Ukrainian MiG-29 Jet With U.S. Supplied GBU-62 JDAM-ER Bombs Destroys Key Occupied Bridge
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A Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29 dropped two US-supplied GBU-62 guided bombs with JDAM-ER kits on a Russian road bridge near Kamianske in occupied Zaporizhzhia, collapsing a key logistics crossing. The strike, documented by the Soniashnyk blog and Ukrainian media, highlights how hybrid MiG-29 and JDAM-ER loadouts are giving Ukraine new standoff options to systematically degrade Russian supply lines in the south.
On 16 November 2025, new footage circulated by Ukrainian sources showed a Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29 striking a road bridge in the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia with a US-made GBU-62 guided bomb fitted with a JDAM-ER kit, severing a main Russian supply artery near Kamianske. According to the Soniashnyk blog run by Ukrainian Air Force servicemen, the Soviet-designed fighter released two precision glide bombs against a temporary crossing that had become the only good-quality asphalt road sustaining Russian forces in that sector of the front. The bridge’s supporting pillar was shattered by a direct hit, making the crossing unusable and forcing Russian units to search for longer and less secure detours to move ammunition, fuel and reinforcements. The Soniashnyk blog emphasised that Ukrainian “Fulcrums” are now methodically targeting transport infrastructure as part of a wider strategy of attrition against Russian logistics in the south, a strategy that increasingly relies on the coupling of Soviet airframes with Western precision munitions. In this context, the Zaporizhzhia strike is more than a single successful mission: it illustrates how hybrid MiG-29/GBU-62 combinations are reshaping the way Ukraine can interdict Russian supply lines from standoff range.
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The MiG-29, armed with US-supplied GBU-62 bombs fitted with JDAM-ER kits, allows Ukraine to strike fixed targets like bridges from significant standoff distance with GPS guided precision (Picture Source: Ukrainian MoD/Reskit)
The MiG-29 itself is a product of late Cold War Soviet design philosophy: a twin-engine, highly manoeuvrable front-line fighter conceived in the 1970s to counter Western F-16 and F/A-18 aircraft. Ukraine inherited dozens of these airframes after the collapse of the USSR and has progressively adapted them from pure air-defence roles to multi-role strike platforms, first with unguided bombs and later with Western missiles such as the AGM-88 HARM. By contrast, the GBU-62 is a US-origin guided munition that uses the JDAM-ER (Joint Direct Attack Munition – Extended Range) kit: a combination of a GPS/INS guidance tail section and folding wings that converts a 500-lb Mk-82-class bomb into a glide weapon able to reach targets up to roughly 70–80 kilometres away when released from high altitude. The bomb follows pre-programmed coordinates with an accuracy on the order of a few metres, allowing a legacy MiG-29, equipped with a specially designed pylon, to deliver a single precision strike against a bridge pier or crossing without having to overfly heavy Russian air-defence zones.
The road to this hybrid capability has been long. JDAM kits were introduced by the United States in the late 1990s to turn unguided “dumb” bombs into all-weather precision munitions, and have since become a standard weapon across US and allied air forces. In cooperation with Australia, Boeing later developed the JDAM-ER wing kit, which triples the range of these bombs and was initially produced for Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18A/B Hornets carrying Mk-82-based GBU-62 weapons. After the full-scale Russian invasion, Washington included JDAM-ER in a 2023 US aid package to Kyiv, and Australian authorities subsequently confirmed that they had donated surplus JDAM-ER stocks withdrawn from service with their Hornet fleet. For Ukraine, integrating this Western kit onto MiG-29s meant much more than bolting a bomb to an old jet: Ukrainian engineers designed an entirely new rail launcher with an extended nose section that likely houses a GPS antenna and electronics to feed the weapon precise location data at the moment of release, compensating for the lack of a NATO-standard data bus on the Soviet airframe. As a result, the same fighter that once carried only Soviet free-fall bombs now routinely deploys AGM-88 anti-radiation missiles, GBU-62 glide bombs and other Western munitions in combat over Zaporizhzhia and even across the border in Russia’s Kursk region.
The MiG-29/GBU-62 pairing gives Ukraine a set of advantages that go beyond the destruction of a single bridge. With JDAM-ER, a MiG-29 can strike fixed targets deep in the Russian rear from stand-off distances comparable to those of HIMARS GMLRS rockets, but with a heavier warhead and at a fraction of the cost of cruise missiles. A full JDAM-type weapon, including the iron bomb and fuse, has historically cost on the order of US$30,000–40,000, while current tail-kit prices range between roughly US$25,000 and US$84,000 depending on batch size; the JDAM-ER wing kit itself was budgeted around US$10,000. This positions JDAM-ER as a relatively economical option when compared to missiles like Tomahawk, whose unit cost is well above US$1 million, or long-range ballistic systems that are available only in limited numbers.
