Russian Tactical Air-to-Surface Missiles (ASM):

Well I said unguided glide bombs are still precise enough for leveling cities.

It won't help. You can easily see where a dumb bomb will fall because it just falls down.

A gliding bomb flys. You can't predict how it will fly. You have to correct the trajectory during its flight.

Gliding bombs don't fly. They also fall down, gliding along the way. They're not proper aircraft but heavy dense non-aerodynamic chunks of metal and explosives with wings attached to extend their path down to Earth.

The problem of calculating their flight-path we can relate to that of another military field we've heard about, namely that of non-ballistic atmospheric re-entry for things like warhead buses or asteroids

It's not a trivial problem to work out but nonetheless a solvable one with some accuracy. After all we can witness the advent of maneuverable hyper-sonic glide vehicles such as the Avangard, which undertake maneuvers to evade missile defenses. If it wasn't theoretically possible for missile defense systems to determine their trajectories in the first place and intercept them - then there would have been no need to add maneuver capability to them; it would have been enough for them to simply glide.
And this means that an on-board aircraft computer can calculate the trajectory of a gliding bomb that it releases with good accuracy, especially if it accounts for the wind speed at the moment of release, factors in local meteorological data, and is utilizing them at a lower altitude or a higher speed; limiting the range but giving less time for error to compound until impact.
In fact the comparison I made to atmospheric reentry is merely illustrative, being rather excessive in reality. An actual gliding trajectory under ideal conditions is pretty much a straight line that you can calculate with trigonometry alone (https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/VirtualAero/BottleRocket/airplane/glidprob.html).. which actually makes them a lot easier to work out than ballistic trajectories of any kind.

Yes both gliding bombs and hypersonic gliding vehicles will be affected by winds and turbulence but in both cases they have a huge amount of inertia minimizing this effect on account of their density and speed respectively.

Well you are assuming they are planning to use these bombs against specific targets, but what if they are planning to use these bombs in saturation attacks?
If that's the case then precision would be irrelevant and the ability to glide would allow Russian aviation to attack an enemy position without coming into range of their manpads.

This is also a very reasonable use-case, kind of like how Su-25s and Ka-52s have been witnessed lobbing unguided rockets into the air to serve as a kind of indirect artillery against enemy troop concentrations.

Even at max range and altitude, a wing of aircraft releasing their payloads of glide bombs would still have a good idea where these bombs will end up, and if the purpose is to inflict a Grad-type barrage over a square area - then some dispersion or inaccuracy would not be a disadvantage in any case.

Very useful for when the enemy is gathering or known to be somewhere which happens to be outside the range of your deployed artillery.

Not to mention, if they can release that from 200m and still get a 6.5km range, it resolves tons of problems as that is well over the range of any MANPADS other than this two stage Iranian...

I find it a little beyond belief that the bomb will glide for 6.5km from an initial altitude of 200m

Would have to be a hell of an initial speed for that at any rate

No you can't calculate their trajectory. A 3° course correction by air turbulences means you hit far away from your aiming point. The further the your glide bomb the bigger that mistake becomes and the more air turbulences the more it will correct its trajectory and push it away from its trajectory.

Onboard computers can't know micro climat events. They have a general data about big meteorogical situation but certainly don't know how the wind blows in the every cm3 of the area.

New post flamming_python Today at 2:07 pm

I find it a little beyond belief that the bomb will glide for 6.5km from an initial altitude of 200m

Would have to be a hell of an initial speed for that at any rate dunno

800-1100 km/s
That was the original Bazalt statement from 20 years ago.

Not sure accelerating to 0.3% the speed of light to deploy your guide bombs is feasible in this day and age

Isos wrote:No you can't calculate their trajectory. A 3° course correction by air turbulences means you hit far away from your aiming point. The further the your glide bomb the bigger that mistake becomes and the more air turbulences the more it will correct its trajectory and push it away from its trajectory.

You'd get a 3 degree course correction from turbulence, or maybe a 300 degree one - if you were a paper airplane, not a gliding 250kg bomb with stub wings

Onboard computers can't know micro climat events. They have a general data about big meteorogical situation but certainly don't know how the wind blows in the every cm3 of the area.

It's rather superfluous information, you no more need to know that to put a gliding bomb within 10m of the target then you need to know it to put a dumb bomb with 5m

/h of course

Actual planes get pushed let and right like paper plane by the wind and air turbulences. That small bomb would end km away from its target without a guidance system.

