NEWS

Growing up in Rawalpindi, a city adjacent to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, Mahnoor Omer remembers the shame and anxiety she felt in school when she had periods. Going to the toilet with a sanitary pad was an act of stealth, like trying to cover up a crime.

“I used to hide my pad up my sleeve like I was taking narcotics to the bathroom,” says Omer, who comes from a middle-class family – her father a businessman and her mother a homemaker. “If someone talked about it, teachers would put you down.” A classmate once told her that her mother considered pads “a waste of money”.

“That’s when it hit me,” says Omer. “If middle-class families think this way, imagine how out of reach these products are for others.”

Now 25, Omer has gone from cautious schoolgirl to national centrestage in a battle that could reshape menstrual hygiene in Pakistan, a country where critics say economics is compounding social stigma to punish women – simply for being women.

In September, Omer, a lawyer, petitioned the Lahore High Court, challenging what she and many others say is effectively a “period tax” imposed by Pakistan on its more than 100 million women.

Pakistani governments have, under the Sales Tax Act of 1990, long charged an 18 percent sales tax on locally manufactured sanitary pads and a customs tax of 25 percent on imported ones, as well as on raw materials needed to make them. Add on other local taxes, and UNICEF Pakistan says that these pads are often effectively taxed at about 40 percent.

Omer’s petition argues that these taxes – which specifically affect women – are discriminatory, and violate a series of constitutional provisions that guarantee equality and dignity, elimination of exploitation and the promotion of social justice.

In a country where menstruation is already a taboo subject in most families, Omer and other lawyers and activists supporting the petition say that the taxes make it even harder for most Pakistani women to access sanitary products. A standard pack of commercially branded sanitary pads in Pakistan currently costs about 450 rupees ($1.60) for 10 pieces. In a country with a per capita income of $120 a month, that’s the cost of a meal of rotis and dal for a low-income family of four. Cut the cost by 40 percent – the taxes – and the calculations become less loaded against sanitary pads.

At the moment, only 12 percent of Pakistani women use commercially produced sanitary pads, according to a 2024 study by UNICEF and the WaterAid nonprofit. The rest improvise using cloth or other materials, and often do not even have access to clean water to wash themselves.

“If this petition goes forward, it’s going to make pads affordable,” says Hira Amjad, the founder and executive director of Dastak Foundation, a Pakistani nonprofit whose work is focused on promoting gender equality and combating violence against women.

And that, say lawyers and activists, could serve as a spark for broader social change.

The court docket describes the case as Mahnoor Omer against senior officials of the government of Pakistan. But that’s not what it feels like to Omer.

“It feels like women versus Pakistan.”

‘It’s not shameful’

Bushra Mahnoor, founder of Mahwari Justice, a Pakistani student-led organisation whose name translates to “menstrual justice”, realised early just how much of a struggle it could be to access sanitary pads.

Mahnoor – no relation to Omer – grew up in Attock, a city in the northwestern part of Pakistan’s Punjab province, with four sisters. “Every month, I had to check if there were enough pads. If my period came when one of my sisters had hers too,” finding a pad was a challenge, she says.

The struggle continued in school, where, as was the case with Omer, periods were associated with shame. A teacher once made one of her classmates stand for two entire lectures because her white uniform was stained. “That was dehumanising,” she says.

Mahnoor was 10 when she had her first period. “I didn’t know how to use a pad. I stuck it upside down; the sticky side touched my skin. It was painful. No one tells you how to manage it.”

She says that shame was never hers alone, but it’s part of a silence which starts at home and accompanies girls into adulthood. A study on menstrual health in Pakistan shows that eight out of 10 girls feel embarrassed or uncomfortable when talking about periods, and two out of three girls report never having received information about menstruation before it began. The findings, published in the Frontiers in Public Health journal in 2023, link this silence to poor hygiene, social exclusion and missed school days.

In 2022, when floods devastated Pakistan, Mahnoor began Mahwari Justice to ensure that relief camps did not overlook the menstrual needs of women. “We began distributing pads and later realised there’s so much more to be done,” she says. Her organisation has distributed more than 100,000 period kits – each containing pads, soap, underwear, detergent and painkillers – and created rap songs and comics to normalise conversations about menstruation. “When you say the word ‘mahwari’ out loud, you’re teaching people it’s not shameful,” she says. “It’s just life.”

The same floods also influenced Amjad, the Dastak Foundation founder, though her nonprofit has been around for a decade now. Its work now also includes distributing period kits during natural disasters.

