On July 22, 2025, the U.S. Army published a video showing what it called the first-ever drop of a live grenade from a quadcopter by soldiers from a regular, non-experimental unit.
The video was posted with the title: "Have you ever seen a drone drop a GRENADE?" — along with an invitation to watch how American troops pulled it off.
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Unsurprisingly, the post triggered backlash from U.S. military experts. Dropping grenades or grenade launcher munitions from drones has long been standard practice. To find this impressive, one would have to ignore the full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s operations in Gaza, Ukraine’s Joint Forces Operation in Donbas against hybrid russian aggression, and even the U.S. Army’s own experience fighting ISIS.
As a result, the Army’s public affairs office quietly deleted the video from its official X account.
Moreover, this supposed "milestone" wasn’t even recent. Defense Express had reported on it earlier, noting that it took several years and a dedicated project to enable a Skydio X10 drone to drop an M67 hand grenade. That event actually took place nearly a month earlier, on June 25.
The U.S. Department of Defense’s media library still hosts the full 7-minute video detailing every aspect of the test.
What's more, the official page of the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine still features information and photos from the event.
And those photos clearly show participants wearing patches reading "Combat Training Centre – Yavoriv" and "Advisor," confirming their connection to Ukraine’s Combat Training Center.
At least one of the grenade drops — along with the preparation and drone operation — was carried out by the same U.S. soldiers who are directly involved in training Ukrainian troops at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center. Evidently, they have adopted some of Ukraine’s battlefield practices themselves.
At the same time, it’s worth noting that the American approach to drone grenade drops has been quite "monumental." The Army developed a special release mechanism called Audible, compatible with nearly all standard infantry grenades and munitions that can be deployed from quadcopters. The Audible system even pulls the grenade pin automatically during the drop. It’s also designed to be 3D-printed for mass production and distribution across the force.
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