VIA SCRIPPS NEWS:
At a time when Ukraine is hurting for weapons — waiting, hoping the United States Congress will approve President Joe Biden's military aid package — a long-awaited, longer-range munition is now joining its arsenal.
While it’s one that has never been used in combat before, the Russians may soon learn its capabilities.
The new Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb, or GLSDB, was developed by Boeing and Saab, and can travel about 90 miles and hit a target within a radius of one meter, and can even strike targets behind a hill or behind its launch point. It's made up of a precision-guided 250-pound bomb attached to a rocket motor.
Ukraine will be the first country in the world to use the new long-range bomb in combat, as no other nation has the weapon in its arsenal — including the U.S.
There’s a video at the Scripps News link above that gives more details, including views of the GLSDB being launched. SAAB has more:
GLSDB advantages:
- Increased range
- Guided artillery
- Accuracy to within one metre
- All angle, all aspect attack, even targets behind launch point
- Multiple rockets to act against many targets, with near-simultaneous impact
- All-weather, 24/7 capability
- Terrain avoidance, such as mountains
- Cave-breaching capability
- Launchable from hidden or protected positions to avoid detection
- Programmable impact and delay fuzing for deep penetration or proximity height-of-burst
- SDB Focused Lethality Munition (FLM) variant for low collateral damage
- Laser SDB variant for moving target capability
There have been calls to give Ukraine this capability for some time. Questions that remain are: how many will Ukraine get, how soon, and what will be targeted?
There have been repeated discussions of what this capability means for Ukraine. It’s not just the ability to reach out 90 miles and hit targets with precision.
- It allows launchers to be placed farther back from front lines, making it harder to attack them.
- It forces Russia to move critical supplies, assets, and assembly points farther from the front, extending supply lines and complicating logistics. (Something Russia has been bad at doing.)
- It forces Russia to adjust its planning and deployments to avoid becoming targets for GLSDB attacks.
- It forces Russia to deploy defense systems around assets that were previously not vulnerable — and there are only so many of those systems.
What this will mean for the current situation of struggles for incremental gains across heavily fortified defenses, extensive mine fields, and the proliferating variety of drones and countermeasures remains to be seen.
There’s also the question of what effect they might have had if deployed months earlier — would Ukraine have been able to use them to greater effect regarding shaping the conflict? The question is academic at this point, but still worth discussing.
It’s also worth looking at what else was in the aid package that was approved back in February 2023. Here’s a July 8, 2022 press release on what had been authorized:
United States security assistance committed to Ukraine includes:
- Over 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems;
- Over 6,500 Javelin anti-armor systems;
- Over 20,000 other anti-armor systems;
- Over 700 Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems;
- 126 155mm Howitzers and up to 411,000 155mm artillery rounds;
- 36,000 105mm artillery rounds;
- 126 Tactical Vehicles to tow 155mm Howitzers;
- 22 Tactical Vehicles to recover equipment;
- 12 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and ammunition;
- Two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS);
- 20 Mi-17 helicopters;
- Counter-battery systems;
- Hundreds of Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles;
- 200 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers;
- Over 10,000 grenade launchers and small arms;
- Over 59,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition;
- 75,000 sets of body armor and helmets;
- 121 Phoenix Ghost Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems;
- Laser-guided rocket systems;
- Puma Unmanned Aerial Systems;
- Unmanned Coastal Defense Vessels;
- 26 counter-artillery radars;
- Four counter-mortar radars;
- Four air surveillance radars;
- Two harpoon coastal defense systems;
- 18 coastal and riverine patrol boats;
- M18A1 Claymore anti-personnel munitions;
- C-4 explosives, demolition munitions, and demolition equipment for obstacle clearing;
- Tactical secure communications systems;
- Thousands of night vision devices, thermal imagery systems, optics, and laser rangefinders;
- Commercial satellite imagery services;
- Explosive ordnance disposal protective gear;
- Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear protective equipment;
- Medical supplies to include first aid kits;
- Electronic jamming equipment;
- Field equipment and spare parts;
- Funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.
This doesn’t include aid from other allies in the region, or what Ukraine is currently in need of at the present stage of the conflict. It also doesn't reflect what has been expended in combat to date, or the toll being taken by Russian attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure.
Will the GLSDB be a game changer? We’ll see.