Footage launched by the Russian Defence Ministry on April 5 confirmed Su-34 strike fighters using ODAB-500 500 kilogram glide bombs with thermobaric warheads in opposition to fortified Ukrainian positions within the disputed Donetsk area. Such warheads are nicely optimised for neutralising nicely fortified enemy positions, and performance by dispersing a gaseous chemical clouds into the air that are then detonated by a vacuum explosive to launch a excessive strain shock wave. The impact is that air is sucked out of confined areas with super pressure, destroying buildings, caves, trenches and different fortifications and rupturing the lungs of all current within the neighborhood. Thermobaric rounds have been employed extensively on the frontlines from TOS-1 rocket artillery programs, with their deployment from guided glide bombs representing a part of a broader development of such bombs getting used to complement Russian forces’ already important artillery superiority, and thereby present a larger firepower benefit.
Russian ODAB-500 bombs are outfitted with common planning and correction modules with wing and rudder controls, permitting them to right course throughout flight for larger accuracy. Regardless of the bombs’ excessive weights, the Su-34 has the very best endurance of any fighter class on the earth at the moment and might carry as much as 4 per sortie with out pressure on the airframe. The Su-34 has been acquired in a lot larger numbers than some other post-Chilly Struggle fighter class in Russia, with manufacturing reported in 2023 to be additional increasing. The more and more widespread use of glide bombs had been highlighted with rising concern by Western and Ukrainian sources, with a number of Ukrainian personnel in January 2024 having knowledgeable the New York Instances {that a} new Russian strikes utilizing these bombs imposed “extra devastating energy,” and with 500kg of explosives might thus obliterate their underground bunkers. One serviceman in contrast the impression of Russian glide bomb strikes to “hell’s gates,” stressing that the Russian Air Drive “would ship them two by two by two, eight in an hour… It appears like a jet coming down on you.” The usage of thermobaric warheads has reportedly made Su-34 sorties considerably extra deadly nonetheless when concentrating on fortified positions, with this sort of ammunition having been broadly likened in Russia to flamethrowers for his or her particular operate clearing trenches and bunkers.
