Provided that my calculations are almost correct, during October of this year, the Russian Air and Space Forces (VCS) launched about 1,000 glider bombs over Ukraine. This amounted to about 30 glider bombs a day.At least the same number was in November, when up to a dozen glider bombs a day were dropped on two sections of the front, such as Avdiyivka and the bridgeheads of the Armed Forces on the Dnieper.

This has prompted at least some relevant messages on both Russian and Ukrainian social networks. Nevertheless, I have the impression that they remain a very little covered and misunderstood factor in this war. And there seems to be a lot of confusion about exactly how Russia's VCS deploys them and what Russian glider bombs can actually do. Or they can't. So, here we will try to explain what is known to date.

To begin with, I do not know how to relate to the fact that most Ukrainian sources - official and unofficial - first call Russian glider bombs “FAB”, and then persistently continue to call them “KABs”.

I have no idea about the Ukrainian language, but my guess is that both abbreviations are based on Russian military terminology. Namely:

- FAB means”Fugitive Aviation Bomb”, while

- CAB means what the Russians call “correctable aviation bomb“.

For me, as a botanist, this is pretty confusing because, as far as I know:

(a) weapons with the designation FAB are general-purpose weapons, fragmentation weapons or destructive weapons without any guidance; in fact, “free-fall bombs”; whereas

b) “family” of KABs designations means bombs with television, laser and satellite guidance, but not such as glider bombs, the number of which in Ukraine has been steadily increasing for about a year.

FABs

Since 1945, the Soviet Union has developed at least three generations of bombs: the M46, M54 and M62. Based on the experience of World War II, the M46 series (FAB-50M-46, FAB-100M-46, FAB-250M-46, etc. up to FAB-3000M-46) was developed for use from subsonic aircraft that were in service in the late 1940s. The M-54 series was only slightly better in this respect, but - due to the fact that the bulk of the fuselage of the FAB-250M-54, FAB-500M-54, FAB-1500M-54, etc. was reinforced with steel strips - it could be deployed from jets that could accelerate to speeds of about 1000 km/h.

Why is it important? Because, being mounted on the wing supports of warplanes, bombs are subjected to enormous loads - such as heat caused by friction, vibrations caused by noise and turbulence, overpressure, etc. - and because no one wants the bombs to start falling apart, yet Hanging under a plane: Rumor has it that it can be quite deadly.

Eventually, to deploy from supersonic fighter-bombers, the Soviet Union developed the M62 series. FAB-250M-62 and FAB-500M-62 are the most common of them. They had a much thicker hull, which allowed them to survive in flight by hanging on jets that could accelerate to speeds of more than 1,000 km/h.

However, all FABs remain uncontrollable. So, sorry, but the use of the abbreviation “FAB” to refer to the Russian glider bombs of our days is, to put it mildly, “a little misleading.”

CABs

So, since the 1980s, the Soviet, and then the Russian defense sector produced dozens of different designs of CABs. For example, CAB-500KR (with TV guidance), or CAB-500C (with Glonass guidance), or CAB-1500L (with laser guidance). But these bombs are fundamentally different from the winged bombs used by the VCS of the Russian Federation today, they have separate guidance sections that are guided either by laser markers, or by means of television cameras, or by the GLONASS satellite navigation system. They are also quite accurate.

But they are also extremely expensive. The reason is that the Soviet Union was unable to emulate the Western model of designing free-fall bombs on a modular principle: whether M46, M54 or M62, all FABs had stiffeners welded to the bomb body. This led to the fact that it was not possible to “simply” attach guidance sections to them. Therefore, in developing the CAB, the Soviet Union found no other solution than to create completely new bombs. And given that the Moscow police (ed.: this is how the author calls the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation)traditionally concerned with profit on any occasion - see: corruption, and this regardless of whether in Soviet times or after - there was not enough money for their production in significant quantities.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that a relatively large number of CABs have emerged over time. Hundreds of them were deployed by the Soviet Air Force over Afghanistan in the 1980s. However, during the 1990s, their production practically stopped. With the exception of export deliveries, the VCS never received more than a few dozen aircraft of each model. In some cases (see Fig. CAB-500C with Glonass guidance) even the Moscow police came to the point of “publicly denouncing” the weapon as “too expensive” even before it was first “used in combat” (and then in Syria in November 2015, and that, in fact, for PR purposes).

Yes, of course: since mid-2022, the Russian defense industry has been operating in three shifts a day, but I doubt that much has changed in this regard. The Russian Federation lacks the production capacity for the necessary high technologies. Therefore, the number of CABs remains limited, and therefore, “sorry, but”: as for me, the use of this abbreviation in the mainstream - and on social networks too - is “a little misleading”.

MPK/UMPK

In fact, most of the Russian glider bombs used today against Ukraine are abbreviated IPC and/or UMPC designations. The latter stands for “A unified set of planning and correction modules”.

Here I should add that although I am sure that the abbreviation UMPC is used in operational service, I am not entirely sure that this refers to the abbreviation of the IPC: I “caught” it somewhere in a Russian Internet article describing the conversion of the FAB-250M-62 into glider bombs. Perhaps the author simply forgot to put “U” in front of “MPK”, or it was an error. As always, only time will tell.

Compared to the KABA, the MPK/UMPC is a much smaller and simpler weapon based on the FAB-250M-62 and FAB-500M-62 bombs.

Now many describe the IPC/UMPC as a kind of “Russian pendant” to the US-developed JDAM GPS-guided bomb family.

In fact, this is not the case: at most, such comparisons are only partially true.

The fundamental difference is that IPC/UMPC are not controllable. Today it is already known for sure that they do not have guidance systems. The only significant difference between, for example, the FAB-250M-62 or the FAB-500M-62 and the MPK/UMPC is the addition of a relatively rough “box” that throws off the wings when the weapon is released. The result is “clean” bomb gliders: no “high-precision guided bombs”.

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