In Ukraine, incendiary drones have entered the war – Libération

Dubbed “dragon drones,” the small, remote-controlled flying machines drop thermite, a chemical mixture that emits temperatures of about 2,400 degrees.

Incendiary weapons are as old as war. As early as World War I, thermite bombs, a mixture of iron oxide (rust) and aluminum, which emits a temperature of about 2,400 degrees, were dropped in abundance by the military air forces of all belligerents. Either on a large scale on industrial sites, or in individual precision shots, knowing that a single thermite grenade could neutralize a tank. A century later, it is not surprising that the Ukrainian army, at the forefront of innovation in terms of drones, has developed incendiary charges.

At the beginning of the year, the Militarnyi website, which specializes in Ukrainian war material, published a photo of a batch of thirty semi-homemade munitions, intended to be dropped by small FPV drones piloted remotely on “armored vehicles, shelters, observation posts and open ammunition depots.” According to the X account (ex-Twitter) PStyle0ne1, each charge includes an aluminum tube, an ignition circuit and 500 grams of thermite, for an active combustion of about two minutes. All for about ten euros. This winter, a camera on a drone filmed the fall of the charge inside a military vehicle