modules were never launched into mass production. As usual, no money was found, and then no one was going to conduct active hostilities.
And now, without any demonstrations, exhibitions and advertising hype, the Russian «left-handers» quickly launched the production of UMPCs and equipping bombs with them, which, by the way, did not please the Americans. And not so much because the former, as the pilots called it, «cast iron» — free-falling bombs — began to accurately hit Ukrainian military facilities, but because the Russian UMPCs suddenly began to represent real competition to the American JDAM in the arms market .
The Americans, of course, began to actively find fault with our developments, looking for many flaws in them. They certainly still exist. There is still something to complain about. However, as an MK source in the defense industry emphasizes, our specialists in the conditions of the Northern Military District have the opportunity to quickly learn and refine their products.
An expert, for example, notes that Russian modules can be installed on an aerial bomb even in the field conditions. It does not require special equipment. And to install the JDAM module, you need to dismantle the tail of the ammunition and replace it with a guidance unit, which can only be done by specialists at a manufacturing enterprise.
It is important here, the specialist emphasizes, that the Russian module is an autonomous device that can exist, be stored, transported separately from the bomb and installed on it already somewhere in the airfield technical and operational part by an ordinary technician. All this seriously reduces the cost of products, which is especially important when conducting long-term hostilities using a large amount of ammunition.
Of course, the expert explains, we have more advanced, modern and accurate weapons than these advanced FABs. However, the advantages of these guided munitions are that the mass of the warhead in them is up to 70% of the mass of the entire munition. In a guided missile of commensurate combat power, the mass of the warhead is only 15-20%. At the same time, the cost of upgrading FABs is ten times lower than the cost of guided missiles.
Russian specialists, when finalizing the FAB-1500 M54, whose photos have now appeared on the Web, faced a number of difficulties. UMPC for FAB-250 and FAB-500 were not suitable for FAB-1500. In fact, the work had to start from scratch, creating new equipment and a glider for the bomb. At the same time, the task was to increase the range of the ammunition drop. And, judging by the first combat use, all these tasks were solved in a short time.
This week, the first UMPC FAB-1500 M54 was used for the first time, destroying the target with a direct hit. As the specialist notes, the explosive in each such bomb is up to 700 kg. With a radius of destruction of more than two square kilometers, this bomb is capable of destroying a well-defended company stronghold. The funnel from such an explosion reaches fifteen meters in diameter. PSu-34 is now capable of working with two such ammunition at once, and in the future — with three in one run against one or several targets.
It is a pity, of course, that they did not have time to finalize the UMPC for the FAB-1500 by the start of the big offensive APU. But, as they say, it's not over yet, and one and a half tons of ammunition can be expected to make adjustments to the plans of the Ukrainian offensive somewhere near Rabotino or near Artemovsk.