Russian glide bombs' faulty guidance systems may have led to dozens being dropped on its own territory, experts say

An undated video released by the Russian Defense Ministry shows a glide bomb being released over an undisclosed location. Russian Defense Ministry Press Service photo via AP

• Russia has dropped at least 38 glide bombs on its Belgorod region, per The Washington Post.
• The outlet cited an internal Russian document intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence.
• The cause may be a cheap, faulty guidance system, military analysts said.

Faulty guidance systems on Russian glide bombs may have led to dozens of the bombs being dropped on its own territory, experts said, per The Washington Post.

At least 38 glide bombs crashed in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, between April 2023 and April 2024, according to an internal Russian document intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence and passed on to the outlet.

At least four were dropped on the city of Belgorod, and another seven in the suburbs around it, the document said, per the outlet.

It said that the majority of the bombs were discovered by civilians, and in most cases Russia's defense ministry didn't know when they were launched, the outlet reported.

Some could not be recovered due to a "difficult operational situation," the document stated, per the outlet.

Cheap guidance systems could be to blame

Glide bombs are older munitions retrofitted with guidance systems that allow them to be launched at a distance.

Russia has been using them to devastating effects against Ukraine, with Russian aircraft able to release them at a safe distance, making it hard for Ukraine to stop them.

But some of the bombs are failing, likely due to cheap guidance systems known as UMPK kits, according to Ruslan Leviev, a Russian analyst who founded the independent open-source investigation organization Conflict Intelligence Team.

"We think these accidental releases are caused by the unreliability of these kits, something that does not seem to bother the Air Force," he said in a video last month, according to The Post's translation.

Even so, Leviev said his organization estimates that "only a fraction" of the bombs fail, meaning it has little impact on the weapon's overall effectiveness.

In June, Russian opposition media channel Asta estimated that Russia had dropped a total of 103 bombs on its own territories over the past four months.

In March, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba said that Russia had dropped 700 glide bombs on Ukraine in just one six-day period between March 18 and March 24.

Russia also used a massive 6,600-pound FAB-3000 M-54 bomb in Kharkiv in northern Ukraine for the first time last month, causing a massive fireball upon impact, footage showed.

Ukraine is now developing its own glide bombs and is continuing to request further air defense systems from its NATO allies.

NATO countries have also eased restrictions on Ukraine's use of their weapons so it can strike Russian targets and repel Russian glide-bomb strikes in and around Kharkiv.

In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged President Joe Biden to let Ukraine use US-provided long-range missiles, including the ATACMS, to strike airfields deep inside Russia.

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