# ANALYSIS: The Vyrivniuvach Bomb Enters Combat — Ukraine Rebalances the Air War

> Watching a Ukrainian weapon go from exhibition to operational in a matter of weeks is to understand that industrial warfare has its own rules of acceleration. Ukraine is no longer playing catch-up — i

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Analysis
- Published: 2026-07-02
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/analyse-la-bombe-vyrivniuvach-entre-en-combat-l-ukraine-reequilibre-les-airs

## Introduction: the revenge of Kyiv's engineers

### An asymmetry that became unbearable

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, **Russia** has been dropping guided glide bombs on Ukrainian positions at a dizzying rate: **more than 7,987 air-guided bombs in March 2026 alone**, according to the **Ukrainian Ministry of Defense**. Every day, **dozens of Russian KABs** rain down on fortifications, command centers, cities, and soldiers — a tempo that **Ukraine** could not absorb without an equivalent response. The Western arsenal — **American JDAM-ERs**, **French AASM Hammers** — arrived in insufficient quantities, constrained by donor-country restrictions and logistical bottlenecks.

That strategic helplessness had a name: **dependency**. And that dependency had a cost measured in lives, in lost territory, in positions abandoned under the pressure of bombs that **Ukraine** could not replicate. On **July 2, 2026**, Ukrainian Defense Minister **Mykhailo Fedorov** delivered the announcement that changes the equation: Ukrainian bombs are **at the front and in action**.

### The Eurosatory moment — a foretaste of a quiet revolution

In **June 2026**, at the **Eurosatory defense exhibition in Paris**, a Ukrainian bomb made its first international appearance. The **Vyrivniuvach** — its name means **"Equalizer"** in Ukrainian — was displayed as a symbol as much as a weapon. **DG Industry**, the Ukrainian company that developed it over **17 months** through the **Brave1** defense innovation platform, had put something rare on the table: a bomb **built from scratch**, without copying Western or Soviet systems, adapted to the tactical constraints specific to this conflict.

A few weeks later, the bomb was no longer on exhibition stands. It was striking Russian positions. The trajectory — from **Paris** to the **Donbas** front — closed in less than a month. This is the story of a war industry learning to run.

## The Vyrivniuvach: anatomy of a 250 kg equalizer

### Technical specs of a bomb built to survive front-line realities

The **Vyrivniuvach** weighs **250 kg** with an explosive payload of the same order. It is designed to strike **fortifications, command posts, and military targets** located dozens of kilometers behind the front. Its guidance relies on **modern algorithms** that improve precision under real-world conditions — particularly against Russian jamming systems. According to **Brave1**, the bomb carries what appear to be **CRPA-type antennas** (Controlled Reception Pattern Antennas), resistant to GPS jamming — a feature that many Western glide munitions do not possess.

Deployment can be carried out from existing **Ukrainian Air Force** aircraft: **Su-24s** confirmed in combat, and potentially **F-16s** and **Mirage 2000s** with additional certification. Preparing the bomb takes **less than 30 minutes**. As for cost: **approximately one-third the price of an American JDAM-ER**, or roughly seven to eight thousand dollars per unit — a massive local manufacturing advantage for serial production.

### The real range: between declared promise and tactical constraint

**DG Industry** advertises a declared range of **130 kilometers** at altitude — a figure on paper. The tactical reality is more nuanced: analysts at **Defense Express** estimate the practical range at **40 kilometers** when launched at low altitude using the so-called **"girka" technique** — the aircraft approaches at treetop level and pulls up sharply to release the bomb. This technique, imposed by the presence of **long-range Russian air-defense systems** and fighters that threaten any aircraft at altitude, reduces the operational radius but keeps the carrier out of range of front-line defenses.

Forty kilometers is no small thing: it is **enough to exceed the range of most Russian tactical air-defense systems on the front line** while keeping the carrier aircraft safe. And if the degradation of Russian air defenses continues — as battlefield data suggests — the effective range could stretch toward **60 to 90 kilometers** in favorable scenarios.

## Brave1 and the 80/20 formula: Ukraine's institutional accelerator

### A military-industrial ecosystem born from the necessity of war

**Brave1** is **Ukraine's** government platform for defense innovation. Since its creation, it has registered **more than 3,500 defense developments** and channeled subsidies to private companies capable of producing weapons at industrial scale. The cluster operates like a **startup accelerator applied to warfare**: rapid selection, direct funding, field testing, accelerated deployment without the bureaucratic delays typical of conventional military procurement.

