Discover how thermobaric weapons are reshaping the battlefield in Ukraine. This video explains how these weapons work, why Russia has relied on massive systems like the TOS-1A and ODAB-1500, and how Ukraine is pursuing a precision-focused approach with compact, drone-delivered thermobaric munitions. We examine the technology, battlefield tactics, legal considerations, and what this shift reveals about the future of trench warfare, fortified positions, and modern military doctrine.
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Russia vs Ukraine Thermobaric Weapon Strategy
01:36 - How Thermobaric Vacuum Bombs Work Explained
03:52 - Russia TOS-1A Solntsepyok and ODAB-1500 Glide Bomb
06:56 - Ukraine RGT-45 500 Gram Pocket Thermobaric Grenade
12:12 - Ukraine Drone Tactics for Clearing Fortified Bunkers
16:02 - Are Ukraine Thermobaric Drones Legal Under International Law
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#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
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SOURCES / ATTRIBUTIONS: https://pastebin.com/HaLX2hje
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Russia vs Ukraine Thermobaric Weapon Strategy
01:36 - How Thermobaric Vacuum Bombs Work Explained
03:52 - Russia TOS-1A Solntsepyok and ODAB-1500 Glide Bomb
06:56 - Ukraine RGT-45 500 Gram Pocket Thermobaric Grenade
12:12 - Ukraine Drone Tactics for Clearing Fortified Bunkers
16:02 - Are Ukraine Thermobaric Drones Legal Under International Law
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
#themilitaryshow
SOURCES / ATTRIBUTIONS: https://pastebin.com/HaLX2hje
Category
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NewsTranscript
00:00For most of this war, the term thermobaric weapon has meant one thing, mass destruction.
00:05It's a term that's almost synonymous with the TOS-1A Sondsepyok,
00:10a Russian rocket launcher that fires two dozen warheads in a single volley,
00:14or the ODAB-1500, a 1,500 kilogram glide bomb that produces a mushroom cloud visible from miles away.
00:21Both have been used by Russia in populated areas during the war,
00:24actions that form part of broader allegations of war crimes being investigated by the International Criminal Court.
00:31That's the doctrine the world learned to associate with Russia so far.
00:36Bigger is better.
00:37The more of an area you can render uninhabitable in one strike, the more effective the weapon.
00:42And civilians caught inside that footprint are unacceptable, and perhaps even the intentional cost.
00:48But Ukraine has gone the other way.
00:50For them, less is more.
00:52Ukraine showed up at a defense expo in Paris in June 2026,
00:56with a thermobaric weapon that weighs only half a kilogram and fits in a cargo pocket.
01:02With that weapon, it's quietly rewriting what this entire category of weapon is supposed to be for.
01:07Instead of mass casualties, the weapons are being recalibrated toward precision,
01:12where the target is a single-room, trench or vehicle.
01:15We're going to explain how thermobaric weapons actually work,
01:19why Russia and Ukraine ended up on opposite ends of the same technology,
01:23and what Ukraine's brand new grenade, together with the drone doctrine now being built around it,
01:28tells us about where the close quarters fight in this war is heading next.
01:32Let's start with the mechanism behind thermobaric weapons.
01:35A conventional explosive is a single self-contained event,
01:39a solid or liquid compound detonate,
01:41releasing all of its energy in one fast chemical reaction,
01:44and the damage comes from the blast wave and the fragments that go with it.
01:49However, a thermobaric weapon is a two-stage process.
01:53Inside the munition is a fuel container paired with two separate explosive charges.
01:57The first charge detonates and disperses the fuel as a cloud of fine aerosol,
02:02spraying it in the surrounding air.
02:04A fraction of a second later, the second charge ignites that cloud,
02:08and because the fuel is now mixed through the atmosphere rather than sitting in a container,
02:12it burns using the oxygen already present in the air around it.
02:16The result is not a sharp instantaneous bang,
02:19but a sustained pressure wave and a fireball that lingers,
02:22burning longer and pushing that overpressure further outward
02:25than a conventional charge of the same size ever could.
