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Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

The article makes a big deal about the gliding aspect, but the devastation it's talking about comes from being cheap retrofits of quite large bombs.

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They can released from a safe distance and have precision guidance(within 10 meters). Don’t put a 20 million jet at risk.

The range seems to be about 60km?

The weapons are large at 500kg:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAB-500

Especially when the jets can release the bombs without entering Ukrainian airspace and not having to risk being shot down.

Ukraine needs more airplanes themselves. With F16 they could shoot down russias Su-34.

Apparently they could shoot them down with patriot missiles except the US doesn't want them used in Russia territory. I'm not sure of the virtue of making Ukraine fight with one arm behind it's back where Russia can destroy all it can in Ukraine's territory but they are largely restricted on striking back in a similar way.

I mean I can understand the desire not to escalate but it would seem reasonable to reciprocate whatever attacks the Russians are carrying out.

Russia destroyed 2 of Ukraine's Patriot launchers, causing Ukraine to decide to stop stationing them on the front lines. (Now they protect Ukrainian cities.)

I think the argument you want is that if the US gave Ukraine a lot more patriot launchers, Ukraine would probably be willing to risk a few of them on the front lines.

Not if they come with same restrictions as other us weapons.

The devastation comes from the gliding aspect, which allows the bombs to be deployed from out of range of air defense systems, minimizing the defensive effect for Ukraine of Russia being unable to operate freely in the air over Ukraine.

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