Much-vaunted US-supplied glide bombs given to Ukraine “didn’t work” due to a combination of mud and Russian signal jamming, the Pentagon has admitted.
The delivery of the adapted bombs to Ukraine in late January was met with widespread enthusiasm, with military experts suggesting it could force Russia to relocate supplies farther from the front lines.
But William LaPlante, the Pentagon’s weapon’s acquisition chief, said: “We sent it to the Ukrainians. It didn’t work.
It didn’t work for multiple reasons including EMI [Electromagnetic interference] environment, just really, dirt, and doing it on ground.”
“When you send something to people in the fight of their lives that doesn’t work, they’ll try it three times and then just throw it aside,” he added at an event at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.A precision-guided bomb with a 100-mile range, the GLSDB attaches to an M26 rocket and is cheaper than the current limited number of Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) rockets the US has sent.
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@ImpeachmentAriaPatriot2yrs2Y
GLSDB uses the older SDB (GBU-39B) with GPS/INS guidance alone, whereas the newer SDB 2 (GBU53/B StormBreaker) has GPS/INS with course correction updates via Link 16, plus 3 modes of target acquisition: MM-wave radar, IR homing via uncooled IR imager and semi-active laser homing.
All part of the testing process. Every weapon produced needs to be sent to Ukraine to be tested & improved. If not for Ukraine, they would have held them in storage until they failed in battle one day. Now we know they will fix it. They'll only get better & better.
Russia is jamming military grade GPS. And since GLSDB is a glide bomb, it travels slow, and that allows the jamming to induce a lot of drift into the targeting system and with it ruining the accuracy of the weapon to the point of being unusable.
@ISIDEWITH2yrs2Y
If you knew a piece of technology might not work because of environmental factors like mud, would you still consider it worth sending to help someone in need?
I would not send the misiles. They will not work properly and have heightened risk of being captured and the stechnology be stolen
@9LVQBRF2yrs2Y
Yes, though in 2024 we should find ways to help everyone in need.
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