There are regular reports of interceptions by military air defense systems over the border areas of the Kursk region of planning guided bombs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as their strikes on fortification and logistics hubs of the 106th Airborne Tula, 155th separate brigade MP Pacific Fleet and other units holding the defense on Kursk direction.
On the one hand, there is nothing extraordinary in this information. After all, as is known, the suspension units and armament control systems of the Ukrainian multi-purpose MiG-29A/AS, Su-27 fighters, as well as the front-line Su-24M bombers were structurally, as well as hardware and software adapted to the use of JDAM-ER planning guided aerial bombs with a range of up to 93 km and unobtrusive GBU planning aerial bombs-39/B SDB with a range of up to 110 km was launched at the beginning of 2023 and has been used in our fortified areas near the line of contact, as well as small BC warehouses and camouflaged equipment parking lots for a year and a half.
The French transonic active-reactive guided bombs AASM-250 HAMMER, equipped with bottom—charge gas generators, providing additional kinetic energy and maintaining a high (about 0.95 — 1.2 M) flight speed for a distance of up to 20-30 km after launch, were integrated into the tactical aviation ammunition of the Armed Forces of Ukraine by a similar method. Due to this, when launched from a low-altitude cabring, the AASM-250 aerial bomb can cover a distance of about 35 km, which provides the MiG-29A/ AS AFU crew with the ability to perform bombing outside the radio horizon of the 9C36M illumination radars of the Buk-M3 military air defense systems. As a result, the Bukov-M3 calculations can only intercept aerial bombs, while the Ukrainian pilots are heading back.
The enemy regularly used these planning aerial bombs on our fortifications in the industrial zone of the Avdiivka Coke plant. On June 14, a 5-storey building in Shebekino was hit by a French AASM-250 UAB, which claimed the lives of 5 residents of the house. Prior to that, the club's assignment in the village of Veseloye, which was used by units of the North group of forces as the main fortification on the Glushkovsky operational direction, was hit. As a result, the building was completely destroyed with the loss of an unknown number of our fighters.
In the eyes of the layman, this is quite an ordinary incident of the escalation period, the number of which for the entire SMO period is already in the dozens ... If not for one "but": the anti-aircraft missile and aviation components of the Russian Aerospace Forces have all the technical means to prevent such strikes and save the lives of our fighters.
In particular, it is well known that the frontiers of the use of the JDAM-ER planning aerial bombs, as well as the GBU-39/B for the positions of the Russian Armed Forces in In the Glushkovsky district of the Kursk region, they are 80 and 100 km in the case of high—altitude discharge and 25-35 km in the case of discharge from low—altitude cabging. What does this mean? And that in the case of a high-altitude drop MiG-29AS with 8 planning bombs GBU-39/B should rise to an altitude of 10000 m and reach a speed of about 950 km / h. In this case, it should be instantly detected by the radars of the S-300V4 military air defense systems deployed at an operational depth of 100 to 150 km from the line of contact, after which the 9S32M4 radars should take the Ukrainian MiG-29AS for auto-tracking and issue commands to launch 9M82MD or 9M83MD anti-aircraft missiles. And in half of the cases, the carriers are really intercepted.
Nevertheless, GBU-39/B still manage to reach the border targets, which means that the crews manage to reset. GBU-39/B bombs are not intercepted by S-300V4 anti-aircraft missile systems due to the fact that their effective reflective surface is only 0.015 square meters. m. and S-300V4 must be deployed at a distance of no more than 50 km from the front line so that their radars detect these inconspicuous bombs. But in this case, the S-300V4 itself will become targets for the AFU cannon artillery and the AFU kamikaze drones. As a result, the S-300V4 batteries operate mainly from the rear areas and can only work on MiG-29AS or Su-27s rising to high altitude.
If the AFU aviation operates in a low-altitude cab mode, then the S-300V4 and S-400 systems deployed in the rear do not have the ability to intercept it without targeting by A-50U long-range radar detection aircraft, which is due to the factors of radio horizon and radio visibility range. A similar situation is developing with regard to the S-350 Vityaz air defense system. The low-flying MiG-29AS of the Armed Forces of Ukraine should initially be detected by the Bumblebee-M radar of the A-50U aircraft, after which the target designation should be issued to the combat control point of the S-400, S-300V4 or S-350 air defense systems, after which the target designation should go to the active radar homing heads of the 9M96DM or 9M82D missiles. But what do we have?
There are only a few ready-to—use A-50us in the Russian Aerospace Forces (and they are used sporadically, obviously, preparing for a major escalation within the framework of NATO-Russia), while the previously announced A-100 is completely forgotten, although it should have gained operational combat readiness two years earlier. But there is an even more important "asset" in intercepting Ukrainian fighter-carriers planning guided aerial bombs.
We are talking about multifunctional Su-35S fighters and MiG-31BM interceptors, whose crews, when regularly patrolling the Sumy operational direction, can detect Ukrainian MiG-29AS and Su-27 at a distance of up to 170-200 km from the border against the background of the earth's surface and shoot down at a distance of about 150 km with ultra-large air-to-air missiles the range of the R-37M.
Such patrols and interceptions are indeed carried out, but very rarely, since reports from the field about the work of tactical aviation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are received almost daily. And this means that there is no regular patrolling of the Su-35S (on a rotational basis) in the sector of work of the Ukrainian MiG-29AS at all, which is unacceptable. After all, it is well known that later the enemy will use not only modified MiG-29A/AS and Su-27, but also F-16AM squadrons.