On the Russian side, the UMPK glide-bomb kit follows a similar logic: it converts FAB-series gravity bombs into guided munitions for Su-34 and other aircraft, with Russian sources citing production costs in a comparable range and Ukrainian reporting noting intensive use of such weapons across the front. The difference is that while Russian glide bombs tend to be employed en masse against area targets such as urban districts and forward positions, Ukraine’s JDAM-ER stock is used more sparingly against bridges, depots and command posts where each precise hit can have outsized operational effects, as the Zaporizhzhia bridge strike demonstrates.
Strategically, every destroyed crossing in Zaporizhzhia reverberates far beyond the local battlefield. The bridge hit near Kamianske was described as the only high-quality asphalt road supporting a Russian grouping that has been pushing Ukrainian units back across the dried-up Kakhovka reservoir towards villages such as Stepove and Lobkove. By cutting that line of communication, Ukrainian aviation complicates Russian attempts to sustain offensive operations and forces Moscow to commit more engineers, trucks and air-defence assets to protect alternative routes that may themselves become targets. Militarily, the repeated appearance of MiG-29s carrying GBU-62s over Zaporizhzhia and Kursk underlines that Ukraine has secured a durable supply of JDAM-ER kits and has mastered their integration, making these hybrid bombers a regular feature of the campaign against Russian infrastructure.,
The destruction of the Zaporizhzhia bridge therefore, marks another step in the quiet transformation of Ukraine’s Soviet-era fighter fleet into platforms for Western precision warfare. A single pair of GBU-62s dropped from a MiG-29 has not only interrupted a key Russian supply line, it has also signalled that hybrid aircraft-munition combinations are now mature enough to be used routinely against high-value infrastructure across occupied territories and, increasingly, inside Russia itself. By forcing Russian commanders to factor in the risk of long-range precision strikes on every major crossing and logistics hub within tens of kilometres of the front, these weapons increase the cost of offensive operations and contribute to a broader strategy of stretching Russian resources. As more JDAM-ER kits arrive and Ukrainian crews refine tactics that blend Soviet airframes, Western guidance and local ingenuity, strikes like the one near Kamianske are likely to become an enduring feature of the conflict, and a warning that legacy platforms, when intelligently adapted, can still shape the geostrategic balance on a modern battlefield.
Written by Teoman S. Nicanci – Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group
Teoman S. Nicanci holds degrees in Political Science, Comparative and International Politics, and International Relations and Diplomacy from leading Belgian universities, with research focused on Russian strategic behavior, defense technology, and modern warfare. He is a defense analyst at Army Recognition, specializing in the global defense industry, military armament, and emerging defense technologies.
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A Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29 dropped two US-supplied GBU-62 guided bombs with JDAM-ER kits on a Russian road bridge near Kamianske in occupied Zaporizhzhia, collapsing a key logistics crossing. The strike, documented by the Soniashnyk blog and Ukrainian media, highlights how hybrid MiG-29 and JDAM-ER loadouts are giving Ukraine new standoff options to systematically degrade Russian supply lines in the south.
On 16 November 2025, new footage circulated by Ukrainian sources showed a Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29 striking a road bridge in the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia with a US-made GBU-62 guided bomb fitted with a JDAM-ER kit, severing a main Russian supply artery near Kamianske. According to the Soniashnyk blog run by Ukrainian Air Force servicemen, the Soviet-designed fighter released two precision glide bombs against a temporary crossing that had become the only good-quality asphalt road sustaining Russian forces in that sector of the front. The bridge’s supporting pillar was shattered by a direct hit, making the crossing unusable and forcing Russian units to search for longer and less secure detours to move ammunition, fuel and reinforcements. The Soniashnyk blog emphasised that Ukrainian “Fulcrums” are now methodically targeting transport infrastructure as part of a wider strategy of attrition against Russian logistics in the south, a strategy that increasingly relies on the coupling of Soviet airframes with Western precision munitions. In this context, the Zaporizhzhia strike is more than a single successful mission: it illustrates how hybrid MiG-29/GBU-62 combinations are reshaping the way Ukraine can interdict Russian supply lines from standoff range.
The MiG-29, armed with US-supplied GBU-62 bombs fitted with JDAM-ER kits, allows Ukraine to strike fixed targets like bridges from significant standoff distance with GPS guided precision (Picture Source: Ukrainian MoD/Reskit)
The MiG-29 itself is a product of late Cold War Soviet design philosophy: a twin-engine, highly manoeuvrable front-line fighter conceived in the 1970s to counter Western F-16 and F/A-18 aircraft. Ukraine inherited dozens of these airframes after the collapse of the USSR and has progressively adapted them from pure air-defence roles to multi-role strike platforms, first with unguided bombs and later with Western missiles such as the AGM-88 HARM. By contrast, the GBU-62 is a US-origin guided munition that uses the JDAM-ER (Joint Direct Attack Munition – Extended Range) kit: a combination of a GPS/INS guidance tail section and folding wings that converts a 500-lb Mk-82-class bomb into a glide weapon able to reach targets up to roughly 70–80 kilometres away when released from high altitude. The bomb follows pre-programmed coordinates with an accuracy on the order of a few metres, allowing a legacy MiG-29, equipped with a specially designed pylon, to deliver a single precision strike against a bridge pier or crossing without having to overfly heavy Russian air-defence zones.
