Latest news with #Oleksiy
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Inside a worsening threat: Russia's one-way attack drones packed with thermobaric bombs
Russia has been packing thermobaric warheads in its Iranian-designed Shahed drones and homemade variants. Ukrainians on the front lines of efforts to protect civilians told BI the threat is getting worse. One soldier said the warheads are getting bigger, while a first responder said they're being used more frequently. Russia is packing its 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. 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. 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. 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. Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
5 days ago
- Politics
- Business Insider
Inside a worsening threat: Russia's one-way-attack drones packed with thermobaric bombs
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. 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. 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. 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.
Times
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Times
Why Ukraine's newest weapons offer a glimpse of the future of war
Oleksiy has peered into the future of war. 'For those unlucky bastards who serve in the trenches, life is already hell,' said the mustachioed soldier who goes by the call sign 'Mexican'. 'But it's about to get a lot worse.' The former fintech worker from Kyiv has just returned from four days of training in Lviv where he learnt how to use drones equipped with artificial intelligence. If warfare's first technological revolution was gunpowder and its second the nuclear bomb, then autonomous weaponry is the third. On the battlefields of Ukraine, that revolution has already arrived. Although neither Ukraine nor Russia is thought to have yet achieved reliable full autonomy — the stage at which a robot is capable of choosing and attacking someone or something by itself — both sides are moving rapidly towards that goal, already deploying partially autonomous systems. The drones that Oleksiy was trained to use last week, for example, do not need operator like him to pilot them manually through a first-person view headset. Now back at his unit's position near Kharkiv, he demonstrated to The Times how, by using an iPad, he simply has to drop a pin on a map and the drone will find its way there, like a general deploying their troops. The advantage of this is that the absence of radio communication between operator and machine — normally required when piloting manually — means the drone becomes almost impossible for the enemy to detect and intercept. The technology also enables him to send up to 20 drones at once to converge on the same location. Once they have reached it, most likely hovering a few hundred metres above a Russian vehicle or dugout, Oleksiy can take over the controls and pilot the kamikaze drones one by one towards their target. 'The enemy will now have only their eyes and ears to know whether there is a drone incoming, and by then it'll probably be too late for them anyway,' Oleksiy, 31, said as he sat surrounded by boxes of newly delivered drone parts. Self-navigating drones are not the only AI systems that Ukrainian forces are experimenting with. More established — albeit only slightly — is the use of terminal guidance drones, which the 58th brigade have been using since the spring. With these, an operator has to fly the drone to the enemy position, but once within eyeline of the target it can lock on through the cross-hairs of the first-person camera view and autonomously speed towards the enemy. This is especially useful in cases where the target is moving, in difficult terrain or ring-fenced by heavy radio-electronic defence waves that cut the live video feed that the operator sees. Last month, it saved the lives of an infantry unit that found itself in the path of 14 Russian armoured personnel carriers. Having tried and failed to destroy the column using conventional drones, it was the AI-powered ones that were able to penetrate their radio-electronic shield. 'We don't have a lot of these [terminal guidance] drones, so when we do use them we use them as a last resort, when we really need them — and this was one of those instances,' said Andriy, 32, a sergeant in the brigade. He estimates that only one in 20 of the drones at his disposal are AI-enabled, all of which were bought with donations rather than supplied by the general staff. As is often a theme in this war, the Russians have more, he says. But that will not necessarily always be the case because the AI arms race, unlike some of the past, is primarily one of software rather than hardware. While Russia, with its superior military-industrial production line, may be able to churn out more shells, guns and men each month, its AI capability is only as strong as its programmers. In this, the two sides are far closer to parity. There are dozens of Ukrainian companies working on various forms of autonomous military tech, including drones for deep strikes and unmanned land vehicles equipped with a machine gun turret. Though there needs to be a physical machine that hosts the AI, once these are built new software capabilities can be instantly and repeatedly uploaded onto their computers — it could be applied, for example, to a missile or a tank. 'You have a completely new situation on the battlefield where the capabilities of a side can change dramatically overnight,' said Yaroslav Azhnyuk, founder and chief executive of The Fourth Law, which supplies many of the terminal guidance drones used by Ukrainian forces. 'It wouldn't be possible in any war of the past. You can't find a legion of Roman soldiers just like that.' The prospect of a future in which thinking but unfeeling machines are able to kill and destroy at will has inevitably provoked unease. At a UN meeting in May, António Guterres, the secretary-general, called for an international ban on lethal autonomous systems, which he described as 'morally repugnant'. The meeting was convened in New York after a resolution of the general assembly, but failed to agree on a ban: 166 countries had voted in favour of holding the meeting; Russia, Belarus and North Korea voted against; Ukraine abstained. But those on the front lines have little time to mull the moral implications. As far as they are concerned, this is a weapon that is helping them to eliminate the enemy more effectively. Where it all will lead is, for now, unimportant to them. But Oleksiy concedes the future could be stranger than science fiction. 'But who knows, perhaps in a year's time this might all look like something out of The Terminator,' he said. Additional reporting by Viktoria Sybir
