Russia’s glide bomb strikes hit a new monthly record in August

Russian aircraft dropped 8,766 glide bombs on Ukrainian front-line positions in August 2026, the highest monthly total recorded since the invasion began, according to Ukrainian General Staff figures compiled by the OSINT monitoring group Oko Gora.

The total works out to an average of 283 bombs a day over the 31-day month. Oko Gora put the increase over July at roughly 5 percent. The figure extends a climb that has run almost without interruption since early 2025, when monthly totals sat closer to 3,500.

Independent open-source trackers have logged the same upward trend using their own counts. Figures compiled from open-source strike monitoring and reported by bne IntelliNews put Russia’s Aerospace Forces at 8,385 glide bombs launched at Ukraine in July, up 1.4% from 8,266 in June, an average of 270 a day.

French outlet Conflits, citing the same Ukrainian General Staff data relayed through Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, described the July total as a monthly record dating back to February 2022, with growth of about 45% over the first half of 2026. The August figure from Oko Gora would mark a new high above that July record.

The weapon behind the totals is not new. It is a Soviet-era FAB gravity bomb, first produced in the 1950s, fitted with a UMPK kit: a set of pop-out wings and a satellite-guidance unit. The added hardware turns a dumb bomb into a stand-off weapon that a jet can release from tens of kilometers away rather than flying over the target. Versions fitted with small jet engines extend that range further, allowing launch aircraft such as the Su-34 to stay further back from Ukrainian air defenses.

Bomb sizes in regular use range from the FAB-500 up to the FAB-1500 and the larger FAB-3000, a roughly 1,387 kg high-explosive weapon that Russia has used against hardened or larger targets. Janes has documented footage of a UMPK-fitted FAB-3000 released from an Su-34 over Ukraine. The glide kits give Russian forces a way to deliver a large explosive payload at long range without the cost of a cruise missile, though accuracy remains poor compared with guided munitions, and Russian claims about precision have drawn skepticism from open-source analysts.

The weapons have continued to hit populated areas away from the front. On August 3, Russian planes dropped eight glide bombs in about 90 minutes on residential districts of Zaporizhzhia, killing one person and wounding dozens, according to regional chief Ivan Fedorov.

Ukraine’s General Staff has not published a separate account of how many of the August strikes used jet-powered UMPK variants versus older unpowered kits, or how many bombs were aimed at front-line positions as opposed to rear-area infrastructure.