Wings are made to be affected by wind. That's their purpose...

800-1100 km/s
That was the original Bazalt statement from 20 years ago.

Not sure accelerating to 0.3% the speed of light to deploy your guide bombs is feasible in this day and age

Glad I wasn't drinking coffee when I read that.

Actual planes get pushed let and right like paper plane by the wind and air turbulences. That small bomb would end km away from its target without a guidance system.

Wings are made to be affected by wind. That's their purpose...

Wings are meant to provide a surface for air to flow faster over the top of, then around the bottom of. This process generates lift.

The same lift is generated when gliding, but it is not enough because there is no method of propulsion. All the wings can do is provide a measure of lift enough to slow down the descent due to gravity.

Wind speed and direction can affect the amount of lift provided a little, but this can be calculated for.

The only thing that could realistically lead to a gliding bomb going far off course is turbulence of the sort where there is a downdraft or other phenomenon which leads to anything in the air quickly loosing altitude as the process of generating lift is interrupted (essentially you momentarily end up in a stall). Simply put however such turbulence is rare, it usually occurs over mountains or jet-streams of some kinds. It can be ignored for the Ukraine.
Turbulence caused by the wind changing directions and lifting one wing higher than the other, etc... can occur, but it shouldn't have such a dramatic effect; unlike on an aircraft, on a gliding bomb there are no flight surfaces or ailerons other than the wings, which are tiny relative to its mass, and the bomb is not in the air for long - it's inertia will keep it locked to its course.

If you look carefully at the "glide-set", specifically the back end of it, you will see two additional tail planes that look like they may be movable (rotationally along their longitudinal axis) and thus may act as stabilators; this would also explain why the main body of the glide set is bigger there, forming what looks like a kind of box, which may contain, e.g. a battery and electric motors to control these stabilators...with those the glide bomb would have pitch control and even some roll control, which can be used to steer it left and right a bit. The actual guidance would then be provided by a small computer using either some kind of GLONASS module that cannot be clearly identified on that image or an inertial navigation system inside the body of the "strap-on set" or, perhaps, even pure command guidance by some aircraft far away tracking the bomb's position with its radar (unlikely).

Just to add a bit: once deployed, the bomb will likely flip 180°, such that the glide-set will be on top (probably one wing is first deployed and shortly thereafter the other)...so then the "belly" of the glide-set (as seen in the image) will be pointing toward the unobstructed sky. So it's not far-fetched to suspect a GLONASS kit in the body of the glide-set below some kind of composite material window on the belly surface, which can not be seen on the image.

Wings are meant to provide a surface for air to flow faster over the top of, then around the bottom of. This process generates lift.

Wings are made to be affected by air flow. Wind is an air flow.

There is no way you can use a targeting systems for a gliding bomb.

And there is no way you can hit something with a gliding bomb that doesn't correct its trajectory during its flight that can be long of few tens of kms.

You need to have no clue of how physics work to pretend the opposite.

ZOKA
@200_zoka
Brothers just need to ask Iran or China

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The Iranian version is probably started by SU-22 (Iranian upgrade version ex Iraq) or F-4.

Because dumb bombs are not so dumb since the modern targeting system in the bomber will make them land very close to their intended target.

Such targeting system don't work if your bomb has to glide for 30km and get its trajectory corrected by the wind.

The glide package can have gyros on it to keep it flying straight and level the way they can make drones hover... multi angle gyros can keep a falling... gliding bomb on a consistent flight path which makes it predictable so the modern targeting systems in the bomber that allow good precision with dumb unguided bombs can also make dumb bombs with basic glider kits with simple gyros to keep it flying level and straight and not be effected by cross winds etc.

Uses for dumb glide bombs are many. I really like this design. In the future they could even attach a relatively cheap laser or tv guidance system to the glide body itself. All in one and then easily gripped to the dumb bomb.

The thing is with the Russians their dumb unguided bombs don't have precision aiming kits like the west, Russian precision guided bombs come with a warhead and guidance as a package.

The gliding kits to add to dumb bomb are not to replace guided bombs with glide fins... they are more comparable to the way we have seen their aircraft use unguided rockets against area targets... to allow release from greater distances... glide bombs would probably be toss bombed to extend their reach while being released at low altitude and at high speed.

