The Russian army has misplaced one other considered one of its TOS-1A thermobaric rocket launchers to a Ukrainian improvised kamikaze drone. The TOS-1A might be seen loaded with a few of its infamous rockets proper earlier than the first-person view (FPV) drone hits it, resulting in a large secondary explosion that produces a large fireball and sends particles flying in all instructions.
A video emerged on social media earlier as we speak exhibiting the drone assault on the TOS-1A. It’s stated to have occurred just lately close to the city of Avdiivka, however The Conflict Zone couldn’t instantly confirm that. Avdiivka within the jap Donetsk area has been the focus of a localized Russian offensive for greater than per week now, which has resulted in at finest minimal positive aspects towards Ukrainian forces to this point and main losses, as you may learn extra about right here. The video can be overlaid with the insignia of Ukraine’s 59th Motorized Brigade, which President Volodymyr Zelensky lauded simply final month for fulfillment in operations in Donetsk.
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Within the video, the FPV drone might be seen following the TOS-1A down a highway and hitting it proper behind its launcher. As already famous, at the least a few of its 24 launch tubes are seen loaded with rockets within the low-resolution clip.
Precisely what the drone is armed with is unclear, however parts of the footage shot from the first-person perspective present an improvised warhead that appears per anti-armor rounds designed to be fired from an RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher. FPV drones with warheads like this have been seen in widespread use in Ukraine.
A display screen seize from the TOS-1A assault video with the entrance of the warhead, which appears to be a PG-7 or comparable spherical meant to fired from an RPG-7 launcher, seen on the backside. through X
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The TOS-1A is a specialised a number of rocket launcher mounted on a modified T-72 tank chassis. It fires 220mm thermobaric rockets designed to create devastating excessive blast stress and high-temperature results after they detonate, as The Conflict Zone has explored intimately up to now. Due to the results it creates, Russia formally refers back to the TOS-1A as a “heavy flamethrower.”
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TOS-1As have been in use in Ukraine because the opening phases of Russia’s all-out invasion final 12 months. They provide significantly devastating capabilities when used towards buildings and different semi-fortified positions. This makes them extraordinarily invaluable for punching by closely defended enemy strains like those Ukraine has established round Avdiivka.
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The TOS-1A’s rockets additionally make the system vulnerable to catastrophic detonations if struck whereas loaded. This additionally means they’re juicy targets which have the potential to trigger vital injury to anything close by with a secondary explosion.
This isn’t the primary time considered one of these automobiles has exploded in breathtaking trend after being attacked in the course of the battle in Ukraine. Movies from Syria and combating over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh area between Azerbaijan and Armenia have additionally beforehand emerged that reportedly present TOS-1As detonating.
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Impartial open-source evaluation group Oryx has visually documented that at the least 10 TOS-1As have been destroyed or captured in Ukraine since Febraury 2022.
It is also value noting that Russians have reportedly been using newer TOS-2 thermobaric rocket launchers in Ukraine since Might 2022. The TOS-2 fires the identical rockets because the TOS-1A, however from an 18-tube launcher mounted on an up-armored 6×6 Ural truck. TOS-2, which first emerged publicly in 2020, was designed to supply a lighter and lower-cost various to the TOS-1A.
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If nothing else, the spectacular destruction of one other Russian TOS-1A by an FPV drone underscores the ever-growing menace that weaponized uncrewed techniques, even industrial designs with improvised payloads, current. FPV-type kamikaze drones, in addition to industrial quad and hexacopter varieties designed to drop small improvised munitions on their targets, have turn into a key function of the combating in Ukraine.
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This, in flip, has prompted the event and deployment of varied tiers of countermeasures, together with digital warfare jammers to interrupt the hyperlink between drones and their operators. Nets have additionally been erected throughout roads in some areas to attempt to stop precisely the sorts of assaults seen within the new video of the destruction of the TOS-1A, which you’ll be able to study extra about right here.
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The usage of drones like this after all predates the the present battle in Ukraine, one thing The Conflict Zone has lengthy referred to as consideration to up to now. Most just lately, small weaponized uncrewed techniques armed with improvised munitions have been an essential part of the unprecedented terrorist assaults that the Palestinian group Hamas carried out in southern Israel, which have now touched off a serious disaster that threatens to go regional.
In Ukraine, one other considered one of Russia’s TOS-1As has now fallen sufferer spectacularly to the now ever-present menace of drone assault.
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