Ukrainian soldiers from the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade have detected and taken out quite a rare and valuable asset of the russian invasion forces, the Zemledeliye remote minelayer. This system shoots out up to 50 cluster rockets with scatterable anti-tank and anti-personnel mines inside at a distance of up to 15 km.
The footage showing how one of these russian systems was caught up and destroyed, was published by the Come Back Alive Foundation. Description adds that the important target was spotted by a Leleka-100 reconnaissance drone.
Read more: russians Deploy Soviet UMZ Minelaying Systems, the New Vehicle's Already Been Destroyed by Ukrainians
Though in this episode, what's more interesting is the weapon used to hit the vehicle. The post mentions it was an artillery strike, while the detailed analysis of the video reveals it was one of the most effective tools available to the Ukrainian artillery forces at the moment.
Let's break the footage down by frames, and we'll see an object approaching the russian minelayer at a moderate angle, it can be seen in a few consecutive frames. As soon as it comes closer, it explodes mid-air.
Here we should note that a standard recording frame rate of 24 to 30 fps simply cannot capture an ordinary artillery shell but only coincidentally on a single frame only. Also, an ordinary artillery munition is just too small to be seen by a camera from such a big distance (Leleka drone can fly up to 1,500 m above).
That said, most likely it's not an artillery round itself but a submunition released by one, and Ukraine has just the types of artillery rounds that use this technique: the SMArt 155 and the 155 BONUS. Both contain two submunitions with individual guidance onto the target – a radar and/or heat-seeking homing head. Once released from the 155mm container which looks like a common shell, the submunitions descend upon the target on a parachute or winglets, find the target(s) themselves and detonate on approach, firing each an explosively formed penetrator.
Here's an example from earlier of how it looks with SMArt 155:
As a reminder, an explosively formed penetrator is an accelerated to over 5,000 m/s projectile shaped of a metal plate facing the target during the explosion. And the video featuring the destruction of russian minelaying system is a good illustration of how effective it is, if we look at it frame-by-frame.
On a side note, destroying a Zemledeliye ISDM minelayer is of great importance for the Ukrainian army because the russians have a limited number of them available. This system was demonstrated for the first time in 2020, the preliminary tests were passed by 2022, and soon enough they were already in Ukraine, practically trialed by real war.
The first time it was documented dates to December 2022, and the first time it was ever confirmed destroyed was only this March.
Read more: Two Submunitions, Two rusian Tanks Destroyed: That is How the SMArt 155mm Artillery Ammunition Should Work (Video)
