A video first released by Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, a combat unit raised and mostly recruited in greater Kyiv, showed a drone releasing an anti-personnel munition able to pound an area about the size of a basketball court with hundreds of projectiles.

The images first made public by the unit on Monday show a circular air burst and a rectangular area of ground approximately 8 meters by 50 meters pelted with strikes.

Three soldiers, in the video identified as Russian army service members, are cut down by the shrapnel-like fragments or slugs, following the detonation of a white object momentarily visible in the upper left of the images.

Ukrainian combat units have published tens of thousands of drone strike videos since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but almost all are of an FPV drone crashing into a target and exploding, using kamikaze tactics. A minority of drones are used to drop small bombs. Video of air-bursting munitions is rare. The video authors did not say the type of weapon used by the drone.

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The pattern of shrapnel impacts on the ground was similar to the lethal zone produced by the detonation of a 1950s-era US-made Claymore anti-personnel mine. The weapon first fielded in the Korean War by the US Army to stop massed People’s Republic infantry attacks fires a directed charge propelling more than 700 steel ball bearings in a flat, cone-shaped arc. As designed, the densely packed ball bearings are deadly out to ranges of 50-100 meters.

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The video did not show the drone aircraft used. Other possible munitions used in the strike could have been a Soviet-produced MON anti-personnel mine, a weapon with similar performance to the US Claymore.

A home-made weapon built of metal fragments or shotgun shot packed onto a directed explosive charge, and triggered remotely, might also have been used in the attack, Kyiv Post researchers said.

Kyiv Post researchers confirmed the video probably showed a rare drop of an anti-personnel munition to explode above soldiers. The blast pattern was like the beaten area covered by a US-made Claymore anti-personnel mine.

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