No Russian would ever look at the use of SDB’s as a good thing. The Russian mindset is the bigger the nastier the bomb the better. A 250 pound toy is very un-Russian. The very idea leaves a bad taste in my Russian mouth. The KAB-250 is as small as the Russian mind can conceive though thats not really true since they technically have a KAB-100 but you never see it in use because it would emasculate the pilot.
Plus, the Russians have a thing for guided and unguided rockets in the roll the SBD is meant to play –namely the S-13 (in all its various mods) most of the time and less frequently you see the old S-24 in all its flavors too. Why use bombs when a perfectly good rocket will do the same job just fine?
As far as big bombs go, bunker buster variants of the KAB-1500 exist so the poor Russians only have to make do with 3,300 pound bunker buster for that 0.1% of targets that actually warrant that kind of ordinance. What ever will the poor souls do with no ready supply of 5,000 lb penetrators? Oh, wait, they have this little bitty bomb called the KAB-9000. A measly little 20,000 bomb can barely do the job of sucking all the air out of a bunker I’m sure. They used them in Afghanistan to clear landing strips for helos and to wipe out entire villages with one bomb just for giggles.
One area where there is definitely no gap is in ordinance development. Procurement is another matter. The VVS is more than content to wipe out caves and adjoining villages in one swoop — collateral damage isnt exactly in the Russian lexicon — “two birds with one stone” is more along their line of thinking. Plus, “if it aint broke dont fix it.” In Georgia they took out those runways with plain vanilla iron bombs and you know what — they did the job just fine.
Sign In
