Dragon Drones And Other Developments

A video analysis of the UAV war for Ukraine

Ukraine recently introduced a new small unmanned aerial vehicle system (sUAV) weapon to the battlefield. Video of the novel system first appeared on English-language social media on 2 September. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (MoD) confirmed reports of a new flamethrower drone two days later. While no single weapon is ever a true Wunderwaffen, this one is already changing the complexion of the battlefield.

Ukraine’s MoD credits this video to the Perun unit of Ukraine's 42nd Mechanized Brigade and reports that it was taken somewhere in Kharkiv. Right away, we can see that the new “dragons” are an important development in Ukrainian industrial strategy. Unlike TOS-1 thermobaric weapons employed by Russian forces, these sUAVs are able to target the treeline entrenchments which define the tactical geography of the war in Ukraine with some precision.

In this video, we first see the perspective of the FPV drone armed with thermite conducting its ‘speed run’ over a Russian-held treeline with the thermite weapon. We then see the observation drone camera view of the same dragon-drone setting fire to the treeline, apparently setting off ammunition that had been cached under the concealment of the tree cover. A successful experiment, the dragon drone attack was quickly replicated, and has become widespread already in just one week.

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