But the social stigma associated with menstruation is also closely tied to economics in the ways in which its impact plays out for Pakistani women, suggests Amjad.

“In most households, it’s the men who make financial decisions,” she says. “Even if the woman is bringing the money, she’s giving it to the man, and he is deciding where that money needs to go.”

And if the cost of women’s health feels too high, that’s often compromised. “[With] the inflated prices due to the tax, there is no conversation in many houses about whether we should buy pads,” she says. “It’s an expense they cannot afford organically.”

According to the 2023 study in the Frontiers in Public Health, over half of Pakistani women are not able to afford sanitary pads.

If the taxes are removed, and menstrual hygiene becomes more affordable, the benefits will extend beyond health, says Amjad.

School attendance rates for girls could improve, she said. Currently, more than half of Pakistan’s girls in the five to 16 age group are not in school, according to the United Nations. “We will have stress-free women. We will have happier and healthier women.”

‘Feeling of justice’

Omer says her interest in women’s and minority rights began early. “What inspired me was just seeing the blatant mistreatment every day,” she says. “The economic, physical, and verbal exploitation that women face, whether it’s on the streets, in the media, or inside homes, never sat right with me.”

She credits her mother for making her grow up to be an empathetic and understanding person.

After completing school, she worked as a gender and criminal justice consultant at Crossroads Consultants, a Pakistan-based firm that collaborates with NGOs and development partners on gender and criminal justice reform. At the age of 19, she also volunteered at Aurat March, an annual women’s rights movement and protest held across Pakistan on International Women’s Day – it’s a commitment she has kept up since then.

Her first step into activism came at 16, when she and her friends started putting together “dignity kits”, small care packages for women in low-income neighbourhoods of Islamabad. “We would raise funds with bake sales or use our own money,” she recalls.

The money she was able to raise enabled her to distribute about 300 dignity kits that she and her friends made themselves. They each contained pads, underwear, pain medication and wipes. But she wanted to do more.

She got a chance when she started working at the Supreme Court in early 2025, first as a law clerk. She’s currently pursuing postgraduate studies in gender, peace and security at the London School of Economics and says that she will go back to Pakistan to resume her practice after she graduates.

She became friends with fellow lawyer Ahsan Jehangir Khan, who specialises in taxation and constitutional law. The plan to challenge the “period tax” emerged from their conversations.

“He pushed me to file this petition and try to get justice instead of just sitting around.”

Khan, who is a co-petitioner in the case, says that fighting the taxes is about more than accessibility and affordability of sanitary pads – it’s about justice. “It’s a tax on a biological function,” he says.

Tax policies in Pakistan, he says, are written by “a privileged elite, mostly men who have never had to think about what this tax means for ordinary women”. The constitution, he adds, “is very clear that you cannot have anything discriminatory against any gender whatsoever”.

To Amjad, the Dastak Foundation founder, the fight for menstrual hygiene is closely tied to her other passion – the struggle against climate change. The extreme weather-related crisis, such as floods, that Pakistan has faced in recent times, she says, hit women particularly hard.

She remembers the trauma many women she worked with after the 2022 floods described to her. “Imagine that you are living in a tent and you have mahwari [menstruation] for the first time,” she says. “You are not mentally prepared for it. You are running for your life. You don’t have access to safety or security. That trauma is a trauma for life.”

As temperatures rise on average, women will need to change sanitary pads more frequently during their periods – and a lack of adequate access will prove an even bigger problem, Amjad warns. She supports the withdrawal of taxes on sanitary pads – but only those made from cotton, not plastic ones that “take thousands of years to decompose”.

Amjad is also campaigning for paid menstruation leave. “I have come across women who were fired because they had pain during periods and couldn’t work,” she says. “When you are menstruating, one part of your brain is on menstruation. You can’t really focus properly.”

Meanwhile, opponents of the taxes are hoping that Omer’s petition will pressure the Pakistani government to follow other nations such as India, Nepal and the United Kingdom that have abolished their period taxes.

Taking on that mantle against the government’s policies didn’t come easily to Omer. Her parents, she says, were nervous at first about their daughter going to court against the government. “They said it’s never a good idea to take on the state,” she says.

Now, they’re proud of her, she says. “They understand why this matters.”