The **80/20 formula** announced by **Fedorov** sits at the heart of this logic: **80% of the relevant defense budget** goes to conventional, proven armaments; **20% funds innovative systems** that pass accelerated tests at specialized testing grounds before being transferred to combat units. It is within this **20% corridor** that the **Vyrivniuvach** evolved — from concept to operational weapon in only **17 months**.

### Eight teams, two ready: industrial diversification as strategy

On **July 2, 2026**, Minister **Fedorov** confirmed that **two of eight Ukrainian teams** developing guided bombs had reached the delivery threshold for front-line units. The other six remain at various stages of development and testing. **DG Industry** is clearly one of the two — its product was the first declared combat-ready on **May 18, 2026**. **BlueBird Tech** announced in June its own partnership with a Ukrainian design bureau to serially produce its own guided bombs.

The simultaneous emergence of **multiple Ukrainian manufacturers** in this segment represents a structural break. **Russia** will not be able to neutralize Ukraine's capability by targeting a single factory, a single supplier, a single model. **Industrial diversification** is itself a survival strategy — a lesson **Kyiv** learned painfully during the first years of single-source dependency.

## The decisive advantage: zero donor restrictions, total freedom to strike

### Striking without permission — the concrete sovereignty of domestic munitions

Every weapon supplied by a Western country to **Ukraine** comes with its share of **geographic and use restrictions**. The **ATACMS** took months to be authorized for use against targets on Russian territory. The **JDAM-ERs**, **Storm Shadows**, **SCALP-EGs** — each system comes with an agreement limiting its use against certain categories of targets or certain territories. These restrictions reflect the complex political calculations of capitals trying to help without triggering direct escalation.

Guided bombs produced in **Ukraine** carry none of these constraints. **No authorization is required** from any donor country to strike a military target with the **Vyrivniuvach**. **Ukraine decides alone** on the objective, the firing window, the intensity. This is the operational definition of military sovereignty — and it is precisely what the Ukrainian doctrine of domestic production has sought to achieve since the first day of the full-scale war.

### Reducing exposure to the political blockades of supplier nations

Dependence on Western deliveries carries a well-documented structural vulnerability: elections, changes of government, domestic pressures in supplier countries can slow, reduce, or condition deliveries. This phenomenon manifested itself repeatedly since **2022** — with **Patriot** systems, with **Leopard** tanks, with fighter jets. Every Ukrainian guided bomb manufactured on national soil is a measurable reduction of that political vulnerability.

The **ISW** — the Institute for the Study of War — predicted that **Ukrainian KABs** will allow the expansion of the strike campaign against Russian troops and equipment, **both in close-combat zones and in the operational rear**. That is a multiplication of pressure vectors that **Moscow** will have to absorb without being able to block diplomatically.

## The first filmed strike: from June 23, 2026 to confirmed operational

### A MiG-29, two guided bombs, one Russian position destroyed

On **June 23 or 24, 2026**, the Telegram channel **Soniashnyk** — associated with Ukrainian aviation — published footage of a **Ukrainian MiG-29** dropping two guided bombs on a Russian front-line position. The bombs struck Russian trenches with precision. These were, by all indications, bombs of the **Vyrivniuvach** type — the first filmed and published strike by this system in real combat conditions according to available information.

This footage is not merely technical evidence. It constitutes a **signal addressed to Moscow**, to its generals, to its planners: **Ukraine is now bombing with its own bombs**. The logistical chain that allowed Russia to count Western deliveries and anticipate shortfalls no longer applies in full. Production is domestic, supply is internal, authorization is exclusively Ukrainian.

### The combat-readiness declaration of May 18, 2026 and its milestones

The timeline is instructive: **development launched** **17 months ago** through **Brave1**; **May 18, 2026**: official declaration of combat readiness by **DG Industry**; **June 2026**: international presentation at **Eurosatory in Paris**; **June 23–24, 2026**: first filmed strikes; **July 2, 2026**: official confirmation by Minister **Fedorov** that the bombs are in active use at the front. This six-week sequence — from Paris to the front — is remarkably short for a weapons system.

