Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported that Russia has for the first time used the Grom-E1 missile to strike the city. This hybrid of a rocket and an unguided aerial bomb has been described by some experts as "extremely unusual."
"During the evening shelling on August 31, the enemy used such an atypical weapon as 'Grom-E1' — a hybrid of a rocket and a guided aerial bomb," Terekhov said.
The Russia's new targets, as always, were civilian objects and ordinary peaceful people who were at home, walking on the street, or working at the time of the explosion.
Experts from the military portal Defense Express note that this is not the first use of the Grom-E1 in Ukraine. Fragments of this weapon were found in the field as early as 2023, and at the beginning of 2024, the Russians used it to strike a school and a five-story building in Myrnohrad and Kherson.
The Grom-E1 is a hybrid of the X-38 rocket and a gliding aerial bomb, with a launch mass of 594 kg and a high-explosive fragmentation warhead weighing 315 kg. The maximum claimed firing range is 120 km at an altitude of 12,000 m, with the range decreasing to approximately 35 km at an altitude of 5,000 m.
"Given that the Russians created their 'rocket-bomb' named 'Grom' based on the X-38 rocket, this project looks extremely strange. The X-38 itself has rather dangerous characteristics — a supersonic speed of 2.2 Mach with a firing range of up to 40 km, and this rocket was specifically developed as a dangerous replacement for the old Soviet X-25 and X-29," Defense Express notes.
