The Ukrainian Air Force Communications Center has released a video interview with a Su-27 attack aircraft pilot, call sign Viking, from the 39th Tactical Aviation Brigade. This interview reveals several interesting details related to the use of Western air-launched smart weapons from Soviet-type aircraft.
For example, the practical range of Small Diameter Bombs and the role of AGM-88 HARM missiles that Ukrainians currently use mostly as "attack support" weapons.
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As for the SDB range, Viking says that the aerodynamic properties of these bombs allow them to reach distances exceeding those of a glide bomb equipped with a JDAM-ER kit.
This is actually a very interesting statement, as it means that SDB can effectively strike targets more than 40 kilometers from the launch point. At least this is the confirmed range of JDAM-ER's strike, verified by a video from a few months ago showing a Ukrainian strike on the Kursk region of russia.
Viking mentions that one Su-27 can take eight SDB guided bombs. The intensity of air sorties to utilize Western precision-guided weapons depends only on the pace of supplies of the respective weapons from Ukraine's international partners.
Moving on to HARM, the pilot insightfully says that when the Ukrainians had just started using these anti-radar missiles, the effectiveness of defeating enemy air defenses was 90%; now, however, they need HARMs more situationally as a means of suppressing enemy air defenses during combined-weapon strikes on russia.
Also, attention should be paid to the following comparison Viking provides: from the qualitative perspective, the hit accuracy of Western guided bombs is 85%, while russian FAB bombs with UMPK guidance kits (similar to JDAM) are only 20%. On the other hand, quantitatively, the intensity of russian strikes with guided bombs is still a dozen times higher, making up for this shortcoming.
Lastly, he notes how quickly the landscape of aerial combat evolves: typically, a Ukrainian pilot, having returned from just 15 days of short-term vacation, arrives in a completely different environment and needs to study all the input data from scratch.
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