The explosion of an aerial bomb in Belgorod on April 20, or as russian propaganda called it – “an abnormal descent of aviation ammunition” during the flight of russian Su-34, is far from the first such incident in russia. Recently, “accidental” damage to residential areas of russian cities by missiles and planes of their own military has caused considerable anxiety and indignation among their residents.
Here are the similar cases in just one month.
On October 10, 2022, Su-24 and Su-25 crashed almost simultaneously in the rostov region.
On October 17, 2022, russian Su-34 fighter jet crashed into a residential building in yeysk, killing 16 people and injuring 43 others.
On October 23, 2022, the Su-30 military plane crashed into a private residential building in irkutsk during a test flight, both pilots were killed, but by a lucky coincidence, there were no victims among the population.
What is behind the escalation of “unfortunate” cases involving the armed forces of the russian federation?
The russian propaganda tries to connect the accidents with the war in Ukraine, they say that during combat sorties the aircraft are used in very intense flight modes, and the load on all aviation systems increases and that is why accidents occur.
However, independent experts consider more realistic versions.
Firstly, the cause of accidents is the obsolescence of aircraft, the lack of pilot experience, as well as low-quality spare parts or fuel. Military aircraft are in the bad technical condition due to violations of the standards of routine work in the “emergency” mode and the lack of parts that were previously purchased abroad. In particular, the disaster in yeysk occurred after Su-34 took off from the naval aviation training airfield, where such aircraft were not based or maintained.
Often the causes of accidents are the imperfection of technical solutions during the modernization of aircraft. Thus, the different circumstances of the Su-30 and Su-34 fighter-bomber disasters are united by the fact that both aircraft were created through the controversial modernization of the outdated soviet Su-27 fighter.
Secondly, the cases of “an abnormal descent of aviation ammunition”, which have become more frequent recently due to a change in the tactics of shelling Ukrainian territories, in particular, attempts to increase the flight range by using so-called planning aerial bombs. At the same time, due to the shortage of supplies specially designed for this purpose, ordinary soviet bombs are being converted into gliders in russia. So, a self-made control module is attached to them, which, due to the simple electronic gyroscopes and weights with “wings”, allows you to change the course and generally adjust the flight of the bomb. It is precisely because of the imperfection of the device that the aircraft bomb does not turn into a gliding one, and during the heaviest loads on takeoff, it simply falls to the ground. According to experts, in the case of belgorod, the pilots tried to launch the bomb in the direction of Kharkiv, but the mechanism did not work and there was an unauthorized release of the bomb from the hanger. Also, a likely version of the unauthorized dropping of bombs could be a deliberate overloading of the plane, because two FAB-500s weigh a ton, which threatens to damage their attachments. It is not for nothing that the russian authorities hid from the population for a whole day the fact that the second FAB-500 aerial bomb had fallen into a residential area, which could destroy 17 apartment buildings with 3 thousand residents. Moreover, the route through the densely populated city, which the plane was flying, was laid out by the russian headquarters, which shows the height of indifference of the government to the safety of its own population.
Thirdly, there is a version that the russian occupiers deliberately dropped bombs on belgorod. Military expert, pilot-instructor R. Svitan believes that by dropping off two bombs on a residential quarter, the pilots were performing a combat mission. The expert calls the accusation of the Ukrainian military for the destruction of peaceful russians on the eve of lavrov’s speech at the UN Security Council on the grounds of “smo” as the purpose of the provocation. Similar events took place in 1999, when “Chechen militants” were blamed for the fss-organized explosions of the residential buildings in moscow, volgodonsk, and ryazan, which became the reason for the start of the Second Chechen War.
And, finally, the conspiracy version links the “accidental” dropping of bombs on russian territory with US interference in the operation of the russian GLONASS satellite navigation system, which leads to the failure of the guidance system and tracking of the course of missiles, planes, and bombs.
❗️Regardless of the versions of “accidental” self-fire, the main reason for these events is the failed situation of the russian federation at the front. Undoubtedly, as the pace of military operations increases, such incidents will occur more and more frequently. However, planned aerial bomb attacks on Ukrainian cities will continue, because the russians do not have other innovative weapons. Therefore, to protect the infrastructure of Ukraine on the front line, Western long-range air defense systems are urgently needed.
