The ability of the Su-24 to fly transonic on the deck in a low density integrated air defense environment means there are a lot of low level holes in radar coverage to lob a stick of glide bombs out of, at high speed, inside occupied Ukraine.
The PSU would be able to hit a number of just over 100 km Russian logistical targets with a 60 km low altitude penetration & JDAM-ER toss bomb attack profile.
The JDAM-ER is the result of a US-Australian cooperation agreement where in the Australians developed a glide kit for the Boeing JDAM five years ago that comes in several flavors & ranges.
It is unclear if the jet engine version of the JDAM-ER will be provided to the PSU.
4/8
If jet powered JDAM-ER was provided, PSU Su-24's don't have to enter occupied Ukrainian air space to kill Russian logistical targets.
160 nautical miles is ~296 km, just shy of the ATACMS 300km.
5/8
And if it wasn't.
The Russian Army should still worried about the Kerch Straits Bridge catching some JDAM-ER as they have GMLRS style microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) inertial measurement units (IMU) that let them ignore Russian GPS jamming.
Given the massive Ukrainian victory in the "Battle of the Azov Sea."
We can say Ukraine has achieved “Usable Drone Air Superiority" over the Sea of Azov in exactly the way the Chinese would in the waters around, & air over, Taiwan when it invades.
🧵
The "Battle of the Azov Sea" shares a lot of historical elements of both the WW2 "Battle of the Bismarck Sea" and the slaughter of Allied oil tankers in 1942 during Operation Drumbeat (Paukenschlag) and Operation Neuland.
2/
The Battle of the Bismarck Sea was the slaughter of 12 ships of a 16 ship Imperial Japanese convoy of eight IJA freighters and eight IJN destroyers moving 6,900 IJA troops.
Tipped off by IJN seaplane deployments & radio intercepts, only 2,700 IJA troops arrived w/o weapons or ammo.
3/
I asked @grok to document this Russian policy of atrocity at the link, excerpt:
"February 24, 2022–present (Full-scale Russian invasion): The scale escalated dramatically. As of May 2026, the WHO had verified more than 3,000 attacks on healthcare via its Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA). A coalition of organizations (including PHR, eyeWitness, Truth Hounds, etc.) documented ~3,095 attacks, with 1,632 damaging or destroying hospitals and clinics"
When I've talked about the legacy of Soviet industrial gigantism (one big factory) making Putin era Russia far more vulnerable to a drone strategic bombing campaign.
I've talked about this vulnerability in a couple of previous threads. Here is a shorter one:
Putin's decades long "Russian exceptionalism" propaganda campaign, that says WW2 was won on the Eastern Front, has made Russians incapable of seeing this.
There is so much to object to here that I'm going to restate some basic design observations on the FP-5 to clarify how the Russian reflexive control data fed AI slop that is polluting public discussions of the FP-5.
1. The FP-5 Flamingo is about four times the launch weight of a BGM-109 Tomahawk (i.e. ~13,200 lb), and 2-3 times the range (i.e. ~1,620 nmi) while carrying twice the warhead mass (i.e. ~2,000 lb).
2/
2. The FP-5 design concept is modelled on the USAF MGM-13 Mace GLCM as Fire Point told Ukrainian military analysts - but designed with modern technology to be extremely cheap to make (claimed 1/6 the cost of a Tomahawk - likely not counting the engine cost).
The first thing that needs to be pointed out is that in 2026 Ukraine has not only replicated, but likely exceeded, the 2018 capabilities of the USAF's Stand-off Munitions Activity Center (SMAC) at at Barksdale AFB.
Electronic warfare is always a "saving throw" with an expiration date for the defense.
Plus no one in the world, since 1989, has invested in enough mobile guns for robust AA-combined arms to screw up the simple arithmetic of a saturation drone/missile attacks.
2/
Russia burned out Ukraine's considerable stocks of 5V55 SAMs (~3,300 rounds), 9M83 SAMs (~1,000) and 9M38 SAMs (~800) by repeat saturation attacks.
Ukraine returns the favor. This is not that difficult to grasp.
Saturation attacks were central to legacy Soviet doctrine.
3/