02:29That detail, the bit about needing the surrounding air to burn,
02:32is the single most important thing to understand about these weapons,
02:36because it explains both why they're terrifying and why they're limited.
02:40In open terrain, with nothing to reflect the blast,
02:43a thermobaric weapon is a genuinely less impressive weapon.
02:46The pressure wave there simply expands outward and dissipates.
02:50But put that same weapon inside an enclosed or even a partially enclosed space,
02:54and everything changes.
02:56The overpressure has nowhere to go.
02:59Instead, it reflects off every wall, compounds on itself,
03:02and arrives at a target from multiple directions in the same instant.
03:06U.S. Army reference material describes the effect
03:09as a long-duration pressure and vacuum surge
03:12that can rupture soft tissue the way it tears aircraft skin or radar surfaces,
03:16and walls don't shield the people inside.
03:18They amplify the tearing effect by bouncing the wave back and forth.
03:22On top of that,
03:24the fireball consumes the oxygen in that enclosed space as it burns,
03:27which means anyone who survives the initial blast
03:30is now fighting a secondary suffocation effect.
03:33So the weapon has been used in cities and against buildings precisely
03:37because doing it against true military targets
03:39like military infrastructure or single tanks is less effective.
03:43In the open,
03:44a thermobaric warhead would have to be unwieldy large to be of any use.
03:48Russia's approach has always been to scale that room clearance principle
03:52up to the size of a neighborhood.
03:54The clearest example is the aforementioned TOS-1A Sonsepiyok,
03:58which means scorching sunlight.
04:00It's a 24-barrel, 220-millimeter rocket launcher
04:04bolted onto the chassis of a T-72 tank,
04:08first developed by the Soviet chemical troops in the 1980s
04:11and used in the Banshir Valley during the war in Afghanistan.
04:14The weapon is technically assigned to Russia's nuclear,
04:17biological, and chemical protection troops
04:20rather than ordinary artillery units,
04:22and it's usually attached to maneuver brigades for exactly one job,
04:26clearing fixed defensive positions, particularly in urban terrain.
04:29Russia used it in Grozny during the Chechen wars in Syria
04:33and it crossed into Ukraine within days of the February 2022 invasion,
04:37film rolling over the Belarusian border.
04:39Each rocket disperses a cloud that ignites at temperatures
04:43approaching 3,700 degrees Celsius,
04:45and a single salvo can, in the right conditions,
04:49functionally erase a residential block's worth of buildings or fortifications.
04:53That's the entire Russia doctrine in one platform,
04:56one system, one strike,
04:58one very large problem for everyone standing inside the engagement area.
05:02And then there's the ODAB-1500,
05:04which takes the same logic and puts it in the air.
05:07This is a 1,500-kilogram thermobaric glide bomb
05:10built from Soviet-era bomb bodies fitted with a modern UMPK glide kit
05:15that lets Russian aircraft release it dozens of kilometers from the target,
05:19well outside the range of most Ukrainian air defenses.
05:22Russia first used it against Ukraine in March 2024,
05:26striking a village in the Sumy region,
05:28just a few kilometers from the Russian border.
05:30And the footage showed a fireball and a mushroom cloud
05:33rising a kilometer into the sky.
05:35It has since been used in Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Kupyansk,
05:39with the same pattern repeating throughout.
05:41Every time Russia dropped it,
05:43it was in or near a populated area,
05:45with the intention of not only destroying it,
05:47but making sure that Ukraine and the world
05:48see the extent of the damage Russia can do in one fell swoop.
05:52But to go a step further,
05:54there's Russia's 2007 test of the so-called father of all bombs,
05:59a seven-ton thermobaric weapon.
06:01The Kremlin explicitly marketed it
06:03as a non-nuclear substitute for a tactical nuke,
06:06showing just how they view the potential for thermobaric weapons.
06:09As it would turn out,
06:11the TOS-1A, for all its terrifying reputation,
06:14has proven to be one of the most vulnerable systems in Russia's arsenal,
06:17in exactly the kind of drone-saturated battlefield Ukraine has built.
06:21Its size and thermal signature make it almost impossible to hide.
