KAB-500Kr

The KAB-500Kr is a Soviet electro-optically guided aerial bomb of the 500 kg class, developed during the 1980s for the Soviet Air Force. It remains in service with CIS air arms and with export customers.

Guidance is provided by a gimballed daylight television imaging sensor housed beneath a wide-angle glass dome. Rather than the contrast-lock approach used by the American GBU-8 HOBOS and AGM-65 Maverick, the -Kr series applies scene matching area correlation, a method comparable to that of the US Navy DAMASK seeker and the Tomahawk DSMAC system. Correlating the target against surrounding terrain features or objects allows engagement of low-contrast targets that would defeat a simple contrast tracker. The seeker acquires and locks onto the target before release, after which the weapon requires no further input from the launch aircraft, permitting the crew to break away immediately.

Lock-on occurs at standoff distances that vary with atmospheric visibility. The standard warhead is a hardened armour-piercing type accounting for the majority of the weapon's mass, capable of penetrating reinforced concrete to a depth of 1.5 metres, making it suitable against bunkers, hardened aircraft shelters, bridge piers and similar structures. The KAB-500-OD variant substitutes a fuel-air explosive warhead for use against soft targets, personnel in field fortifications and area targets. A KAB-500Kr-U training round exists for aircrew familiarisation. The KAB-500S-E is a separate development of the same 500 kg family using satellite navigation guidance instead of an imaging seeker, giving all-weather and night capability at the cost of the terminal precision offered by the television system.

The guidance package developed for the KAB-500Kr was scaled up for heavier munitions, most notably the KAB-1500Kr, based on the FAB-1500 general-purpose bomb body, which retains the same scene-matching seeker and fire-and-forget employment method while delivering a substantially heavier penetrating charge.