News18
07-07-2025
- Politics
- News18
Ukraine Latest News Facing Battlefield Setbacks, Ukraine Withdraws From Mine Ban Treaty
Oleksiy, a 26-year-old Ukrainian soldier, is six months into a difficult recovery after losing most of his left leg to an anti-personnel mine. Despite his injuries, he says Ukraine is right to withdraw from a treaty banning such challenges in securing new U.S. supplies of artillery and munitions, or to recruit enough new soldiers to hold frontline positions, Kyiv announced its withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention on June 29. News18 Mobile App -
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What Ukraine's air defenders and first responders are seeing in Russia's deadly double-tap strikes
Russia has been accused of carrying out double-tap strikes against Ukraine throughout the war. This style of attack, seen in Syria, involves striking the same target twice to maximize damage. A Ukrainian air defender and a first responder described what this deadly tactic has been like. Russian forces have been using attack drones and missiles to execute double-tap strikes, a Ukrainian air defender and a first responder told Business Insider, sharing their observations of the brutal tactic. The tactic involves striking a target location, waiting for emergency services and other civilians to arrive at the site, and then hitting the same exact spot again in a follow-up attack. United Nations officials have described the strategy in Ukraine as "ruthless." Oleksiy, the deputy commander of a mobile air defense unit with Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, said that Russia has increasingly paired drone attacks with cruise missiles, using the two weapons simultaneously "to intimidate the population." He said Russia first launches drones, which sometimes strike civilian infrastructure or housing. When rescuers, medics, and volunteers arrive on the scene to provide assistance, "a missile arrives that leaves no chance." A first responder in Ukraine's State Emergency Services, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, described a Russian attack in June that saw a drone hit a recreation complex near Kyiv, and after rescue crews arrived on the scene, a second drone struck the facility. The first responder shared video footage with BI showing emergency workers at the facility in Bila Tserkva, which was engulfed in fire and smoke. They said that they have not encountered a double-tap strike using missiles, just drones, but the practice is not unheard of. On Friday, the State Emergency Service issued a statement about double-tap strikes targeting rescue workers in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and in the southern city of Kherson. The first responder BI spoke with also mentioned another Russian double-tap strike several weeks earlier near Kyiv. Surveillance footage shared with BI captures what appears to be the scream of a drone as it flew toward its target, followed by the sound of an explosion and a burst of light. It's unclear how often this tactic is employed, and Business Insider could not independently verify all the details of the two Ukrainian accounts. Russia's defense ministry did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment. The Russian embassy in the US referred BI to a press briefing held on Wednesday by Maria Zakharova, the foreign ministry spokesperson. The Russian armed forces have been accused of carrying out double-tap strikes against Ukrainian cities since the early days of the full-scale invasion over three years ago. Last year, for instance, an attack on the port city of Odesa killed and wounded dozens of civilians and emergency workers. Russia was accused of executing similar deadly attacks in Syria after intervening on behalf of the Assad government in the country's brutal civil war. Moscow's playbook in Ukraine has often resembled its Middle East campaign, with brutal, scorched-earth tactics. Conflict analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, said on Monday the Russian military is "very likely intentionally targeting Ukrainian civilians, including with double tap' strikes likely meant to kill first responders." The Ukrainian observations of the double-tap strikes come as Russia's air attacks have gotten worse. In recent weeks, it has become more and more common for Kyiv to face daily bombardments that consist of hundreds of drones and missiles. Last week, Moscow launched some 550 munitions in a single night. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is halting shipments of critical weapons — reported to include air defense ammunition and other essential weapons — to Ukraine amid concerns over US stockpiles. The decision to withhold US support could severely undermine Kyiv's ability to protect its cities and front-line forces from Russia's worsening attacks. In a statement last week, Ukraine's foreign ministry said any delay in support for its defensive capabilities would only encourage Russia to continue its war. And analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, warned that the suspension of US aid will only accelerate Moscow's battlefield gains, as has been the case previously. After a phone call with President Donald Trump on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the two leaders "spoke about opportunities in air defense and agreed that we will work together to strengthen protection of our skies." Read the original article on Business Insider
