GLSDB munitions proven largely ineffective in Ukraine — Pentagon
U.S.-made Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB) have not been effective against Russian forces in Ukraine, The War Zone reported on April 25.
Citing U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante, the report said that the Ukrainian military has discarded the sophisticated precision-guided weapons after they failed to penetrate Russian electronic warfare defenses on several occasions.
“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,” said LaPlante.
“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.”
Read also: Ukraine reportedly uses GLSDB munitions for the first time
While he did not explicitly name the weapon system in question, the description he provided suggests he was talking about Boeing-Saab’s GLSDBs.
He also indicated that the U.S. government truncated the usual testing requirements to expedite the weapons system's acquisition. As a result, the weapon was "produced as quickly as possible."
GLSDBs are not currently used by the U.S. military, and Ukraine was the first to test it in combat.
“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 what happened,” the official concluded.
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