UMPK glide-bomb kits (FAB family)

Record

Conflict relevance

This is the catalogue's single record for this system. It is relevant to the module below; each module's Force Atlas shows how it is used there.

Operators

Russia: delivered principally by Su-34 strike aircraft

Battlefield role

Standoff demolition of fortifications, strongpoints and urban defences from beyond most air-defence range — the tonnage behind Russian assaults since 2023.

Strengths

Near-zero cost relative to missiles while drawing on a vast existing bomb stockpile; released in volume week after week; warheads up to three tonnes collapse fortifications no artillery shell can; range has grown steadily through improved and powered kit variants.

Limitations

Modest accuracy, partly restored by jam-resistant antenna upgrades after Ukrainian GPS jamming degraded early kits; useless against mobile targets; carrier aircraft must still approach release areas, where Patriot ambushes have imposed documented losses.

Campaign relevance

Derived: a participant organisation in these campaigns carries a typed equipment association with this system. That is not the same as documented use of the system in the campaign itself.

• The Ukrainian deep-strike campaign Since 2022

  via Air Force (Documented, high confidence)

• The strategic campaign against Ukraine's electricity system Since October 2022

  via Aerospace Forces (VKS) (Documented, high confidence)

Visual identification

A standard Soviet FAB bomb body with a strap-on kit: pop-out folding wings on a dorsal rack and small tail surfaces — crude and mass-produced in appearance, unlike purpose-built Western glide weapons.

Documented conflict use

In documented use since early 2023 and central to the fall of Avdiivka in 2024, where glide-bomb tonnage was publicly assessed as decisive; employment has expanded in volume and range since, including strikes on frontline cities such as Kharkiv. In July 2026 the UN human rights monitoring mission recorded casualties from aerial bombardment — principally glide bombs — at 105 killed and 753 injured, a 143 per cent increase on June and enough to make them the second leading cause of civilian casualties that month. WHAT ACTUALLY COUNTERS THEM — NOT INTERCEPTORS. This is the distinction the module records, because it separates this threat from every other one in the air war. NATO's Joint Air Power Competence Centre assesses the counter as a three-tier disruption of the kill chain, in which shooting the weapon down is the least useful tier. First, deny the target: dispersal, concealment and movement, on the reasoning that prevention is more cost-effective than interception. Second, disrupt the weapon: electronic warfare and satellite- navigation jamming are identified as "the most effective countermeasure", exploiting the kit's navigation dependency, with the backup inertial system described as prone to significant drift — while continuous use of NASAMS, Patriot or S-300 against glide bombs is assessed as "unsustainable owing to war-reserve material and cost limitations". Third, destroy the shooter: aerial interception by fighters and strikes against airfields and dispersed launch platforms, described as "the most decisive way to defeat glide bombs" but requiring robust suppression and destruction of enemy air defences. The consequence for this module is that glide-bomb casualties and ballistic- missile casualties are constrained by entirely different supply chains, and no single decision about interceptor supply addresses both.

Branch & service operators

• Air Force Documented
• Aerospace Forces (VKS) Documented