Minister **Fedorov** maintained a deliberately measured tone: "the accuracy statistics and effectiveness during testing are **pleasantly impressive**," while noting that **"the path to maximum effectiveness under real combat conditions is long and complex."** This restraint is not performative humility — it is a learned lesson. He did not identify which two companies' products had reached front-line units, nor how many munitions had been used in combat, maintaining a calculated **operational discretion**.

## Comparison with the Russian arsenal: the mountain to climb, without excuses

### Russia at more than 7,000 KABs per month — Ukraine is just starting

To measure the distance remaining, Russian figures impose themselves as a painful benchmark. In **January 2026**, Russia was dropping glide bombs at a rate exceeding **5,700 per month**. By **March 2026**, that figure had reached **7,987 air-guided bombs in a single month** — a documented record. Some of these bombs weigh **up to three tons** — payloads capable of destroying entire buildings or large fortified positions in a single strike.

Against this, **Ukraine is starting with an experimental batch** from two developers out of eight. Symmetry is not there — and no one claims it will arrive quickly. But the asymmetry is not a permanent fatality either. **Production can accelerate**, other teams can cross the operational threshold, and every Ukrainian bomb produced replaces a munition that would otherwise have had to come from abroad with all its attached conditions.

### The degradation of Russian air defenses as a catalyst for deployment

A crucial factor is shifting the equation in **Ukraine's** favor: the **progressive degradation of Russian air-defense systems** on the front line and in the strategic depth. Repeated Ukrainian strikes on **radars, S-300, S-400 launchers, and Buk systems** have reduced **Moscow's** coverage. If this trend continues, the effective operational range of Ukrainian bombs increases mechanically — carrier aircraft can operate at higher altitudes, extending glide trajectories.

Analysts estimate that the practical range could extend from **40 km** today to **60–90 km** if Russian air defenses continue to degrade. This is not a theoretical hypothesis — it is the logical reading of a battlefield dynamic documented by multiple independent sources, including **Euromaidan Press** and **Defense Express**.

## Strategic implications: what this bomb changes for the rest of the war

### A paradigm shift in Ukraine's air strike campaign

The entry into service of **Ukrainian KABs** structurally changes **Kyiv's** air strike campaign. Until now, the scarcity of guided munitions forced **Ukraine** into extremely selective target choices. With a scalable domestic production — even modest at first — that bottleneck loosens. The **ISW** predicted that Ukrainian KABs will allow the strike campaign against Russian troops and equipment to expand, both in direct contact zones and in the **Russian operational rear**.

For **Russia**, this means that its logistical positions, depots, and supply junctions in the depth of the front are gradually becoming more vulnerable. This is not an instant revolution — it is a **cumulative pressure** that adds to long-range drones, missile strikes, and intelligence operations. Each new vector reduces the comfort zones of **Putin's** logistics.

### Serial production: the necessary condition to turn the test into victory

The real question is not whether the **Vyrivniuvach** is effective — early data confirms it is. The real question is: **how quickly can Ukraine move from an experimental batch to meaningful serial production**? **DG Industry** announced it has entered serial production — the actual capacity remains undisclosed for operational security reasons. The seven other teams in the **Brave1** program represent a multiplying potential if financing and component supply chains hold.

The industrial challenge is real: certain key components — **guidance microelectronics, gyroscopes, navigation units** — have long depended on foreign suppliers. **Ukraine** is actively working to substitute or secure these supply chains, but it is a long-term effort that cannot be accomplished in a few weeks. **Serial production is the real test** — a bomb that strikes well but exists only in dozens of copies remains a symbol more than a military advantage.

## The Russian response and its structural limits against Ukrainian innovation

### Moscow cannot diplomatically block what it does not control

**Russia** understood early that the capacity to produce weapons domestically is a strategic force multiplier — which is precisely why it targeted **Ukrainian industrial infrastructure** from the very start of the full-scale invasion. Factories, power lines, logistics depots — the goal was to destroy **Ukraine**'s productive capacity before it could be mobilized for war. Those strikes caused considerable damage, but they did not extinguish innovation. **Brave1** kept functioning under active warfare conditions, dispersing its teams and securing its facilities.

Now, **Moscow** faces a structural problem it cannot solve in the short term: it cannot sanction, threaten, or diplomatically block the delivery of weapons that **Ukraine** produces for itself. The usual pressure levers — lobbying donor countries, escalation threats, backroom negotiations in **Washington** or **Berlin** — do not apply to Ukraine's domestic production chain. This is a vulnerability that **Putin** likely did not anticipate closing this quickly.