To her, the case is not just a legal fight. “When I think of this case, the picture that comes to mind … It’s not a courtroom, it’s a feeling of justice,” she says. “It makes me feel a sense of pride to be able to do this and take this step without fear.”

Kim marked one year since North Korean troops deployed to fight against Ukraine with the opening of a museum.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has hailed his country’s “invincible” alliance with Russia, as he marked one year since his troops deployed to fight in Moscow’s war against Ukraine with the opening of a museum honouring soldiers who died in battle.

Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony in the capital Pyongyang on Thursday, Kim addressed the families of North Korean soldiers who “fought in the operations for liberating Kursk”, as he said their deployment to Russia “marked the beginning of a new history of militant solidarity” with Moscow.

“The years of militant fraternity, in which a guarantee has been provided for the long-term development of the bilateral friendship at the cost of precious blood, will advance nonstop,” Kim said, according to state news agency KCNA.

Challenges of “domination and tyranny” cannot hinder ties between Russia and North Korea, Kim added.

The event attended by Kim was the latest public honouring of North Korean troops who fought to repel an incursion by Ukrainian forces into Russia’s Kursk region in 2024.

Kim said the museum – which will feature a cemetery, a memorial hall and a monument – dedicated to soldiers in overseas detachments, was the “first of its kind” in North Korean history.

“Today we are holding the groundbreaking ceremony of the Memorial Museum of Combat Feats that will hand down forever the shining life of the heroes and fallen soldiers of the overseas operations units, excellent sons of the Korean people and defenders of justice,” he said.

In October 2024, NATO, the United States and South Korean intelligence agencies said they had evidence that North Korean troops had been deployed to fight alongside the Russian military.

A month later, Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin officially ratified a mutual defence pact, raising international concern over growing military cooperation between the nuclear-armed states.

The Treaty of Comprehensive Strategic Partnerships obliges both countries to provide immediate military assistance to each other using “all means” necessary if either faces “aggression”.

In April, North Korea confirmed for the first time it had deployed a contingent of soldiers to the front line to fight alongside Russian troops, and its forces had contributed to taking back Russian territory held by Ukraine.

The soldiers were deployed to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces”, Kim said at the time, according to KCNA.

Kyiv and Seoul estimate that North Korea deployed more than 10,000 troops in return for economic and military technology assistance from Russia.

Estimates of the casualty rate among North Korean forces have varied widely.

In September, South Korea’s intelligence agency said some 2,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed. In January, Ukraine said North Korean troops were withdrawn from battle after suffering heavy casualties. It was unclear how many North Koreans remain fighting alongside Russian forces.

Earlier this month, Ukraine claimed North Korean troops based in Russia were operating drones across the border on reconnaissance missions, providing the first report in months of North Korean soldiers engaging in battlefield roles.

“The Defence Forces of Ukraine have intercepted communications between North Korean drone operators and personnel of the Russian army,” the Ukrainian General Staff said.

The same week, South Korea’s defence minister said North Korea had likely received technical help from Russia for its submarine development in return for its military efforts against Ukraine.

BBC

‘Time to get more aware’

One of U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command’s new OA-1K Skyraider II light attack aircraft crashed today, not far from Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma, where the type is based as part of a partnership between the 492nd and 137th Special Operations Wings. Both crew members onboard — a contractor and an active-duty service member — were not injured in the incident, thankfully.

Images of the Skyraider II sitting damaged in a field began circulating on social media this afternoon.

The Oklahoma Air National Guard says that the aircraft was out on a training mission when the incident occurred and that the circumstances are currently under investigation.

The OA-1K is brand new to the USAF’s inventory, with the type fulfilling what is something of the final culmination of a long string of aborted requirements for a light attack aircraft specially configured for low-intensity missions, such as counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations. A synopsis of the OA-1K from a previous TWZ article on its official naming can be read below:

The two-seat OA-1K can carry up to 6,000 pounds of munitions and other stores, including precision-guided missiles and bombs and podded sensor systems, on up to eight underwing pylons. L3Harris has previously said the aircraft can fly out to an area up to 200 miles away and loiter there for up to six hours with a typical combat load. They also have a “robust suite of radios and datalinks providing multiple means for line-of-sight (LOS) and beyond line-of-sight (BLOS) communications,” according to the company.

AFSOC currently plans to acquire 75 Skyraider IIs, with the first example to be delivered this spring. The turboprop-powered OA-1K, a militarized derivative of the popular Air Tractor AT-802 crop duster, is a tail-dragging design like the much larger piston-engined Skyraider. The Skyraider II is set to be the first tail-dragging tactical combat aircraft anywhere in U.S. military inventory in decades.”

