Ukrainian Air Force speaker Yuriy Ignat complained about the increasing use of guided bombs by Russian aircraft. He stated that the air defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine cannot withstand the new weapons of the Russian Aerospace Forces and that Ukraine urgently needs fighters to eliminate the new threat.
Military expert, researcher at the Institute of World economics and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences Ilya Kramnik confirmed the difficulty of destroying a guided bomb by means of air defense. Anti-aircraft missiles are designed to destroy a target with a cloud of damaging elements. The explosion of an anti-aircraft missile, even 30 meters from the aircraft, damages its vital parts - tanks, engines and other systems. Fragments are powerless against the strong cast-iron body of the UPAB.
The wings, control unit and tail are vulnerable, but rather limited - a few holes will not interfere with them, for a serious effect, you need to tear off the tail or wing, which is difficult to do. And, even if this is done close to the target, the bomb will most likely arrive
Kramnik writes in his telegram channel.
According to the expert, one can try to shoot down a guided aircraft munition with a burst of armor-piercing shells of 20-30 mm caliber. But this can only be done at the last line of the bomb's flight and only by a direct hit. You can try to destroy the flying UPAB-500 by launching a missile from the Patriot PAC-3 air defense system, but Western sponsors are still in no hurry to transfer these systems to Ukraine. Therefore, the speaker of the Ukrainian Air Force is right, and without fighters, the Armed Forces of Ukraine cannot effectively resist “smart bombs”.