The road to this hybrid capability has been long. JDAM kits were introduced by the United States in the late 1990s to turn unguided “dumb” bombs into all-weather precision munitions, and have since become a standard weapon across US and allied air forces. In cooperation with Australia, Boeing later developed the JDAM-ER wing kit, which triples the range of these bombs and was initially produced for Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18A/B Hornets carrying Mk-82-based GBU-62 weapons. After the full-scale Russian invasion, Washington included JDAM-ER in a 2023 US aid package to Kyiv, and Australian authorities subsequently confirmed that they had donated surplus JDAM-ER stocks withdrawn from service with their Hornet fleet. For Ukraine, integrating this Western kit onto MiG-29s meant much more than bolting a bomb to an old jet: Ukrainian engineers designed an entirely new rail launcher with an extended nose section that likely houses a GPS antenna and electronics to feed the weapon precise location data at the moment of release, compensating for the lack of a NATO-standard data bus on the Soviet airframe. As a result, the same fighter that once carried only Soviet free-fall bombs now routinely deploys AGM-88 anti-radiation missiles, GBU-62 glide bombs and other Western munitions in combat over Zaporizhzhia and even across the border in Russia’s Kursk region.
The MiG-29/GBU-62 pairing gives Ukraine a set of advantages that go beyond the destruction of a single bridge. With JDAM-ER, a MiG-29 can strike fixed targets deep in the Russian rear from stand-off distances comparable to those of HIMARS GMLRS rockets, but with a heavier warhead and at a fraction of the cost of cruise missiles. A full JDAM-type weapon, including the iron bomb and fuse, has historically cost on the order of US$30,000–40,000, while current tail-kit prices range between roughly US$25,000 and US$84,000 depending on batch size; the JDAM-ER wing kit itself was budgeted around US$10,000. This positions JDAM-ER as a relatively economical option when compared to missiles like Tomahawk, whose unit cost is well above US$1 million, or long-range ballistic systems that are available only in limited numbers.
On the Russian side, the UMPK glide-bomb kit follows a similar logic: it converts FAB-series gravity bombs into guided munitions for Su-34 and other aircraft, with Russian sources citing production costs in a comparable range and Ukrainian reporting noting intensive use of such weapons across the front. The difference is that while Russian glide bombs tend to be employed en masse against area targets such as urban districts and forward positions, Ukraine’s JDAM-ER stock is used more sparingly against bridges, depots and command posts where each precise hit can have outsized operational effects, as the Zaporizhzhia bridge strike demonstrates.
Strategically, every destroyed crossing in Zaporizhzhia reverberates far beyond the local battlefield. The bridge hit near Kamianske was described as the only high-quality asphalt road supporting a Russian grouping that has been pushing Ukrainian units back across the dried-up Kakhovka reservoir towards villages such as Stepove and Lobkove. By cutting that line of communication, Ukrainian aviation complicates Russian attempts to sustain offensive operations and forces Moscow to commit more engineers, trucks and air-defence assets to protect alternative routes that may themselves become targets. Militarily, the repeated appearance of MiG-29s carrying GBU-62s over Zaporizhzhia and Kursk underlines that Ukraine has secured a durable supply of JDAM-ER kits and has mastered their integration, making these hybrid bombers a regular feature of the campaign against Russian infrastructure.,
The destruction of the Zaporizhzhia bridge therefore, marks another step in the quiet transformation of Ukraine’s Soviet-era fighter fleet into platforms for Western precision warfare. A single pair of GBU-62s dropped from a MiG-29 has not only interrupted a key Russian supply line, it has also signalled that hybrid aircraft-munition combinations are now mature enough to be used routinely against high-value infrastructure across occupied territories and, increasingly, inside Russia itself. By forcing Russian commanders to factor in the risk of long-range precision strikes on every major crossing and logistics hub within tens of kilometres of the front, these weapons increase the cost of offensive operations and contribute to a broader strategy of stretching Russian resources. As more JDAM-ER kits arrive and Ukrainian crews refine tactics that blend Soviet airframes, Western guidance and local ingenuity, strikes like the one near Kamianske are likely to become an enduring feature of the conflict, and a warning that legacy platforms, when intelligently adapted, can still shape the geostrategic balance on a modern battlefield.
Written by Teoman S. Nicanci – Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group
Teoman S. Nicanci holds degrees in Political Science, Comparative and International Politics, and International Relations and Diplomacy from leading Belgian universities, with research focused on Russian strategic behavior, defense technology, and modern warfare. He is a defense analyst at Army Recognition, specializing in the global defense industry, military armament, and emerging defense technologies.