You can also check out our exclusive tour of the aircraft in the video below:

It’s quite possible the aircraft’s crop-duster roots helped keep the airframe and its crew intact when it came down in the field, as it’s built to operate from rough fields even in its suped-up military configuration.

We will update this post with any new information that becomes available in the next 24 hours about the mishap.

Contact the author: [email protected]

For Trump followers, his offer of a 20 to 40 billion economic assistance to Argentina came as a shock. For a government that emphasizes not spending American tax payers’ money abroad the record high foreign debt defaulter and agrobusiness competitor Argentina is a puzzling choice.

However, there are profound reasons for this outcome. In what follows, I will try to explain them. The first two motives are the most obvious ones, but I promise that the following two are the ones that are not that apparent though interesting to read.

The first reason, and more obvious one, is the ideological congruence between the executives. The Argentine president Milei shares Trump’s anti woke ideology, it has always been a Trump supporter and shares with him a deep-seated rejection for leftist governments and ideologies. However, whereas Trump is an economic nationalist, Milei brands himself as an “anarcho-capitalist” that profoundly believes that the powers of free market should reign without interference in order for economies and societies to succeed.

Secondly, next Sunday Milei will face a crucial midterm election. In a last September legislative vote in the crucial Buenos Aires province (that accounts for 40% of Argentina’s population) he lost against his arch rivals, the Peronist Party. The Peronist coalition, that governed Argentina for the most part of the last 25 years, held a leftist ideology that privileged bilateral relations with China over the US and that is a staunch critic of Trump’s policies. The following Monday, the Argentine peso faced very strong devaluation pressures that ended up drying up the Central Bank’s reserves.

Third, the US grand strategy has been under a deep transformation, at least since Obama`s presidency. It has been progressively withdrawing from the Middle East while focusing more on China. It has also demanded the Europeans (and also its allies in East Asians) to up their defence spending. This relative withdrawal is somewhat compensated by an increase of attention in its own neighbourhood, the Americas. It is under this lens that we can understand the recent US military actions against the Maduro regime in Venezuela, the suspension of economic aid to leftist governed Colombia and the huge tariffs applied to also leftist governed Brazil. Being Mexico also governed by a (somewhat pragmatic) leftist party and having in Chilean President Boric a staunch critic of Trump`s policies, the US is left with very few friends in the region. Right now, the only welcoming ally from a large country in the Americas is Argentina`s Milei.

Fourth, from the Argentine side, a change in the strategic outlook in part of its elites is also paving the way for an alliance with the US. The current Argentine executive, in its quest to achieve macroeconomic stability has as its most coveted goal the dollarization of the economy. This is the endpoint of the pro market economic reforms under way. At the same time, the Milei government supports the US and Israel in a fashion unseen in Argentine history. Worldwide, there are not many countries supporting the Trump agenda as thoroughly as Argentina.

There are strong indications that the deepening of the alliance between the US and Argentina is under way. However, near future events might change this course. Next month there will be presidential elections in Chile, while Colombia and Brazil will have theirs in May and October respectively. A win by the opposition in any of these countries will devalued the strategic relevance that Argentina holds right now. Secondly, will Trump successors double in an alliance with a country that has never been considered strategic for US interests? Finally, there is the question of Milei`s political future in Argentina. Good part of his ambitions and of Argentina’s grand strategy will be risked in next elections.

EU leaders had hoped to agree on a plan to fund a loan of 140 billion euros to bolster Ukraine.

Leaders across the European Union have agreed to help Ukraine fund its fight against Russia’s invasion, but stopped short of approving a plan that would draw from frozen Russian assets to do so, after Belgium raised objections.

EU leaders met in Brussels on Thursday to discuss Ukraine’s “pressing financial needs” for the next two years. Many leaders had hoped the talks would clear the way for a so-called “reparation loan”, which would use frozen Russian assets held by the Belgian financial institution Euroclear to fund a loan of 140 billion euros ($163.3bn) for Ukraine.

The EU froze about 200 billion euros ($232.4bn) of Russian central bank assets after the country launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In order to use the assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort, the European Commission, the EU’s executive, has floated a complex financial manoeuvre that involves the EU borrowing matured funds from Euroclear.

That money would then, in turn, be loaned to Ukraine, on the understanding that Kyiv would only repay the loan if Russia pays reparations.