06:25Its bulky launcher doesn't accommodate the cope cages
06:28that protect other Russian armor from FPV strikes,
06:32and open-source trackers have documented 36 of Russia's estimated pre-war fleet
06:36of 48 systems damaged, captured, or destroyed by July 2026.
06:42So, the single most feared thermobaric platform on the battlefield
06:46turns out to be a prime target for the same small cheap drones
06:49that Ukraine has been quietly building
06:51an entirely different thermobaric doctrine around.
06:54Which brings us to why exactly Ukraine's switch
06:57in the other direction is so important.
06:59Ukraine inherited a slice of that same Soviet thermobaric legacy
07:03after independence,
07:04mostly in the form of RPG-7 thermobaric rounds
07:07and shoulder-fired flamethrower charges like the Shmel.
07:11Ukrainian infantry near Bakhmut
07:13have used those inherited Soviet rounds
07:15against occupied buildings,
07:16the same way Russian troops have used them elsewhere.
07:19But starting in 2017, Ukroboromprom,
07:22the Ukrainian defense industry,
07:24unveiled the first RGT-27 hand grenade.
07:27It entered service with Ukraine's armed forces in 2020
07:30and was designed from day one to get thrown,
07:33or later flown, into a single occupied space.
07:36A 600-gram RGT-27 grenade
07:39produces a fireball of roughly 13 cubic meters,
07:42lasting about four seconds,
07:44and reaching temperatures between 2,500 and 3,000 degrees Celsius,
07:49which is more than enough to kill anyone
07:50sheltering in an enclosed position
07:52while doing nothing essentially to the building itself
07:55in the way a rocket salvo would.
07:57Ukrainian infantry adopted it
07:59for exactly the job it was built for,
08:01clearing trenches and fortified buildings
08:03where a fragmentation grenade scattershot of metal fragments
08:06can miss the corners and dead space
08:08that a defender is using for cover.
08:10A thermobaric grenade doesn't have that blind spot.
08:13The pressure wave fills the entire volume of the room,
08:16wraps around obstacles,
08:18and turns whatever structure was protecting the defender
08:20into the thing that kills them,
08:22because the same walls that stop the fragments
08:24now reflect and compound the blast.
08:27Ukrainian forces then took that same grenade
08:29and combined it with one of its greatest inventions
08:32in modern warfare, drones.
08:34Starting in 2023,
08:36one widely shared case from the 59th Motorized Brigade
08:40showed a commercial DJI Mavic 3
08:42being used to drop an RGT-27S2 thermobaric grenade
08:46directly into the open hatch
08:48of an abandoned Russian BPM infantry fighting vehicle,
08:51destroying it outright.
08:53Neither the grenade nor the drone
08:55was purpose-built for that role.
08:56Some soldiers simply realized that a 600-gram thermobaric charge,
09:00delivered with enough precision through a hatch or a window,
09:03could do the same damage as a much larger
09:05and far more expensive anti-tank weapon
09:07when confined to the close quarters of a tank.
09:10And at Eurosateri 2026 in Paris in June,
09:14Ukraine revealed the RGT-45
09:16and its smaller sibling, the RGT-45A.
09:20On paper, these looked like a modest evolution
09:22of the same 500-gram and under-grenade family.
09:25In practice, Ukro Boromprom is claiming a jump in lethality
09:29that puts them in a different category entirely.
09:31The RGT-45 weighs 500 grams
09:34and carries 300 grams of thermobaric mixture,
09:37and the company states its effective damage volume
09:40in an enclosed space exceeds 120 cubic meters.
09:44The compact RGT-45A weighs 225 grams
09:48with 135 grams of mixture,
09:51and its stated effective damage volume exceeds 60 cubic meters.
09:55If we compare that to the outgoing RGT-27S2's 13 cubic meters,
10:00this isn't a 10% or 20% bump,
10:03but closer to a tenfold increase in the volume of space
10:05the weapon can render lethal,
10:07achieved without significantly increasing
10:09the grenade's weight or size.
