Anti-drone rifle bullets are emerging in the Ukraine war, potentially giving ground troops a safer option against the cheap drones that are now the battlefield’s No. 1 killer.
While Russian troops were seen experimenting with such ammo since at least last year’s winter, Ukraine’s defense innovation program debuted its own version in late June.
Brave1 published a video of a soldier filling a cartridge with black and grey-tipped 5.56mm rounds, before loading it into a CZ Bren 2 assault rifle and firing at a drone in a test range.
“The goal is for every infantryman to carry these NATO-codified cartridges, enabling them to react quickly to aerial threats,” the government organization wrote, adding that the bullets “dramatically increase the chances of downing FPV drones.”
Brave1 did not publish footage of the bullet’s interior design.
However, United24 Media, an outlet run by the Ukrainian government, wrote that the bullets use a “custom-designed warhead that creates a dense and rapid fragmentation effect upon firing.”
In short, the tech would allow soldiers to fire a bullet that travels some distance before dispersing a spread of pellets to strike a first-person-view drone or quadcopter.
That could allow infantry to start shooting at attack drones from a safer distance, compared to the last-resort measure of trying to down the threat with a shotgun, which is now the norm across Ukrainian units.
The shotgun tactic has become especially needed against the rising use of fiber-optic drones by both sides. These drones receive their signals through long, thin cables instead of radio, meaning they can’t be jammed via electronic warfare.
Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images
As a result, many units carry 12-gauge shotguns with them. A new anti-drone bullet could allow infantry to simply bring extra rifle cartridges instead of a whole separate firearm.
Brave1 did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
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Russian troops are making anti-drone bullets
Notably, a similar style of bullet has appeared among Russian forces before.
In November, Russia’s 74th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade published a photo of a 5.45mm bullet, which is fired by the AK rifle. It was tipped with a heat-shrinking tube.
Within the tube, the brigade wrote on its Telegram channel, there are four buckshot pellets meant to disperse and hit Ukrainian drones. It added that when handloading cartridges, troops should alternate between these new bullets and standard rounds or tracer rounds.
This design appears to be more of a DIY creation and is distinct from the version that Ukraine’s Brave1 showed. It’s not clear if the bullet was made widely available for Russian forces.
Z Parabellum MD, a pro-war Russian Telegram channel, published a separate video on November 29 showing several men working at a table to snap off the tips of 5.45mm rounds. In the footage, one of the men places heat-shrinking tubes on the bullet by hand.
The channel also posted a video of a Russian soldier demonstrating the rounds, shooting them at a metal sheet in a firing range.
In another example, a photo that circulated among Ukrainian channels in May showed a presentation board with an assortment of small-arms rounds used to destroy FPV drones.
One of these was a 5.45mm round tipped with a casing containing six pellets.
The growing appearance of such bullets on both sides shows how rapidly drone warfare is evolving in real time, with roughly three years of war driving a back-and-forth series of new technologies and tactics studied closely by militaries around the world.