The scheme would be “fully guaranteed” by the EU’s 27 member states – who would have to ensure repayment themselves to Euroclear if they eventually decided Russia could reclaim the assets without paying reparations. Belgium, the home of Euroclear, objected to this plan on Thursday, with Prime Minister Bart De Wever calling its legality into question.

Russia has described the idea as an illegal seizure of property and warned of retaliation.

Following Thursday’s political wrangling, a text approved by all the leaders – except Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban – was watered down from previous drafts to call for “options for financial support based on an assessment of Ukraine’s financing needs.” Those options will be presented to European leaders at their next summit in December.

“Russia’s assets should remain immobilised until Russia ceases its war of aggression against Ukraine and compensates it for the damage caused by its war,” the declaration added.

Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a guest at the summit, had urged a quick passage of the plan for the loan.

“Anyone who delays the decision on the full use of frozen Russian assets is not only limiting our defence, but also slowing down the EU’s own progress,” he told the EU leaders, saying Kyiv would use a significant part of the funds to buy European weapons.

Earlier, the EU adopted a new round of sweeping sanctions against Russian energy exports on Thursday, as well, banning liquefied natural gas imports.

The move followed United States President Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday that Russia’s two biggest oil companies would face US sanctions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday struck a defiant tone over the sanctions, saying they were an “unfriendly act”, and that Russia would not bend under pressure.

United States President Donald Trump sanctions Russia’s two biggest oil companies – after scrapping a summit with President Vladimir Putin on the Ukraine war.

The European Union has also announced new measures targeting Russian oil and assets.

Will they bring an end to the war any closer?

Presenter: Bernard Smith

Guests:

Anatol Lieven – Director of the Eurasia programme at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

Steven Erlanger – Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for Europe at The New York Times

Chris Weafer – CEO of Macro-Advisory, a strategic consultancy focused on Russia and Eurasia

This week, we are getting our first visual evidence of Russia’s notorious glide bomb kit capability combined with a small turbojet engine, a modification that provides this class of munition with a significant boost in range. The latest version of the weapon is reportedly designated UMPK-PD, in which the “P” suffix very likely denotes Dalniaya, for long-range, although other sources describe a similar weapon as the UMPB-5R. Regardless, they look set to become another problem for Ukraine’s air defenses… if they work as advertised.

At least some of the photos of the wreckage of the glide bombs, posted recently to social media, appear to show the remains of the turbojet engine among the other components. The first such photos were apparently initially shared on a Ukrainian Telegram channel, Polkovnik GSh, and are said to date from the late spring or early summer of this year.

Meanwhile, reports in the Ukrainian media describe the use of such munitions against targets in the Kharkiv region, specifically the town of Lozovaya, around 56 miles from the front line, and in the Sumy region, where the reported target was the village of Khoten, 6.2 miles from the front line.

Maj. Gen. Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR), has said that a new Russian glide bomb (presumably the UMPK-PD or UMPB-5R) was combat-tested in September/October and is now entering series production. He has said the weapons include “new control modules” and superior resistance to electronic countermeasures.

There have long been rumors that the Russian UMPK, or Unifitsirovannyi Modul Planirovaniya i Korrektsii, meaning unified gliding and correction module, glide bombs had started to be adapted to accommodate propulsion. This would be in keeping with the steady improvements that have been made to this series of weapons, which have included using new types of warheads as well as increasingly larger payloads.

A recent report from the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant states that the latest version of the UMPK can strike targets at ranges of up to 62 miles, thanks to various aerodynamic improvements. This range is said to be achieved when released at an altitude of around 40,000 feet and at a speed of around 621 miles per hour. The range would be correspondingly reduced when launched at lower altitudes and lower speeds.

Meanwhile, the same weapon fitted with a motor reportedly doubles that baseline range, to 124 miles, comparable with a standoff weapon like a shorter-range cruise missile. While all these range figures should be treated with caution, anywhere near these range figures would provide an impressive leap in capability over the weapon’s unpowered counterpart.

Publicly available data attributes the original UMPK weapons with a range of between 25 and 45 miles when strapped to a FAB-250, FAB-500, or FAB-1500 bomb. A range of between 31 and 37 miles can be achieved when using the heavier FAB-3000 bomb.

In its baseline form, the aerodynamic improvements for the UMPK-PD include a pair of wings, replacing the single pop-out wing that was originally used in the glide bomb kits. These provide increased area and, therefore, generate more lift for sustained flight.

