WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- American-made smart bombs are falling victim to Russian electronic jamming in Ukraine, causing them to miss their targets, according to leaked documents and confirmed by a Defense Department official.
In some cases, the weapons were also failing to detonate due to a technical issue, which Ukrainian troops have since addressed.
The news adds to an increasingly bleak picture of the state of Ukraine’s military that has emerged from a trove of top secret intelligence documents that leaked on social media and came to light over the past week. The documents show that Washington has grave concerns about Kyiv’s dwindling ammunition and air defenses, which could cause it to fall short of its goals for the anticipated spring counteroffensive.
The Pentagon in December began sending Kyiv advanced equipment that could convert unguided air-dropped munitions into precision-guided “smart bombs” that can hit Russian targets with a higher degree of accuracy.
The guided bombs can be launched by a variety of aircraft such as bombers and fighters, and are called Joint Direct Attack Munitions or JDAMs. The longer-range version being sent to Ukraine is called a JDAM-Extended Range, or JDAM-ER.
But the weapons have experienced higher-than-expected dud rates and have missed their targets on the battlefield, according to a leaked slide prepared by the Joint Staff and confirmed by a U.S. official, who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.
In some cases, the bomb fuzes were not arming when they were released, causing the weapon to fail to detonate.
The document includes a diagram of the munitions and lays out the technical issue the weapons are experiencing as well as the proposed fix. It also provides a detailed account of the weapon’s failure rate in several recent attacks, including the dates and the number of munitions it took to take out the target.
A larger problem is that Russia is using GPS jamming to interfere with the weapons’ targeting process, according to the slide and a separate person familiar with the issue who’s not in the U.S. government. American officials believe Russian jamming is causing the JDAMs, and at times other American weapons such as guided rockets, to miss their mark.
“I do think there may be concern that the Russians may be jamming the signal used to direct the JDAMs, which would answer why these munitions are not performing in the manner expected and how they perform in other war zones,” said Mick Mulroy, a former Pentagon official and retired CIA officer.
Last week, a highly-classified Pentagon document showed that four out of nine JDAMS fired by Ukrainian pilots missed their targets due to Russian GPs jamming capabilities. The document says that other artillery systems such as the M270 and HIMARs are also being impacted by Moscow’s forces using GPs jamming.
In response to the Russian tactics, the document recommends that Ukrainian forces destroy or disrupt the jammers to the “maximum extent possible before JDAM-ER employments.”
It is unclear how many JDAM-ERs the U.S. has sent to Ukraine, the document notes that “1,000 arming lanyards” were provided to Kiev, and Washington planned to send more soon. This suggests that the White House was planning to send more than one thousand of the “smart bomb” kits to Ukraine.