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- New video seems to show a drone dropping fire from above on a battlefield in Ukraine.
- Ukrainian accounts said the drone was from a Ukrainian unit active in south Ukraine.
- Observers speculated that the drone was dropping the flaming mix of chemicals known as thermite.
A new video appears to show a striking new use for drones in the war in Ukraine: raining fire from above.
Footage posted on Monday showed a drone dropping a burning substance on a tree line.
The footage seemed to show a first-person camera feed from the drone itself, followed by aerial video showing the attack from a distance.
It wasn't clear from the footage whether there were any soldiers in the area that was hit.
The footage was shared by several Ukrainian accounts, who attributed the hit to the 108th Territorial Defense Brigade of the Ukrainian military.
One account claimed to geolocate the strike to a field just behind Russian lines in the Zaporizhzhia region of southeastern Ukraine.
Another, one of the earliest accounts to surface the footage, added the celebratory line "Dracarys!", a reference to the fire-breathing dragons in the HBO series "Game of Thrones."
Eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian drone drops molten thermite on a Russian-held treeline, setting it ablaze. pic.twitter.com/LWKDj3NGpz
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 2, 2024
The open-source intelligence account @OSINTechnical said on X that the drone appeared to be dropping molten thermite.
The substance, a mixture of aluminum powder and iron oxide, can reach temperatures of 4,000F, enough to burn through metal.
According to Action on Armed Violence, a UK advocacy group, thermite has been used in Ukraine by both sides.
Dispensing it from a drone, however, appears to be without precedent.
The Ukraine war has been dubbed the "War of the treelines" by an analyst at the Center for European Policy Analysis, with troops taking cover from pervasive drone surveillance in treelines like the one in the video