10:11Ukro Boromprom itself frames the improvement
10:14as only 20% to 30% more effective overall
10:17than the RGT-27S2,
10:19and the company has been explicit
10:21that the gain comes almost entirely
10:23from an upgraded thermobaric chemical mixture
10:25rather than a larger form factor.
10:28But getting 120 cubic meters
10:29of lethal overpressure and heat
10:31out of something roughly the size of a large energy drink
10:34is a question of chemistry
10:36that's actually huge
10:37when it comes to weapon development cycles.
10:39It means the improvement
10:41can likely be folded into future munitions
10:43of similar size without another redesign,
10:45and that the same mixture being used
10:47in a larger munition
10:48would drastically increase
10:50the potential payload of the weapon.
10:52What makes this a bit more interesting
10:54than a single new grenade
10:55is that Ukraine is actually building
10:57an entire family of thermobaric munitions
10:59specifically designed around drone delivery.
11:02It has essentially acknowledged
11:03and continued on the tradition
11:04that the aforementioned 59 Brigade Mavic strike
11:07started almost accidentally.
11:10Alongside the RGT-45 line,
11:12Ukroboranprom has also been showing off
11:15purpose-built thermobaric bomblets
11:16designated TB1 and TB2,
11:19explicitly designed to be delivered via drone.
11:22The first should be dropped
11:23from a multi-rotor drone,
11:24while the second is meant to be mounted
11:26directly as the warhead
11:27on a one-way FPV drone.
11:29The TB1 weighs around 2.5 kilograms
11:32with a minimum lethal radius of 2.5 meters,
11:35and the larger TB2 weighs 4.5 kilograms
11:38with a minimum radius of 3.5 meters.
11:41And both are built with a universal fuse
11:44that should remain functional
11:45regardless of weather and moisture conditions.
11:48It's the RGT-27 to the RGT-45 story
11:52playing out again at a slightly larger scale.
11:55Except this time,
11:56the weapon was designed
11:57as a drone payload from the prototype.
11:59By contrast, the RGT-45 is still, fundamentally,
12:04a grenade that happens to be droppable.
12:06With the main weapon specs out of the way,
12:08let's discuss the tactics
12:10behind weapons in confined spaces.
12:12But first, make sure you're subscribed
12:14to the military show
12:15so you don't miss any new updates
12:17and analytics straight from the front.
12:20Now, beyond using thermobaric grenades,
12:22there's been a broader trend
12:23across modern infantry weapons
12:25toward designing specifically for confined spaces
12:28rather than treating that as an afterthought.
12:31Elsewhere in this war,
12:32Western-supplied systems
12:33like the Swedish Carl Gustav recoilless rifle
12:36carry a dedicated confined space round,
12:39the HEAT-655.
12:41It swaps the usual gas backblast
12:43for a solid counter-mass,
12:44specifically so the weapon can be fired
12:46from inside a room
12:47without killing its own crew.
12:49Ukraine's thermobaric grenade line
12:51is chasing the same underlying problem
12:53from the opposite direction.
12:55Instead of making a big weapon safe
12:57to fire indoors,
12:58it's making an indoor weapon powerful enough
13:00to matter its scale.
13:01And Ukrainian units have already built tactics
13:04around exactly that kind of delivery.
13:06Frontline drone teams,
13:07including operators associated with the terror group,
13:10have described a two-drone technique
13:12for cracking open fortified buildings
13:14that Russian troops are using as strong points.
13:16The first, FPV drone,
13:18which carries a conventional high-explosive warhead,
13:21punches a hole through the roof or a wall,
13:23opening a passage into the structure.
13:25The second drone, carrying a thermobaric munition,
13:28then flies directly through that opening
13:30and detonates inside.
13:31It's the trench-clearing logic
13:33from years of infantry combat,
13:35translated practically one-to-one
13:37into the drone age.
13:39Instead of a soldier physically approaching
13:41a doorway under fire to throw a grenade through it,
13:43two drones do the breaching.
13:45At no point is a Ukrainian soldier
13:47ever exposed to the defender's line of sight.
13:50That's the major tactical playoff
13:52of a smaller, more energetic thermobaric charge.
