NATO should steal a page from Russia's air war against Ukraine

Yahoo

01-03-2025

Ukraine's missiles have kept Russian aircraft away from the battlefield.
Russia has responded by battering Ukraine's defenses with glide bombs dropped farther away.
Increasing glide-bomb production should be a critical priority for NATO.
One of the surprises of the Ukraine war has been the marginal role played by Russian airpower. Expectations that Russian fighters and bombers would blast a path for the ground troops — as US airpower did in Desert Storm — were disappointed. Instead, Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles have kept Russia's air force at bay.
But Russia has hit on a way for its air force — known as the VKS — to make a difference while staying away from the battlefield — massive glide bombing. And that approach seems to be successful enough that a British think tank is calling for NATO air forces to be ready to do the same.
"Glide bombs gave the VKS teeth without the need to first achieve air superiority or gain the ability to penetrate Ukrainian airspace," wrote analysts Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds in a report for the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.
Ironically, Russia's airpower woes have become NATO's worries. Since 1941, the warfighting concept of America, Britain and other Western nations has been to maintain relatively small armies backed by copious amounts of airpower. The concept eventually worked in World War II. It might have worked in the Cold War to repel a massive Soviet ground invasion of Europe.
But the air war over Ukraine raises doubts about this approach. If Ukrainian S-300 and Patriot anti-aircraft missiles can destroy Russian planes, then couldn't Russian missiles do the same to NATO planes? Ukraine claims 369 Russian warplanes have been shot down as of February 2025, with most claimed by missiles rather than Ukraine's small fleet of fighter jets.
That's why Western experts are paying close attention to how Russia has managed to make its air force relevant to the ground war. Much like the Russian war machine in general, the Russian air force is now emphasizing brute-force tactics that rely on massive amounts of bombs rather than accuracy. Instead of running the gauntlet of Ukrainian air defenses as they drop their bombs, Russian jets safely orbit up to 60 miles behind the Russian front line — out of range of Ukrainian long-range surface-to-air missiles — and lob glide bombs. These are low-budget guided weapons that mate a conventional iron bomb with a satellite-guidance system, and aerodynamic fins to control the bomb's trajectory.
Russian UPMK glide bombs lack in accuracy compared to their Western counterparts such as the US Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). But Russia doesn't care. The giant FAB-1500 — a 1.5-ton glide bomb — or the 3.4-ton FAB-5000 have such a large blast radius that even a near miss will destroy Ukrainian trenches and bunkers. It's the same sort of approach long practiced by Russian artillery: saturation bombardment to pulverize enemy defenses and rattle soldiers inside before the assault troops go in.
Ukrainian troops have yet to find an effective defense against glide bombs; moving air defenses forward to fire at a launch aircraft also risks systems like Patriot that are in short supply. Instead, "they have been pushed to completely avoid observation of their positions, to disperse or seek concealment underground, and to rely on uncrewed or autonomous systems to keep and kill the enemy at arm's length," Watling and Reynolds wrote.
The Ukraine war has shown the biggest shortcoming of precision-guided munitions: they are so expensive that nations only procure small numbers, which are quickly depleted during a long war. Because glide bombs use cheap components — old-fashioned iron bombs and inexpensive navigation systems — Russia can easily mass produce them. "The rise in UMPK glide bomb production from 40,000 units in 2024 to 70,000 units anticipated in 2025, has significantly increased the number of Ukrainian troops killed during defensive operations," RUSI noted.
RUSI recommends that NATO increase its stockpiles and manufacturing capacity for stand-off weapons like JDAMs and the Joint Standoff Weapon made by Raytheon (JDAM bombs cost around $20,000 each). In addition, NATO air forces need more long-range air-to-air missiles: Russian fighters have had success in suppressing Ukrainian airpower by using long-range missiles such as the R-77-1, with a range of more than 62 miles.
Given the ferocious consumption of munitions seen in Ukraine, procuring mass quantities is only viable if the price is right. "Increasing stockpiles and the capacity to produce long-range air-to-air munitions and stand-off strike weapons at as low a cost as possible should be critical priorities for the force," RUSI argued.
The Ukraine war offers one bit of consolation for NATO. The fact that Russia had restored some effectiveness to air force suggests that NATO's emphasis on airpower is still relevant. "The disproportionate impact of the VKS, despite the generally poor performance of Russian airpower, validates the importance placed on air power across NATO," RUSI concluded.
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Read the original article on Business Insider