Isaac Ji Kuo
@Infoseepage @noelreports I think it's thermite mixed from base ingredients. If thermite is packaged in an incendiary grenade, it would be more effective to use the grenade directly.
With mixing DIY thermite, the Ukrainians can mix up an essentially limitless cheap supply, independent of foreign supplies and purchases.
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦
Russian soldiers watch helplessly as a Ukrainian FPV drone torches their position on the eastern front, unable to take it down with small arms.
EdizioniLazio
@Infoseepage its thermite, its not just about the vegetation
Isaac Ji Kuo
@Infoseepage @noelreports This video clip really highlights how difficult it is to shoot down even a slow moving drone with small arms.
Isaac Ji Kuo
@Infoseepage @noelreports Yes, that's the basic idea. It's not the most effective incendiary weapon, but it's relatively cheap and easy, if the drone can carry a lot of weight and it can survive while slowly moving directly above the target.
EdizioniLazio
@Infoseepage They are using them from an year or so now, its more than a distraction or harassment, its actual effective destruction, its an incendiary weapon by all definitions of the term. The few wasted bullets dont mean much in the big scheme of things. You can see how many ammo boxes are just thrown to the ground when troops deploy from an APC
Thermite just goes through all sort of stuff and a drone delivers it very precisely, Ukranians have been even following whole trench lines with them
Isaac Ji Kuo
@Infoseepage @noelreports The latter two pictures are of a Russian "copycat" thermite drone that apparently does not dispense very much thermite compared to the Ukrainian ones:
https://www.kyivpost.com/analysis/38934
I don't know the size and mass of the Ukrainian ones, but it'd have to be a lot bigger and heavier to produce such large amounts of incendiaries.
Cadbury Moose
@isaackuo @Infoseepage @noelreports
It's quite possibly an "off the shelf" item, used for on-site welding - especially of railway track. Then you just need a container with a hole in the bottom for the igniter and a suitable heat-resistant lid to protect the drone as it pours molten steel onto the target.
(Someone was selling "NR Grade Thermite" on eBay UK a few years ago - I suspect the NR stood for "Network Rail".)
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