Drones Dropping Grenades and the Terminator Movie Like Future of War

There are interesting reports on the close combat fighting in the Ukraine-Russia war. There is extensive use of drones in close combat for situational intelligence and to drop grenades on soldiers.

There are other videos showing the use of drones for combat but they are restricted viewing because of the violence.

There are many videos on social media shows Ukrainian drones dropping grenades through open hatches into Russian tanks. Sometimes it takes several tries, but the video ends with a shot of a burning vehicle.

The tight integration of drones into close army combat means ground combat is rapidly heading toward a Terminator movie-like future.

The US Air Froce is looking to get 1000 drones to support combat fighters and bombers.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown told planners to assume the service might acquire 1,000 CCAs (collaborative combat aircraft). Under this model, the Air Force would acquire two CCAs for each of 200 NGAD platforms, and two for each of 300 F-35s, Kendall said.

A Taiwanese state-owned military weapons developer unveiled five new types of Taiwan-made military drones. Taiwan is boosting its asymmetric warfare capabilities against China’s growing military threat.

16 thoughts on “Drones Dropping Grenades and the Terminator Movie Like Future of War”

  1. Might be useful to contemplate China providing weapons to Russia to: (1) test their weapons, (2) test the resolve of the West (Biden administration seems incompetent), and (3) retaliate against the decoupling and pulloutbof tech manufacturers from the West, and especially the US. The Chinese know how upset we are at their blatant IP theft and unbalanced trade rules.

  2. Side note: I miss the Russian milblogger trolls who used to frequent NBF. Would be funny to have conversations with them now.

  3. Drones dropping grenades is really only viable for static targets that are limited to the confines of a trench. They are useful because this war is odd in that this war is a throwback to WWI.

    There are all sorts of other drones that are effective against moving or targets with nets.

  4. More will be done of course by more technology advanced countries for sure. Smarter bombs, more capable drones for longer range duration and release of more rounds.

  5. The Ukrainians basically have to do this to maintain a sufficiently high kill ratio, as the Russians have a deeper reserve of soldiers. The West might be willing to provide Ukraine with munitions, but never soldiers.

    The only thing they can do is use munitions to improve their kill ratio drastically, and they need to be cost effective munitions, to, because the West’s ammunition stocks turn out to be far from bottomless.

    The most cost effective possible munition? A hand grenade dropped from a hobby drone.

    • The eventual problem for Russia is the lack of capable machinery. They can send all the people they want to, but those folks need some form of weaponry. As long as Ukraine has weaponry (and intel), they will win. Volume of people may have gotten Russia this far, but it will be less and less useful as time goes on.

      I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I just don’t think personnel is the limiting factor. Neither side will run out of people. Russia just won’t have anything left to fight with.

    • West doesn’t have limitless ammunition resources because the west would never fight a war this way because the west doesn’t need to fight a war this way.

      • The West doesn’t have limitless ammunition resources because our institutions are all becoming corrupt, and being diverted from their primary purposes to political and graft ends. And the military are no exception.

        It’s nice to go a long while without being subject as a nation to existential risks, but it does allow corruption to flourish, and institutions to be coopted.

    • While it probably isn’t that high in reverse, nobody thinks there have been more Ukrainians than Russians killed in the war – nor is there any rational context for anybody thinking that – since defense classically has lower casualty rates.

      Indications from their social media are that Russians are well aware their losses are much higher than Ukraines.

      • Russia is a garbage ‘country’. They will implode from poor productivity, backward politics and trust throughout its own population, dysfunctional allies, and lack of modern thinking and technology, most of which were stolen/reverse-engineered; before the mid 2020s.
        Ukraine, the poorest and weakest country in eastern Europe outside of Moldova has more than held its own with only the most pathetic Western support. Russia should have taken them in a week. Russia in-fighting, ground tech, and poor morale is the laughing stock of eurAsia. Where’s the damn air force? How could they lose Kharkiv so quickly when it is hemmed in with the glorious ‘motherland’. Who cares what the death count is? Ukraine has more than enough fighters and allies LEFT OVER to ground the russian forces down to the point when they are using the peasant mothers and daughters from the poorest republics with insufficient slav blood, throwing rocks. The EU and NATO will never abandon Ukraine until Sevastopol is a NATO base in the mid 2020s and the russian shoreline of the Black Sea is tiny, effectively locking them out from the Mediterranean. Russia should have tactically nuked Kyiv and a few other western Ukraine cities when they were pushed back a year ago. The Russian Federation peaked decades ago – its but a smouldering ruin just waiting to realize its final state as a perpetually developing country without even its fossil fuels to support in a few decades.

    • I saw a table of different types of munition delivery methods vs cost a while ago. Data was from stats from the Ukraine war and actual outcome.
      There were enormous differences end the “grenade dropped from drone” came in second in efficiency slightly behind the kamikaze fps drone loaded with explosives.
      The reason being higher cost of the bomber drone, less accuracy and more needed munitions. There is also the problem that all drones have a very short lifespan anyway when deployed in battle.
      Traditional delivery systems like missiles, unguided artillery shells etc were orders of magnitude more expensive.

    • The Russian military has a deeper reserve but lower morale and a general lack of interest among the soldiery for sustaining this conflict vs their superiors in Moscow.

      If Putin died tonight the conflict would be over by monday.

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