Have Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs Been ‘Thrown Aside’ By Ukraine?
A U.S.-supplied air-to-ground munition transformed into a ground-based strike weapon has been performing very poorly in Ukraine due to jamming and other factors, according to a senior Pentagon official. Though the weapon system in question has not yet been confirmed, there are strong indications that it could be the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB).
"One company, I won't say who they are, they came up with a really cool idea of taking an air-to-ground weapon and doing a ground-launched version of it, and it would be a long-range fire weapon," Bill LaPlante, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, said yesterday. The Under Secretary was speaking as part of a panel discussion at the annual Global Security Forum hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank's International Security Program.
"They raced and did it as fast as they could," LaPlante continued in his remarks yesterday. He added that U.S. authorities truncated typical testing requirements to help speed the weapon system in question to Ukraine. Previous reporting has said that months of testing were still required before the GLSDBs could go to Ukraine. The weapons are not currently in U.S. military service.
"We said, look, just test for safety. Otherwise the operational testing will be non-cooperative with the Russians," according to LaPlante. "And so then we sent it to Ukrainians. It didn't work."
"It didn't work for multiple reasons, including [the] EMI [electromagnetic interference] environment, including just really ... doing it on [the] ground, the TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures], the DOTML [the doctrine, organization, training, and materiel] – it just didn't work," LaPlante explained. "And what happens is, when you send something to people in the fight of their lives, [and] it doesn't work, they'll try it three times and then they just throw it aside. So that's happened, too."
https://www.twz.com/land/have-ground-la ... by-ukraine
Ukrainian Fighter Jets “Using iPads” To Control Western Weapons
The Ukrainian Air Force is using iPads, or similar tablets in the cockpits of its Soviet-era jets to enable rapid integration of modern Western air-to-ground weapons — something that TWZ predicted back in 2022. This has been confirmed by Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Dr. William LaPlante. While many questions remain about the tablet and how it exactly works, there’s now footage showing it fitted in cockpits during combat (or at least live-fire training) missions.
LaPlante was speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank's annual Global Security Forum yesterday, April 24, 2024. When asked to provide examples of successful programs that rapidly developed capabilities and got them into the hands of the military, one example he chose was the tablets in Ukrainian fighter cockpits:
“There’s also a series of … we call it ‘air-to-ground,’ it’s what we call it euphemistically … think about the aircraft that the Ukrainians have, and not even the F-16s, but they have a lot of the Russian and Soviet-era aircraft. Working with the Ukrainians, we’ve been able to take many Western weapons and get them to work on their aircraft where it’s basically controlled by an iPad by the pilot. And they’re flying it in conflict like a week after we get it to him.”
LaPlante didn’t provide further details, but it’s noteworthy that a video recently released by the Ukrainian Air Force shows a Su-27 Flanker fitted with exactly this type of system — possibly an iPad, but perhaps also another kind of commercially available tablet.
https://www.twz.com/air/ukrainian-fight ... rn-weapons
