Le Figaro: Washington supplied Kiev with bombs that turn into missiles

On March 6, Washington surprised everyone by announcing that it had provided the Ukrainian arsenal with a new offensive option, explaining that in the weeks preceding the announcement, it had handed Kiev the advanced "Jaddam" system capable of turning a simple gravity bomb into a guided missile.

The French newspaper Le Figaro said in a report on the subject that the "Jadam", the English acronym for "Joint Direct Attack Munitions", represents an additional advantage for the Ukrainians in their fight against the Russian invasion.

The newspaper quoted the commander of the US Air Force in Europe, General James Hicker, as saying, in this regard, to the war blogger "The Wear Zone", "We have just sent munitions that go beyond the gravity bomb and have great accuracy," referring to the "Jadam" system, according to Le Figaro.

This system, according to the newspaper, is not a weapon in the proper sense of the term, but a guidance system capable of turning a simple gravity bomb into a guided missile. Concretely, the kit consists of rear fins for guidance, strips on the body to increase their range and even a set of retractable wings mounted under the bomb in its "ER" version.

The main interest in this system, manufactured by Boeing, lies in its ability to increase the range and accuracy of so-called "dumb" bombs that are affected only by gravity, but the fins and aerodynamics of the crew tapes of the "Jadam" system allow the bombs to reach a target 25 km away in their simple version and more than 70 km in their upgraded version, of which Kiev has already received a number.

This system also enables the target to be hit with an accuracy of up to a few meters, and this only requires entering the GPS coordinates of the target, and the fins then move the bomb over tens of kilometers and can even correct its course if necessary, which is a real advantage compared to laser-guided bombs, but this system is limited to bombs dropped from an aircraft.

Jaddam is not a new system, with its first delivery dating back to 1998 and widely used by the United States in Kosovo and Afghanistan.

As an example of its effectiveness, Le Figaro says that the past few days have seen moving images circulating on social networks of Ukrainian planes directing a strike said to be using "Jadam", which destroyed a building in the city of Kordomevka in Donetsk, noting that it reduced a number of houses that were inhabited by Russian soldiers to ashes.

But the number of Jadam weapons systems delivered to Ukraine is small, but that could mean that Washington has come to prefer quality in the weapons it provides to Ukraine over quantity, according to Le Figaro.