Kaboom! Russian Drone With Thermite Grenade Blows Up a Billion Dollars of Ukranian Ammo

A drone carrying a grenade infiltrated an ammunition dump in the Ukraine, setting off an explosion that caused an astounding billion dollars worth of damage. The incident points to the growing use of drones in wartime, particularly off the shelf civilian products harnessed to conduct sabotage and other attacks. Ukraine's domestic intelligence service, the SBU, believes that a drone carrying a Russian thermite hand grenade caused a series of titanic explosions at Balakliya, a military base in Eastern Ukraine. Amateur video of the incident posted on YouTube shows a raging fire spewing out of control artillery rockets, and an explosion and shockwave that sent civilians nearby reeling. One person was killed in the attack and five were injured.
The drone is believed to have carried a ZMG-1 thermite grenade. Thermite, a combination of iron oxide (rust) and aluminum powder. The stuff burns extremely hot and easily could have gotten through wooden crates to detonate the munitions inside. The ammo dump is just 60 miles from the Russian/Ukrainian border, where fighting recently took place.
According to PM contributor David Hambling writing at Scout Warrior, it's not the first time military bases in Ukraine have been hit by drones. A similar attempt to blow up the Balakliya base took place in December 2015, when drones dropped 14 grenades. The fires were extinguished by Ukrainian servicemen, and one grenade, a ZMG-1, was recovered.
In October 2015, an attack on an ammunition depot at Svatovo destroyed 3,000 tons of explosives and damaged 1,700 nearby homes. Two other attacks on ammo dumps took place in February, and another facility was attacked in March.
Guerrilla groups, terrorists, and perhaps even governments worldwide have rapidly weaponized consumer drones, effectively turning hobbyist devices into lethal weapons capable of killing. In 2016, two French Special Forces soldiers were injured and two Kurdish fighters were killed by an exploding ISIS drone. ISIS has conducted numerous drone attacks during the Mosul campaign and terrorism experts fear weaponized drones could spread outside conflict zones.

 

lol....hilarious...good job!

 

They've been using cheap toy drones for a couple years now. They even ordered some from Ebay in the beginning and modified them to drop hand gernades. When various governments tried to stop the mailorder drones, they simply started ordering parts and putting them together piece by piece until they have a complete drone.
Some of them were converted to flying bombs and used to crash into a target such as an individual enemy fighter or a pickup truck or crash through a window.
They have no problem getting thousands of Nissan pickup trucks from Japan, so a toy drone is easy to get.