The Russians have an enormous number of different types of air to ground ordinance from gliding 1.5 ton bombs to the air launched Grom, which comes in two modular versions... one with a bomb and a solid rocket fuel section for standoff targets and another model where the solid rocket fuel is replaced with more HE... in both cases the weapon has wings and glides to the target, but obviously the one with the rocket fuel can reach further... both are guided.

They also have glide cluster bomb dispensors:



Note the bomb in the foreground is the RBK-500U cluster bomb, while the bomb in the rack behind it is the PBK-500U gliding version.



Some are not obvious like this glide bomb... UPAB-1500 with x shaped folding wings...

According to Bazalts advert I have here, the MPK is a gliding and correction module kit that comes in four versions. The simplest is the one shown earlier and is the cheapest and most basic... it stabilises the bomb in flight with no homing and is intended to allow the bomb to hit targets 6-7km away from a low altitude release, the second variant has simple gyro stabilisation allowing targets 12-15km away to be hit effectively, the third variant has a satellite receiver added to hit targets 40-60km away, and the most advanced version has a pulsejet engine attached to extend range to 80-100km.

gefest cant control the wind

Doesn't need to... released at high speed at low altitude it wont make much difference, and over greater distance the auto gyro or the guidance systems will correct...

A gliding bomb flys. You can't predict how it will fly. You have to correct the trajectory during its flight.

Can't predict how an aircraft will fly?

So the goal is not to have thousands of them but be able to produce one when needed that is less expensive than a kh-29 and in good numbers to destroy plenty of key targets when needed.

Sounds like a very simplified and restricted use of a weapon intended for area targets.

In this case the glide component is not to turn a dumb bomb into a cruise missile... the purpose is to shift the impact point and time several kms and several seconds so an aircraft can deliver a bomb attack but not fly close to the target it is bombing... as I said for the Russians this is the equivalent of firing the unguided rockets up into the air at targets so they can be attacked from a safe distance.

If the target is a bridge or a tank then a guided missile would make more sense, but if the target is troops in a light tree covered area then 6 glide bombs of 100kg released 12km away by an Su-34 moving at near sonic speeds at 40m altitude might be the tactic used.

I find it a little beyond belief that the bomb will glide for 6.5km from an initial altitude of 200m

Would have to be a hell of an initial speed for that at any rate

That was the purpose of the kits...

No you can't calculate their trajectory. A 3° course correction by air turbulences means you hit far away from your aiming point. The further the your glide bomb the bigger that mistake becomes and the more air turbulences the more it will correct its trajectory and push it away from its trajectory.

All those problems effect dumb bombs yet Gefest & T still make systems that calculate accurate delivery trajectories... do you think a glide path is impossible to calculate because that turbulence and crosswind also effects unguided rockets too...

Smerch and Uragan and Grad must be useless...

Actual planes get pushed let and right like paper plane by the wind and air turbulences. That small bomb would end km away from its target without a guidance system.

Wings are made to be affected by wind. That's their purpose...

That is why only guided bullets hit people...

Brothers just need to ask Iran or China

No, they don't, Russia already has a wide range of gliding bombs and does not need Chinese or Iranian or American types... it seems the French don't have any gliding bombs because they are impossible.

And Grom 1 and Grom 2... both with wings and a HE payload... one has a rocket motor and the other replaces the rocket fuel with a lot more HE... both are technically glide bombs:

If you look at the two rear fins of the new glide bomb they are clearly mobile, so chances are it is guided.

I suspect it's more like GarryB's suggestion

Some sort of gyro or other auto-stabilization mechanism, just to make sure that any turbulence that banks the bomb is counter-acted

All those problems effect dumb bombs yet Gefest & T still make systems that calculate accurate delivery trajectories... do you think a glide path is impossible to calculate because that turbulence and crosswind also effects unguided rockets too...

Smerch and Uragan and Grad must be useless...

You need some physics classes.

Rockets, artillery and mortar shells don't have wings. They also rotate on themselves in order to decrease winds effects on them.

The further you fire them the less precisie they are which what I said for the gliding bombs. Actually it's worse for gliding bombs since they are made to be affected by air flow and wind.

This argument prove my point rather than yours.

Can't predict how an aircraft will fly?

No you can't. Get in a plane, don't turn on the autopilot, don't touch the joystick and you will see if it flies straight.

