Ukraine in the war with Russia is increasingly using innovative bombs produced by amateur gunsmiths.
In Ukraine and abroad, the production of various types of ammunition for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which are produced by amateur gunsmiths, is growing.
This is reported The Economist.
Inventors are constantly improving their offspring – the so-called “candy bombs” that Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield drop from drones on enemy manpower and equipment.
Citing an example, the publication writes that Lesha, an amateur gunsmith from Kyiv, and his friends three months ago developed an 800-gram anti-personnel bomb called “Bunny” or “Rabbit”. The group uses 3D printing to fabricate the hull before sending it off to be filled with explosives and shards of steel. In tests, Lyosha says, this shrapnel cuts through wooden boards like butter.
“Zaychik” is just one example of deadly innovations that have emerged in Ukraine in the 17 months since the Russian invasion. Stocks of many factory-made ammunition have dwindled, but explosives are still plentiful. This helped create a hobbyist arms industry dedicated to supplying soldiers at the front with homemade weapons to use against Russian troops.
Lesha’s team prints plastic shells for about 1,000 “candy bombs” per week. But the officer who is in contact with the team wants 1,500 a day, says a member of Lesha’s group under the pseudonym ADV.
Another amateur group, the Druk Army, has made over 30,000 rounds of ammunition in the past four months. Swat, their leader, says production is on the rise, and not just in Ukraine.
Janis Ozols is the founder of the Latvian branch of Wild Bees, a group of volunteer gunsmiths. He estimates that at least 65,000 home-made bombs have been shipped from Europe since November 2022 – Ukrainian customs officers turn a blind eye to this, classifying such shipments as children’s toys or candlesticks.
Homemade ammo is not a direct replacement for factory made ammo, but it does have advantages. On the one hand, they are cheap. Emanuel Zmudzinski, a Wild Bees volunteer from Poland, makes bomb components. 3D printing the nose cone, body and tail for the 27cm Big Egg model costs him less than 3.5 euros, not including explosives, instead of $1200, which is what a factory model costs, and there is no need re-equip production lines, so “candy bombs” can be easily produced in various modifications.
Thoughtful innovations made such bombs very effective. There were even ammunition for the destruction of armored vehicles. Copper and aluminum are pressed inside these bombs into a specially designed conical shape. When explosives detonate, the metals turn into a thin jet of superheated plasma that can burn through armor. Ukrainian drone operators claim they can destroy Russian tanks by dropping these half-kilogram bombs on top of the vehicle, where the armor is thinner.
“Duke”, a Ukrainian soldier fighting in the Donetsk region, believes that the Ukrainian Armed Forces now use about 200 different types and sizes of “candy bombs”. This testifies to the creative enthusiasm of their creators. The amateur industry is becoming more professional every day, notes The Economist.
Recall that a video of the liquidation of the Russian military was published on the Internet, on which a shell was dropped from the air. The attention of users was attracted by the filigree precision with which the drone operators of the Armed Forces of Ukraine worked.
We also wrote that a grenade suddenly fell from the sky to the invaders in Donetsk.
Author: Mikhail Butko
2023-08-03 10:35:22
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