Russia is packing its deadly one-way attack drones with thermobaric warheads, and Ukrainians dealing with this deadly challenge say the threat is getting worse.
An air defender says the warheads are getting bigger, while a first responder said they’re showing up more frequently.
Oleksiy, the deputy commander of a Territorial Defense Forces mobile air defense unit operating near Kyiv, told Business Insider that Russia has been equipping its Shahed-style drones with thermobaric warheads for quite some time now.
What’s changing, though, is the size of the warhead, among other things. He said that the explosive payload has grown from 40 kilograms (90 pounds) to 90 kilograms (nearly 200 pounds). “Accordingly, the destructive force is much greater,” he said.
Oleksiy shared that his unit, which operates truck-mounted machine guns, has not yet shot down the larger thermobaric drones, but he said they started to appear in Ukrainian military reports at the end of last year.
A thermobaric munition, also known as a vacuum bomb, disperses an aerosol cloud of explosive material and then ignites it, causing a large fireball and a devastating blast wave while sucking out the surrounding oxygen.
These destructive and controversial weapons cause high-temperature blasts that can run hotter than 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit and last longer than typical explosions. The intense pressure and heat can destroy fortified buildings and cause severe injuries and death, especially in enclosed spaces.
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A first responder in Ukraine’s State Emergency Services, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, explained to BI that the “thermobaric warheads are much more deadly and destructive” than standard explosives.
AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
The first responder said they were not aware of larger warheads, but they shared that Russia has been using the drones with thermobaric payloads more frequently than before. They said these weapons can burn “everything” around them.
Oleksiy said the thermobaric munitions can destroy everything from small homes to multi-story buildings.
BI could not independently verify all of the details of the two Ukrainian accounts. Russia’s defense ministry and its embassy in the US did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations.
Russia’s military has been accused of deploying thermobaric weapons since the early days of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv and the UK have specifically called out the use of the TOS-1A, an armored multiple rocket launcher that can fire munitions with thermobaric warheads.
Britain’s defense ministry previously said that the Russian military used this weapon in its wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
Kateryna Stepanenko, the Russia deputy team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, said that Moscow began to integrate thermobaric warheads into Shahed drones at scale last summer and fall, enabling these weapons to “inflict more damage on buildings.”
Stepanenko told BI that Russia used Shaheds with thermobaric warheads in an attack on civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv last week and that Russian sourcing suggests Moscow is also using these bombs against Ukrainian military targets along the front lines.
Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP
While the use of thermobaric warheads is not new, Russia continues to adapt the ways it delivers these strikes, she said.
“The integration of thermobaric warheads onto cheaply made drones may allow Russia to increase the number of strikes that previously would’ve required a larger and more detectable system, such as TOS-1,” Stepanenko said, adding that “the Russians are also trying to make these strikes more precise.”
Earlier this month, the Ukrainian military said that it carried out a long-range attack on a Russian factory making thermobaric warheads for Shahed drones, possibly reflecting Kyiv’s efforts to curb this threat.
The assessment comes as Russia has stepped up its attacks with the notorious Shahed-136, an Iranian-designed drone that Moscow now mass-produces in its own factories.
Shaheds, also known as loitering munitions because they can linger above a target before attacking it, travel at slower speeds than cruise or ballistic missiles. The drones, however, are much cheaper, allowing Russia to use them for large-scale bombardments.
In recent weeks, Russia has staged massive attacks against Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones, including Shaheds and decoy systems intended to exhaust Kyiv’s limited air defense stockpiles.
Just on Tuesday, for instance, Ukraine’s air force said Russia attacked with nearly 270 Shahed and decoy drones, adding that two-thirds of the munitions were shot down.