A hint: it won't fly straight. Same for gliding bombs or anything that has wings.

The glide package can have gyros on it to keep it flying straight and level the way they can make drones hover... multi angle gyros can keep a falling... gliding bomb on a consistent flight path which makes it predictable so the modern targeting systems in the bomber that allow good precision with dumb unguided bombs can also make dumb bombs with basic glider kits with simple gyros to keep it flying level and straight and not be effected by cross winds etc.

It needs some sort of guidance system. The cheaper the better.

Gliding bombs and gliding package for old bombs are supposed to do what an expensive missile would do. Not as good but not bad too.

If you can give it a 10-20 CEP then it will destroy the target. Bombs of 250-1000kg have enough power to transform any target into dust at such ranges.

If you wabt better precision use a missile.

Yeah I think mass production of Grom would be more than warranted. That would enable the Su-34 to strike targets outside the range of MANPADS and the Buk and Osa systems Ukraine has and be much cheaper than the Kh-59 they do have. They should just produce the solid rocket glide version of it.

The rocket powered model has a range of between 10km and 120km with a 320kg warhead... an all up weight of just under 600kgs so even an Su-25 should be able to carry them... what is interesting is that it can be used at targets at an angle of up to 180 (+-) degrees away from the point of release... so it can be used against targets behind the launch aircraft.

The unpowered version has a range up to 50km, the same all up weight of just under 600kgs, but it has an additional 130kgs warhead together with the 320kg original warhead making it a 450kg warhead, which is pretty decent.

50km is a decent standoff range and the extra payload weight would have better effect on target too.

Anything with a turbojet will be more expensive and harder to handle since you need to load fuel into the missile.

How many solid rocket propelled aircraft or cars or trucks or trains are there?

Internal combustion engines are generally more efficient because its fuel is just fuel... whereas a solid rocket motors fuel needs a large oxygen component to be included which massively increases the volume and weight of its "fuel".

I agree the rocket motor makes sense on this weapon, but for long range weapons with long endurance a turbojet or scramjet makes sense too.

In addition putting MAWS into the Su-34, like already available on Su-35, would reduce losses to IR guided MANPADS.

Why do you think the Su-34 does not have MAWS?

If Russia wants help from China they should just ask for satellite intelligence on Ukraine and NATO supplies to them. That would have minimum chance for blowback and the Chinese have way more reconnaissance satellites than Russia at this moment after 8 years of Western sanctions on satellite components.

If Russia lacks satellites then the solution is to build and launch some...

You need some physics classes.

Everybody does... it is a complex area.

Rockets, artillery and mortar shells don't have wings. They also rotate on themselves in order to decrease winds effects on them.

Fantastic analysis... perhaps you can break it to Russian troops using old model RPG-7 rockets whose tail fins caught in cross winds required aiming compensation into the crosswind...

On an RPG-7 rocket the tail fins flip open and are thin but rather long... the rocket exhaust on an RPG-7 rocket is just behind the warhead and well ahead of the fins that give it a slow roll to stabilise it in flight, so a cross wind pushes the tail obviously in the direction of the wind, which turns the nose in to the wind and the rocket motor propels it forward as it turns into the wind so a wind blowing from left to right you don't aim down wind to compensate for the wind you aim the same distance up wind to get a hit... isn't physics fun?

Hot air balloons don't have wings either are they not effected by the wind?

Wings are about lift to keep something in the air... with a gyro that keeps the bomb straight and level a crosswind is not going to blow the aircraft off course by an enormous amount... and cross winds can be compensated for too... it is all part of the calculation... for long range ballistic missile and artillery shell flights you actually have to take into account the rate at which the earth spins... crosswinds are not that much of a big problem over shorter distances that the unguided models will be used for.

The further you fire them the less precisie they are which what I said for the gliding bombs. Actually it's worse for gliding bombs since they are made to be affected by air flow and wind.

And your mistake is to think glide bombs need to be precision weapons that take out tiny precise targets.

An Su-25 carrying 8 x 250kg bombs with glide kits would use them the same way it would use 80mm rockets in rocket pods... fly towards the location of the target and at the max glide range of the weapons pitch up and release at top speed... the natural dispersion of the bombs is like the natural dispersion of the 80mm rockets when they loft them.... it MAKES THEM MORE EFFECTIVE.

