US examining JDAM smart bombs failures in Ukraine
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The United States is looking into the failures of JDAMs used by the Kiev forces about a month after the munition was used in the Ukraine war.
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South Korean Air Force's F15K fighter jet fires 2 JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition ) bombs into an island target in South Korea on October 4, 2022 (South Korea Defense Ministry via AP)
The United States is looking into the recent failures of the US-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) guidance system in Ukraine, NBC News reported on Monday, citing leaked Pentagon documents.
A document marked "secret" claims that bomb fuses were not being armed correctly amid issues with GPS signals, which may have been behind the failures.
The leaked documents have been making their way to the public through the Internet since March.
Read next: Ukraine running extremely low on anti-air systems, per Pentagon leaks
Last week, confidential documents were leaked online on platforms such as Discord, Telegram, and Twitter, with US national security secrets concerning China, Ukraine, and the Middle East - including sensitive intelligence reports, Ukraine war plans, and information on allies that the US obtained through spying on them.
This is seen as one of the most serious security breaches since more than 700,000 documents, videos, and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2013.
The Pentagon said on Sunday that the US is examining the implications of an apparent leak of a number of highly classified information on national security, AFP reported on Monday.
The documents leaked also have US officials scrambling to identify the leak's source, with some experts saying it could be an American rather than an ally, owing to the breadth of the topics addressed in the documents.
One of the documents, dated February 23, was said to be labeled "Secret/NoForn" which meant that the content of the document was not meant to be disclosed to any foreign nation.
While senior US officials claimed that the documents were tampered with before being published, much of the information that was exposed is in accordance with CIA World Intelligence Review reports that are provided to the White House and Pentagon, the report said.
US officials considered that the leak of classified documents obscured US ties with key allies and partners as it undermined the US credibility and ability to keep secrets.
Moreover, Ukraine possibly used a JDAM for the first time since the beginning of the war near Bakhmut city, Ukrainian media reported in March.
The JDAM was reported to have been used by the Ukrainian military forces near the Kurdyumivka settlement, the outlet said.
Yan Gagin, an advisor to the leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), told Russian news agency TASS on March 10 that Ukrainian forces dropped a JDAM bomb on Kurdyumivka near the Bakhmut region of the DPR to test the capability of Soviet-made war jets to deploy such bombs.
"These are air-launched bombs. Originally, they were made for NATO aircraft. Ukraine has no such aircraft. This could have been a combat test with a non-standard carrier. This can apply, in particular, to MiG-29 multirole fighters," he said.
US media reports citing US officials stated in December 2022 that Ukraine is expected to be provided with advanced electronic equipment by the White House - to transform unmanned aerial munitions into high-precision "smart bombs" to use against Russia.
