(bombs exploding) – [Host] This US weapon
will arrive in Ukraine soon, according to a US Defense official, it's the Ground launched
small diameter bomb, a 250-pound class weapon capable of reaching targets over 90 miles away. The GLSDB is so accurate that it can strike its
target within one meter, but unlike other long-range
missile systems like the ATACM, the Ground launched small
diameter bomb comes at a considerably lower price. – Think of GLSDB as kind of in the middle of the Goldilocks missile. That gives for in this case
the Ukrainians greater reach and greater standoff, but
with a much lower cost and greater numbers. – [Host] Here's why the Ground
launched small diameter bomb gets a lot of bang for its buck.
The Ground launched small
diameter bomb is a new precision guided weapon that
attaches to an M-26 rocket. The US has had an air launched version, but it had to test the
ground launched version before sending it to Ukraine. – This particular munition
is a bit of a innovation. It takes something that the United States has
thousands lying around, and that's a small diameter bomb and essentially straps a a
rocket motor to the back of it and then fires it out of some
of our most standard rocket launchers that we have for the United States and for our allies.
– [Host] The bomb has a
range of about 94 miles and can be fired from multiple types of launchers like the M-270 MLRS and the HIMARS, which
have already been supplied by the US to Ukraine. And this flexibility means that those who use it can be
deceptive with their enemy. – So the Russians
wouldn't necessarily know if that HIMARS launcher has GMLRS, has GLSDB, or if it had ATACM. And frankly, you could have mixing and matching of those things and we want to use that uncertainty to the benefit of the Ukrainians. – [Host] The bombs are unpowered but are equipped with
wings which allow them to glide to their targets. – The glide feature allows you to come in from a non-unpredictable angle. You can shoot off axis and then come in from
the side or from behind.
And so if you're the Russians and you have your air defenses point in one particular sector, one direction, you might not be looking in
every direction all at once. So you take that ability
to glide to a target and then you attach that
rocket engine to the back and all of a sudden you've got range and you've got a little bit more speed. You don't have to fly
that aircraft with a pilot that much closer to to the target. – [Host] The GLSDB flies
slower than the ATACMS and other ballistic missiles,
which makes it more likely to be spotted by adversaries, but also allows it to be more precise. – So you're trading some
speed to get greater range and to get greater accuracy and to get the different flexibility for how you approach the target.
– [Host] The glide bomb has
both the ability to maneuver and advanced guidance. This combination gives it the
ability to hit more difficult, to reach targets like inside caves. – It is a precision guided
munition, which means it can maneuver in the end game to get exactly or pretty close to exactly
where you want it to be. It can come in and kind of curve around and come in from behind. And so you can come from all
kinds of different trajectories as well as different attack angles. Just opens the possibility
to get things that terrain or urban areas might otherwise
be really hard to get at, with something ballistic
such as artillery. – [Host] At 250 pounds, the GLSDB warhead is smaller than the 500-pound ATACMS warhead, but it can effectively reach
most of the same targets. – So it's not as big as of an ATACM, but it's still pretty sizeable. And in principle that the sort of targets that you could use here are as as diverse as anything you would otherwise use a small diameter bomb for. It could be softer targets, it could be things sitting on an airfield.
It could be penetrating
into a hardened bunker. – [Host] The GLSDB also has a number of fusing options which allow
the operator to select how and when the bomb will detonate. – You can tell an SDB to explode, at some particular designated
height of altitude. You can tell it to explode
instantly when it hits something. You can tell it to penetrate a little while and then to explode. Those are useful for
different kinds of targets.
And so you have all those
different options as well. – [Host] While the exact
price of GLSDB is unknown, they cost far less than other long-range missile systems like the ATACMS. – Ukrainians are shooting six,
seven, 8,000 artillery rounds a day. So the unit cost of
these things does matter. It also affects how much the United States or other folks can afford to
purchase for the Ukrainians. – [Host] An abundance of
affordable munitions allows for what's known as structured attacks. – Perhaps you might want to have multiple GLSDB coming in all at the same time and from different directions. And that's really going to complicate to hopefully overwhelm your target. Perhaps you might launch
your slower weapons first. They start coming in from different angles and then you time your
faster moving ballistic GMLRS or ATACMS to come in and everything kind of
arrives at the same time. The prospect of having structured
attacks that can really confuse and overwhelm a defender begins to get pretty, pretty interesting.
– [Host] The GLSDB won't
be Ukraine's most powerful or longest range weapon, but it will add significant flexibility for attack operations as well as capacity. – The wings really give
you the flexibility to have that aerodynamic maneuverability
from whichever direction and whichever axis you
want to come in from. You may be able to launch
'em this way and this way, and then they begin to glide and come back from behind all different directions. – [Host] The GLSDB
could be a powerful tool to slow down Moscow's
continued assaults on Ukraine and it's lower cost, and existing stockpile means
Ukraine could get more of them.
Although it's unclear how many
GLSDB the US will deliver. – We're taking stuff that's
lying around in inventory and putting it together
in an innovative way, excess-surplus bombs and marrying them with rockets
that we have lying around. Now, we'll probably will
need to produce more of the rockets to be sure, but the good news is we
have a lot of these GLSDBs. – [Host] And while the stockpile
will eventually run out, – It's not about looking for
the perfect solution here. It's looking for the good
enough solutions for looking, for the solution that keeps
the Ukrainians away from defeat and pushes the the Russians back.
And so it's really putting a
particular munition within this much larger picture so that
Ukraine can repel the invader. (soft music).