### Ukrainian acceleration against Moscow's intended war of attrition

The painful paradox of this war is that Russian military pressure — designed to exhaust **Ukraine** — has simultaneously accelerated its defense industrialization. Under constraint, **Ukraine** has developed in just a few years a production capacity for drones, missiles, artillery, and now guided bombs that makes it progressively less dependent on outside suppliers. This is not a total victory — needs remain enormous — but it is a structural transformation whose effects compound quarter after quarter.

**Every Vyrivniuvach bomb** that strikes a Russian position sends two simultaneous signals: immediate military pressure and proof that the Ukrainian war economy is functioning. These two signals, combined, carry a message that neither **Putin** nor his allies — **China, Iran, North Korea** — can ignore: **Ukraine is holding**, and it is now arming itself with its own hands.

## Conclusion: the balance shifts, slowly but irreversibly

### The Equalizer earns its name — but the work is just beginning

The **Vyrivniuvach** does not rebalance the correlation of forces in one stroke. **Russia** will continue to drop its KABs by the thousands while **Ukraine** builds its production capacities. But the trajectory has changed fundamentally: **Ukraine is no longer in the position of absorbing strikes without being able to respond in the same armament category**. It now possesses a domestic guided bomb, cheaper than its Western equivalents, unrestricted in use, compatible with several of its aircraft, developed in **17 months** by Ukrainian engineers under wartime pressure — a fact without precedent in the history of this conflict.

This is not the end of dependency on Western partners — far from it. But it is the beginning of its measurable reduction. In a war of attrition where every marginal gain in sovereignty counts, **the Equalizer is beginning to equalize**. History will note that in the summer of **2026**, **Ukraine** stopped waiting for others to supply the means to defend itself against Russian bombs — and started manufacturing them itself.

### What Western partners must take away from this moment

For **Western allies**, the message is clear: **Ukraine is not just seeking weapons — it is building a defense industry**. Investing in Ukrainian domestic production — in components, expertise, and funding for **Brave1** — is investing in a durable capability that will not disappear with a change of government in a European capital. That is strategically more robust than delivering weapons subject to fluctuating political restrictions and foreign electoral calendars.

The **Vyrivniuvach** bomb is Ukrainian from its first rivet to its last. It strikes because engineers worked **17 months** without pause, because a functional defense innovation system — **Brave1** — exists and delivers, because a nation at war chose to invest in its own military future. That is the kind of story that industrial history remembers as a turning point.

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Euromaidan Press — Ukraine deploys its first domestically made guided bombs to battlefield — July 2, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/07/02/ukraine-deploys-its-first-domestically-made-guided-bombs-to-battlefield-narrowing-russias-advantages/)

- [RBC Ukraine — Ukraine's army already using domestically produced guided bombs in war with Russia — July 1, 2026](https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/ukraine-s-army-already-using-domestically-1782936964.html)

- [Forbes — Glide bombs will define the next phase of the Russia-Ukraine war — July 1, 2026](https://www.forbes.com/sites/vikrammittal/2026/07/01/glide-bombs-will-define-the-next-phase-of-the-russia-ukraine-war/)

### Secondary sources

- [Euromaidan Press — As Russian air defense dwindles, Ukrainian glide bombs join the fray — June 24, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/24/as-russian-air-defense-dwindles-ukrainian-glide-bombs-join-the-fray-but-juicy-targets-are-receding/)

- [Militarnyi — Ukrainian MiG-29 drops guided bombs, destroying Russian frontline position — June 24, 2026](https://militarnyi.com/en/news/ukrainian-mig-29-drops-guided-bombs-destroying-russian-frontline-position/)

- [Euromaidan Press — Ukraine announces its first Equalizer for asymmetric warfare — May 19, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/05/19/ukraine-announces-equalizer-for-asymmetric-warfare-250-kg-warhead-no-donor-restrictions-third-of-us-jdam-er-cost/)

- [Militarnyi — Ukrainian Vyrivniuvach guided bomb costs roughly a third of single JDAM-ER — May 19, 2026](https://militarnyi.com/en/news/vyrivniuvach-guided-bomb-cheaper-than-jdam/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/analyse-la-bombe-vyrivniuvach-entre-en-combat-l-ukraine-reequilibre-les-airs