Russia’s Defense Ministry has released drone and bodycam footage showing Russian forces using man-portable thermobaric, rocket-assisted grenade launchers against an entrenched Ukrainian Army position in the Krasny Liman direction in northern Donetsk.
The Defense Ministry told Sputnik that assault troops armed with Shmel rocket launchers and LPO-97 43mm pump action grenade launchers were deployed in the area, getting as close to an enemy stronghold as possible and pummeling it until its destruction after it was spotted by reconnaissance drone operators.
“We had a task in the Kremensk forests, where a machinegun point was identified, and the infantry couldn’t get through; they called us, we finished it off,” an assault unit commander going by the call sign Zhiga said.
Thermobaric weapons, also known as vacuum bombs, spray a combustible substance over an area and ignite it, resulting in oxygen from the surrounding air being sucked up and generating a high-temperature explosion. In the Shmel’s case, the explosion is deadly to any personnel in a 50 meter radius in open areas, and 80 cubic meters in an enclosed space. The US military has estimated that the RPO-A Shmel’s warhead has the same amount of power as a 107 mm artillery shell upon impact.
Along with the RPO-A, the Shmel has Z and D modifications (incendiary and smoke, respectively). The Shmel was first deployed to effect by Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when it was dubbed the "Satan Pipe" by the CIA-backed Mujahedeen militias.
The RPO-A Shmel is used by more than a dozen nations, including Russia and other countries in the former Soviet space, plus Serbia, India, Vietnam, and North Korea.