“Destroying the carrier is the number one priority,” Khrapchynskyi said. “Once the carrier is destroyed, the enemy must add the cost of the aircraft to that of the guided aerial bomb and reassess the risks. Therefore, it is necessary to invest in long-range air-to-air missiles, aerial reconnaissance and strikes on airfields where aircraft are concentrated. This is far more effective than attempting to intercept each bomb individually.”

It is also crucial to disrupt supply chains and target production and logistics hubs.

“An example from World War II is instructive: in 1944, the sole Hungarian factory producing engines for Tiger and Panther tanks was bombed,” Yaroslav Honchar, co‑founder of the NGO Aero Rozvidka, told Ukrainska Pravda. "Engine output ceased for six months, which significantly influenced the war’s course.

That is why, when we speak about mass production of guided bombs, it makes sense to look for weak links across the chain: specific components and engines, warehouses, production lines and supply routes," he adds. “A sustained disruption at any of those stages would have a far greater effect on the enemy’s combat capability than isolated interceptions in the air.”

This is why KABs are not as dominant as a future weapon as they appear to be at the moment, in so many dimensions the battlefield is becoming more transparent and that bodes terribly for the future as a workhorse delivery platform for fragile, niche, extremely expensive and hard to replace fighter-bombers that require large, static facilities. The future of long range precision guided munitions in a landwarfare context is a combination of palletized launch effects from large cargo and passenger aircraft, helicopters (tilt rotor and traditional) and most importantly for Ukraine, 155mm cannon artillery paired with rocket artillery to fire precision guided munitions 100km+.

Russia is thankfully painting itself into an expensive corner just at the precise moment it can’t afford to do so here, KABs are an expensive bandaid on a poor longterm military investment strategy.