13:55When you have precise drones
13:56that can fly through windows
13:57and other small openings,
13:59the effective range
13:59and viable launch trajectories just get amplified.
14:02The same underlying idea is scaling upward, too,
14:06which broadens what this doctrine
14:07can actually accomplish.
14:09The Behemoth Strike drone,
14:10developed by GLEFA and Culver Aerospace,
14:13and first shown publicly in May 2026,
14:16carries a 75-kilogram tandem payload,
14:18consisting of a 40-kilogram high-explosive fragmentation
14:21warhead in the nose,
14:23followed by a 35-kilogram thermobaric charge behind it.
14:26In June 2026,
14:28the drone had already been used
14:30against the Chonha bridge,
14:31connecting the occupied Kherson oblast to Crimea,
14:34disrupting one of the key logistic corridors
14:36to the peninsula.
14:37But while the drone is enormous
14:39compared to the grenades,
14:41it shares the same fundamental design philosophy.
14:43While the grenade replaces a much larger
14:45and less wieldly anti-tank grenade,
14:48the Behemoth is meant to replace a cruise missile
14:50like the Storm Shadow or Scout missile,
14:53supplied by the British or French.
14:55The Storm Shadow has a conventional warhead
14:57that weighs approximately 1,300 kilograms,
15:00is traditionally air-launched,
15:02and most importantly,
15:03cost over $1 million to produce.
15:05The Behemoth's reported costs
15:07are between $35,000 and $55,000
15:10for something that's claimed
15:12to have a range of over 300 kilometers,
15:14so directly competing with the Storm Shadow.
15:16Ukraine has even adapted the concept
15:18to naval usage.
15:20A report in early June suggested
15:22that it's adapted the famous Sea Baby
15:24by fitting them with Schmel
15:25thermobaric grenade launchers
15:27and even putting separate FPV drone
15:29deployment platforms
15:30in the drone boat side compartment.
15:32It essentially made what used to be
15:34a single-use drone
15:35into a floating multi-weapon platform
15:37that can hit entrenched Russian shore positions.
15:40The point is,
15:41thermobaric weapons showcase the design philosophy
15:44that favors precision over mass,
15:46applying them from weapons as small as grenades
15:48to those meant to replace smaller missiles.
15:51Note how this stops at the point of destruction
15:53where Russian weapons begin,
15:55as they're not meant to replace
15:56ballistic or nuclear missiles here,
15:58just clear fortified positions and trenches.
16:01And that last point is precisely
16:03why the thermobaric weapons
16:04have become so hotly debated in 2026.
16:07You see,
16:08throughout the previous two years,
16:09most of the fighting has been isolated
16:12to a relatively stagnant line
16:13crossing through the Donbass region.
16:15Russia actually built the original defensive line
16:18starting in late 2022,
16:20a roughly 1,000 kilometer network
16:22inside occupied Ukraine.
16:24Later known as the Surovikin line,
16:26it consisted of layering minefields,
16:28dragon's teeth,
16:29and dispersed trench systems,
16:30specifically to prevent or reduce the impact
16:33of the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
16:35And it worked.
16:36Ukrainian forces spent most of 2023
16:38grinding through a single sector of it
16:41at enormous cost
16:42and never fully broke through.
16:44Then the roles reversed.
16:45Facing renewed Russian offensives
16:47from 2024 onward,
16:49Ukraine built its own version
16:50of the same thing,
16:51a network called Ukraine's new Donbass line,
16:54stretching more than 350 kilometers
16:56through Donetsk,
16:57Dnipro-Petrovsk,
16:58Kharkiv,
16:59and Zaporizhia.
17:00Similar to the Surovikin line,
17:02it's made of dispersed
17:03camouflaged strong points,
17:05specifically designed to avoid
17:06presenting a single target
17:07to drone and satellite reconnaissance.
17:10Both sides arrived
17:11at nearly identical
17:12fortification doctrine independently,
17:14which means both sides
17:15are sitting on belts of trenches,
17:17dugouts,
17:17and reinforced strong points
17:19that have to be cleared
17:20position by position.
