The imagery appeared a month after the reported first strikes by similarly huge munitions – and at least four months after Russian industry began assembling the new bombs. In March, Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu inspected the assembly line for the giant weapons at a factory in Nizhny Novgorod in western Russia.
In one sense, a 3.3-ton bomb signals an escalation of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. After suffering heavy losses in warplanes and crews in the first year of the war, in early 2023 the Russian air force introduced its first glide bombs.
Borrowing a concept from Western air forces, which have long employed an array of gliding munitions, the Russian air force bolted inexpensive wings and satellite-guidance kits onto existing unguided bombs, most of them weighing 1,100, 2,200 or 3,300 pounds.
The first generation of these bombs ranged around 25 miles, allowing Russian aircrews to attack Ukrainian positions while staying outside the range of the most numerous Ukrainian air defences. As the Ukrainians deployed more and better defences – including American-made Patriot surface-to-air missiles – the Russians improved the glide bombs, extending their range to 40 miles.
The Russians quickly realized they had gained an aerial advantage – and leaned into it. A year later the air force is dropping a hundred glide-bombs a day. It’s now standard practice, in the days before a Russian ground assault, for Sukhois to lob glide bombs at Ukrainian defences – pulverizing them and clearing a path for the ground troops.
The glide-bombs are a “miracle weapon” for the Russians, the Ukrainian Deep State analysis group concluded. And the Ukrainians have “practically no countermeasures.” Until they can deploy a lot more air defences, that is.
Considering how effective the 1,100-, 2,200- and 3,300-pound glide-bombs have been, it doesn’t make a lot of military sense for the Russians to bother with a 6,600-pound bomb. Blast effect doesn’t scale geometrically, so a 6,600-pound bomb isn’t twice as powerful as a 3,300-pound bomb.
And the greater mass of the bigger bomb weighs on its glide slope. The 3.3-ton winged bomb actually has less range than its lighter predecessors. Once Ukraine reinforces its air defences, the Sukhois carrying the bigger glide-bombs should be the first ones to come under fire.
And those air defences are coming. In the weeks leading up to the recent Nato summit in Washington DC, Ukraine’s allies pledged another four Patriot batteries on top of the three batteries they’ve already provided. And any day now, the Ukrainian air force should get the first of 85 ex-Nato Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters armed with AIM-120 air-to-air missiles ranging as far as 85 miles, depending on the model.
All that is to say: deploying giant new bombs is an intimidating move by the Russian air force. But it might actually backfire if the Sukhois carrying the bombs fall into the trap of Ukraine’s new defences.