The ‘twin-wing’ configuration is something that has been seen in use for some time now, but the motor wasn’t visible. That apparent anomaly now makes much more sense, given that versions of the UMPK-PD can be employed with or without the range-extending engine.

Otherwise, the baseline UMPK-PD is also fitted with redesigned tail fins, guidance and control unit, and a power source, all of which are bolted to a standard free-fall bomb.

When fitted with a jet engine, for maximum reach, the twin wings are reportedly of smaller size and are swept back. As for the engine, photos of the wreckage indicate this is a Chinese-made Swiwin SW800Pro-Y turbojet, which is commercially available and generates around 180 pounds of thrust. Russia’s ability to source large numbers of small turbojets domestically has been questioned in the past, so getting them from China off-the-shelf would certainly make sense.

The Kommersant report states that the powered UMPK-PD is now being combat-tested in prototype form, which means there may not yet be a standardized format for this version, with the potential for changes to be made based on early operational experience.

According to a report on Telegram from the pro-Russian military Fighterbomber channel, the specific bomb used as ‘payload’ for the UMPK-PD is the FAB-500T, a 500-kilogram (1,102-pound) class weapon. It is claimed that the specific properties of the FAB-500T, which include a more aerodynamic body and heat-resistant features, make it more suitable for powered, long-range flight.

Interestingly, the FAB-500T was originally developed during the Cold War for carriage by the MiG-25RB Foxbat reconnaissance-bomber. In this case, the letter “T” stands for Termostoykaya (thermally stable), since it was designed to withstand in-flight heating at the MiG-25RB’s cruising speed of 2,500km/h (1,553mph) at high altitude. It’s unclear how many FAB-500Ts remain in the Russian stockpile, but presumably other FAB-series bombs could also be adapted for use with the UMPK-PD, too.

The UMPK-PD reportedly also features a new launch procedure, in which a combination of a spring mechanism and a pyrotechnic serves to deploy the wings after release from the aircraft. The various control surfaces are then adjusted to direct the munition toward the target.

This is very likely intended to overcome previously reported problems with the standard UMPK series.

As we wrote back in 2023, quoting an online critical analysis of the UMPK module, conducted anonymously by an employee of a Russian company:

The wing is opened after the bomb is dropped by a spring hooked to the locking mechanism. The wing opening mechanism is unreliable, and “the fact that the wing is not brought into flight position is a standard occurrence for this product.”

Ruslan Pukhov, the director of the Center for Analysis of Strategy and Technologies (CAST), a Moscow-based think tank, told Kommersant that the UMPK-PD is an “excellent, but probably temporary solution” to the problem of a lack of more purpose-designed precision-guided munitions to support the Russian ground forces. Pukhov noted that the UMPK-PD would help compensate for a lack of longer-range precision-guided munitions and even cruise missiles, but that it wouldn’t offer the same level of accuracy or destructive power.

Nevertheless, the UMPK-PD is another major headache for the hard-pressed Ukrainian air defenses.

Since their first employment in the war in Ukraine, the Russian glide bombs have proved to be extremely difficult to shoot down, being small in size, relatively fast, and with no thermal signature.

They have also been continually improved.

Meanwhile, Russia introduced another new standoff weapon last year, a winged precision-guided bomb known as the UMPB D-30SN, or simply UMPB. As we discussed at the time, this munition has some interesting parallels to the U.S.-made Small Diameter Bomb (SDB).

As for the UMPK-PD, this can meanwhile be compared to a much cruder counterpart to the powered version of the Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range (JDAM-ER). The Powered JDAM essentially combines a JDAM-ER winged precision-guided bomb with a small turbine engine, creating something like a lower-cost cruise missile.

As we have noted in the past, Russia has a limited air-launched standoff precision-guided munitions arsenal, overall, so being able to convert dumb bombs into longer-range guided weapons is of significant utility. The result is a series of weapons that allow the Russian Aerospace Forces to strike deeper in certain areas, as well as to conduct more survivable weapons deliveries in others.

Due to the crash program to develop these kinds of bombs, the earlier versions suffered from several shortcomings. However, with the Russian Aerospace Forces’ huge demand for weapons that can be launched at a safer distance from air defenses, and the tempo of airstrikes in general, the continued appearance of more refined versions of these weapons, including with longer range, is no surprise.

Contact the author: [email protected]