The last thing in the world they want is for all the gliding bombs to land the same distance apart that they were launched... 8 x 250kg bombs landing 10km away the distance apart that they are on the Su-25s wing would be a horrible waste of weapons... the shrapnel from bomb number one will kill everything that bomb number 8s shrapnel will kill.... you might as well just drop one bomb... or you could not waste your time making cheap simple weapons used against area targets super expensive and use them as intended... the enemy troops are moving forward at this coordinate... drop a spread of bombs over this area to make it hard for them... crosswinds will effect all the bombs so the impact area wont get that much bigger, but the cluster of bomb impacts will be shifted by any crosswind...

No you can't. Get in a plane, don't turn on the autopilot, don't touch the joystick and you will see if it flies straight.

A hint: it won't fly straight. Same for gliding bombs or anything that has wings.

An autopilot is not smart... it just uses autogyros to fly level and straight on a specific heading... even the cheapest dumbest most crap 200 dollar drones have better than that these days.

In fact that is essentially what NLAW has...

Except a Russian equivalent would not cost 20K pounds like those pieces of crap do.

It needs some sort of guidance system. The cheaper the better.

It is a dumb bomb, it doesn't need any guidance except decent delivery guidance.

Gliding bombs and gliding package for old bombs are supposed to do what an expensive missile would do. Not as good but not bad too.

Guided gliding bomb packages make the old cheap bombs more expensive than actual guided missiles, and are redundant most of the time.

If you can give it a 10-20 CEP then it will destroy the target. Bombs of 250-1000kg have enough power to transform any target into dust at such ranges.

If you are using a guided weapon of 1,000kgs then it is a very hard target.... a glide bomb would make sense to use first to take down enemy air defences where the enemy has very strong air defences... most of the time anti radiation missiles would make rather more sense... TOR can easily shoot down gliding bombs as easily as it can shoot down high speed anti radiation missiles.

Russian use of glide bombs would be like their use of rockets where they loft them at targets... hitting point targets makes more sense to use cheap drones or artillery.

If you wabt better precision use a missile.

Most of the most expensive Russian weapons are cheaper than the cheapest western weapons... what makes sense for the west does not always make sense for Russia.

Fantastic analysis... perhaps you can break it to Russian troops using old model RPG-7 rockets whose tail fins caught in cross winds required aiming compensation into the crosswind...

On an RPG-7 rocket the tail fins flip open and are thin but rather long... the rocket exhaust on an RPG-7 rocket is just behind the warhead and well ahead of the fins that give it a slow roll to stabilise it in flight, so a cross wind pushes the tail obviously in the direction of the wind, which turns the nose in to the wind and the rocket motor propels it forward as it turns into the wind so a wind blowing from left to right you don't aim down wind to compensate for the wind you aim the same distance up wind to get a hit... isn't physics fun?

Hot air balloons don't have wings either are they not effected by the wind?

I said they reduced impact of the air flow. Artillery is precise at close range. The further you fire the more you loose in precision because of externak factor like temperature, wind and the unperfect design of the shells.

Wings on glide bombs are made to be impacted by the air flow so the wind will have hard impact on them.

Same for rpg-7. 100% accurate at 50m but good luck touching anything at 1000m.

Basic physics.

And your mistake is to think glide bombs need to be precision weapons that take out tiny precise targets.

Yes they need a certain precision. Even for carpet bombing. If your carpet bombing misses by 500m the target is still standing and you lost tens of bombs for nothing.

An autopilot is not smart... it just uses autogyros to fly level and straight on a specific heading... even the cheapest dumbest most crap 200 dollar drones have better than that these days.

In fact that is essentially what NLAW has...

Except a Russian equivalent would not cost 20K pounds like those pieces of crap do.

Yeah so why does russian companies buy western planes with western autopilots ? They carry thousand of passenger hourly those autopilots. They are certainly not crap or made out of few autogyros...

But that's not the point here. My point is no pilot, no computer controling the wings in a plane, you let that plane uncontrolled and it will quickly change its course. Same for gliding bombs.

Most of the most expensive Russian weapons are cheaper than the cheapest western weapons... what makes sense for the west does not always make sense for Russia.

Ask any export customer of russian MiC if their weapons are as cheap as you pretend...

They are just as expensive. So at the end they will buy western stuff. That's actually happening. They are loosing clients everywhere for western or 3rd party like south korean or japanese stuff.

For very cheap stuff China beats Russia.