Russia claims to be using guided smart bombs to strike Islamic State in Syria, but experts say the frequency of use of these weapons is low.

Russian soldiers at the Hmeimim air base, Syria, install a satellite-guided smart bomb on a Su-34 fighter jet. Photo: AP

Since Russia launched its airstrikes against the Islamic State (IS) and other terrorist groups in Syria, domestic media have continuously published news and promotional programs praising the superiority of the precision-guided bombs that Moscow has equipped for fighter jets on missions there.

RT also published a series of photos showing Russian soldiers installing KAB-500S precision-guided bombs on the fuselage of fighter jets parked on the runway at a military base in Syria. The Russian Defense Ministry reportedly refused to use the KAB-500S bomb in 2012 because of its high cost.

But according to Foreign Policy magazine, for most of the airstrikes, Moscow only used old-generation bombs that were not capable of guidance and had a high probability of missing the target. In some of the first videos released by Moscow, the bombs were said to only fall near the target.

The Russians are mostly “dropping unguided bombs from medium altitude,” said Michael Kofman, a public policy professor at the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center.

“They are not precision weapons,” Lt. Gen. Bob Otto, deputy chief of staff for the US Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Command, said of Moscow’s bombs, adding that they would likely cause trouble for Russia.

“We can see exactly what is hanging from the fuselage of the Russian planes through intelligence images.” They are all conventional bombs, which are notoriously inaccurate because they are dropped freely based on calculations of the position and speed of the aircraft at the time of the action, Mr. Otto said.

Unlike Russia, the US and its allies use smart bombs when bombing IS and only attack targets when they are sure that the possibility of innocent people being affected is minimal. Therefore, the frequency of bombing missions is not as intense as Russia, Otto added.

Time magazine said that Russia's smart bombs fell behind their Western counterparts because the Soviet Union collapsed at a time when the technology to develop this type of weapon was flourishing. It was not until after 1991 that the Russian military began to focus on investing in improving the accuracy of weapons equipped for fighter aircraft.

In addition to smart bombs, many other high-precision weapons have also appeared in President Vladimir Putin's propaganda campaign about Russia's military power, such as the Su-24 attack aircraft equipped with Kh-25ML laser-guided air-to-ground missiles. However, according to analysts, the frequency of using these weapons in actual combat by Russia is insignificant.

"Using precision-guided weapons is much more expensive than traditional gravity bombs. Moscow seems to be sacrificing this precision strike capability to save costs for its already expensive military intervention in the Middle East," commented expert Jorge Benitez from the Atlantic Council.

According to Sim Tack, an expert from the intelligence analysis organization Stratfor, the cost for each deployment of precision-guided weapons ranges from 26,000 USD to 1.1 million USD, while unguided bombs only cost about 600 USD.

Mr. Benitez said that what Russia is more interested in is building the image of an increasingly powerful and modern military force, surpassing that of the United States. The war in Syria is a good opportunity for President Putin to show off his most advanced equipment.

The amount of money Russia has spent to achieve this is not small. Moscow has allocated $81 billion to defense this year, the largest since the Cold War, despite the economic difficulties it is facing. But the Syrian battlefield is also seen as an opportunity for Russia to show off the capabilities of its military forces. Su-34 fighters that have never been in combat are now being deployed to Syria. Russian soldiers are going to the battlefield with both "old aircraft technology combined with new platforms that need to be tested," Wilson commented.

According to VNE