17:21Ukraine's broader drone wall,
17:23which extends 15 to 25 kilometers
17:25back from the front line in places,
17:27has made that fight
17:28even more lethal
17:29for whoever is caught moving in the open.
17:32And a thermobaric grenade
17:33is uniquely suited
17:34to breaking through these defenses
17:36on either side,
17:37precisely because of the physics
17:38we started with.
17:40Fragmentation can miss the dead space
17:42behind a support beam
17:43or around a bend in a dugout.
17:45A soldier crouched
17:46in the wrong corner of a bunker
17:47might survive a frag grenade
17:49thrown through the door.
17:50A thermobaric charge
17:51doesn't leave that corner untouched
17:53since the pressure wave
17:54finds every part
17:55of the enclosed volume.
17:56That's exactly why
17:57a tenfold jump
17:58in effective damage volume
17:59potentially changes
18:01how much of a fortified structure
18:02a single munition
18:03delivered by a single drone
18:05can neutralize in one pass.
18:07The implication is
18:08that Ukrainian units
18:09could clear Russian defensive positions
18:11while using fewer resources
18:13and putting less of its infantry
18:14in danger.
18:15However,
18:16there's a legal and moral dimension here
18:18that's worth naming plainly
18:20rather than skating past.
18:21International law
18:22doesn't prohibit
18:23the use of thermobaric weapons
18:24against legitimate military targets,
18:27and every attempt
18:27to specifically restrict
18:29or ban the category
18:30as a class of weapon
18:31has failed.
18:32What determines legality
18:33and what has driven
18:34war crime's allegations
18:35against Russia's use
18:37of the TOS-1A
18:38and the ODAB-1500
18:39is the target,
18:40not the mechanism.
18:42When used against a trench,
18:43a bunker,
18:44or an armoured vehicle,
18:45a thermobaric weapon
18:46is a legal tool of war
18:47like any other,
18:48no different in the eyes
18:49of the law
18:50than a conventional grenade
18:51or an anti-tank round.
18:53But when used against
18:54an apartment building
18:55or a residential neighbourhood,
18:57the same physics
18:57that make it devastating
18:59in a bunker
18:59make it a mass casualty weapon
19:01against civilians.
19:02The latter point
19:03is the core of the allegation
19:05of a Russian pattern
19:06of urban bombardment
19:07in cities from Grozny
19:08in 1999
19:09to Aleppo in 2016
19:11to the Ukrainian towns
19:13hit by the ODAB-1500
19:15in the 2020s.
19:16Ukraine's stated doctrine
19:18across the RGT-27,
19:20the RGT-45
19:21and the drone-delivered TB series
19:23has been consistently narrowed
19:25to trenches,
19:26buildings occupied
19:27by combatants
19:28and vehicles.
19:29Whether that doctrine
19:30holds perfectly
19:31in every engagement
19:32in every unit,
19:33across a war grinding
19:34into its fifth year
19:35isn't something
19:36anyone outside
19:37Ukraine's military command
19:38can verify with certainty.
19:40But the pattern
19:41in the open source record
19:42across years
19:43of documented strikes
19:44is consistent.
19:46Russia has scaled
19:47thermobaric weapons
19:48toward mass effect
19:49against areas
19:50that include civilians.
19:51Ukraine has scaled
19:53the same underlying physics
19:54down toward precision
19:55against a single room,
19:57a single vehicle,
19:58a single fortified position
19:59and every known engagement
20:01fits that intent.
20:03The RGT-45
20:04isn't dangerous to Russia
20:05because of its size.
20:07It's dangerous
20:07because it represents
20:08not only how differently
20:10the entire category
20:11of weapon could be used
20:12but also because it underscores
20:14just how much collateral damage
20:15Russia is willing to inflict
20:17on Ukraine
20:17to achieve its objectives.
20:19It also represents
20:20broader failures
20:21of Russia's military technology
20:23which never managed
20:24to scale down the weapon
20:25while also keeping it effective.
20:28Now, if this was useful,
20:30please like and subscribe
20:31as we cover weapons development
20:33and battlefield doctrine
20:34from Ukraine, Russia
20:36and NATO every day.
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