The second function Russian fighters are optimized for is the delivery of precision firepower in support of ground operations, with a particular emphasis on the reduction of enemy strong points rather than interdiction:
The second mission set — delivering firepower in support of ground manoeuvre — follows a well-established Soviet tradition of having an Air Army support each operational direction to provide additional firepower. The approach, however, has had to change due to an evolving threat environment. Soviet concepts of air operations, from the Il-2 of the Second World War to the Su-25 Frogfoot, emphasised direct attack with guns, rockets and gravity bombs, initially meant to assist with delivering concentrated fire at the point of breakthrough, and thereafter to extend the depth of strikes of Soviet manoeuvre forces, thereby advancing beyond the range of concentrated artillery groups. The growing effectiveness of NATO fighter aircraft, however, pushed the Russians to transition to precision-guided bombing and then to undertake stand-off attacks using glide bombs. These types of attacks allow Russian aircraft to stay well behind the defensive screen of friendly air defences. Hence, Russia has emphasised the delivery of precision bombs with their own inertial and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) guidance, to deliver munitions with a far larger payload than ground-launched munitions suitable for large-scale employment. Such strikes target identified strong points, fighting positions and other targets where a large payload is critical to achieving lethal effect.
During Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russians have moved away from both medium-altitude precision bombing and lobbed rocket salvos by aircraft at low altitude, to instead employ gravity bombs augmented with a glide and guidance kit (UMPK). In 2022, Russia assessed what capabilities would achieve the greatest damage for the lowest price per unit and identified the UMPK fitted to its FAB-500, FAB-1000 and FAB-1500 bombs as the most promising capability against this metric. Primarily dropped from Su-34, glide bombs are now systematically used as part of Russian preparatory fires, destroying defensive positions in advance of Russian ground force operations. Hundreds of glide bomb strikes are recorded each week along the front. The Armed Forces of Ukraine recorded 3,370 UMPK strikes in February 2025, 4,800 in March, over 5,000 in April, 3,100 in June, 3,786 in July and 4,390 in August.8 Production of UMPK kits has risen dramatically, from several thousand in 2023 to 40,000 in 2024, and a production target of 70,000 in 2025.9 The accuracy of these glide bombs has varied over the course of the war, depending on the performance of Ukrainian electronic warfare (EW) against Kometa jam-resistant GNSS navigation modules. Degradation in accuracy, however, is temporary as the Russians modify the Kometa-M regularly. With around a 50–70-km stand-off range, VKS aircraft conducting UMPK strikes are hard to intercept.