Throughout this year, the Wild Hornets drone workshop has shown several times how their largest FPV drone, the Hornet Queen, was being tested in an interesting combination with a grenade launcher by troops from the Bulava unit of Ukraine's military Presidential Brigade. The soldiers finally told Army TV some details about their invention.
"These ideas have been in the air for a long time but there was no suitable platform. I mean a drone on which you could install all our sick fantasies we had before," says a soldier with the call sign UDAV about his FPV drone equipped with a man-portable anti-tank grenade launcher.
Read more: Ukraine's Biggest FPV Drone, the Hornet Queen, Revealed: Bomber, Kamikaze, Minelayer, Mothership
He points out the broad "field for creativity" regarding the tactics of application for this airborne weapon. First of all, it can be useful in urban battles: "There are many places where you need to fly in and strike," he says, and here we should add that an FPV armed with an RPG is not the ordinary expendable kamikaze drone but a reusable vehicle.
Another application for the FPV grenade launcher is to finish off damaged equipment (like an immobilized tank) that was abandoned on the battlefield by the fleeing enemy. This way the drone pilot can shut down the possibility of this tank's retrieval and repair later. "Usually we destroy such a vehicle, and it takes a bunch of FPVs, a bunch of drones lost. Vehicles that are already knocked out need up to five more [drones] to finish off. <...> A reusable one is exactly what you need. You can aim properly, since you know all the vulnerable spots on the tank."
As for the design of this grenade launcher drone, UDAV explains that the "mechanical" components can be bought at a regular hardware store.
Speaking of weapons mounted on a drone, a recurring concern is fire accuracy. When asked about the methods of aiming, a drone operator nicknamed Skif said: "We are using the crosshairs on the screen, and generally, tests showed sufficient precision."
Footage from tests published by Wild Hornets this September:
The unit Bulava is calibrating the drone grenade launcher The shots have become more accurate Please support our drone production so that we can conduct more experiments and achieve even better results:[email protected] pic.twitter.com/KQF5Z7hRSU — Wild Hornets (@wilendhornets) September 17, 2024
Worth noting, strong winds are heard in the video, and although the drone does struggle to navigate in such conditions, the Hornet Queen has enough power to get through with them. To further modernize it, an FPV drone with a grenade launcher can be equipped with additional thermal imaging cameras to hunt targets at night.
Read more: The First 3,000 Drones with Machine Vision for the Armed Forces of Ukraine Are Ordered; Another 10,000 Are on the Way
