Video: Air-Bursting Anti-Personnel Munition Employed by Ukraine Drone

A video first released by Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, a combat unit raised and mostly recruited in greater Kyiv, showed a drone releasing an anti-personnel munition able to pound an area about the size of a basketball court with hundreds of projectiles.

The images first made public by the unit on Monday show a circular air burst and a rectangular area of ground approximately 8 meters by 50 meters pelted with strikes.

Three soldiers, in the video identified as Russian army service members, are cut down by the shrapnel-like fragments or slugs, following the detonation of a white object momentarily visible in the upper left of the images.

Ukrainian combat units have published tens of thousands of drone strike videos since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but almost all are of an FPV drone crashing into a target and exploding, using kamikaze tactics. A minority of drones are used to drop small bombs. Video of air-bursting munitions is rare. The video authors did not say the type of weapon used by the drone.

The pattern of shrapnel impacts on the ground was similar to the lethal zone produced by the detonation of a 1950s-era US-made Claymore anti-personnel mine. The weapon first fielded in the Korean War by the US Army to stop massed People’s Republic infantry attacks fires a directed charge propelling more than 700 steel ball bearings in a flat, cone-shaped arc. As designed, the densely packed ball bearings are deadly out to ranges of 50-100 meters.

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Ukraine’s cutting-edge weapons industry is also developing a UAV “aircraft carrier” project to launch swarms of drones and enhance deep-strike capabilities.

The video did not show the drone aircraft used. Other possible munitions used in the strike could have been a Soviet-produced MON anti-personnel mine, a weapon with similar performance to the US Claymore.

A home-made weapon built of metal fragments or shotgun shot packed onto a directed explosive charge, and triggered remotely, might also have been used in the attack, Kyiv Post researchers said.

Kyiv Post researchers confirmed the video probably showed a rare drop of an anti-personnel munition to explode above soldiers. The blast pattern was like the beaten area covered by a US-made Claymore anti-personnel mine.