Drone and cluster munition combo: Ukrainian army effectively targets Russian forces 

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are already using cluster munitions to hit the occupying Russian forces on the battlefield - an interesting video has recently been posted online showing an enemy infantry fighting vehicle with Russian soldiers targeted by cluster artillery shells.

The footage above shows the work of a Griffin UAV unit of the 501st Detached Marine Battalion, which used an FPV drone to hunt a Russian BMP-2 moving along the road.

Although the FPV drone's strike did not appear to cause serious damage to the vehicle, it forced the crew to stop - the video shows some of the Russian soldiers jumping out of the vehicle and running away.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="uk" dir="ltr">FPV + касетні снаряди = ????????????<br><br>Перші дрони RUSOREZ від вас вже нищать росіян на фронті.<br>Робота підрозділу Грифон501. <br><br>На відео знищення російської БМП-2, але незвичайне.<br>Бо там же після удару дроном вдарили ще й касетні боєприпаси????<br><br>Донатьте на ще 10 000 FPV із БЧ! <a href="https://t.co/nsLLKJvAqa">https://t.co/nsLLKJvAqa</a> <a href="https://t.co/PiH5mTQ2Ua">pic.twitter.com/PiH5mTQ2Ua</a></p>&mdash; Serhii Sternenko ✙ (@sternenko) <a href="https://twitter.com/sternenko/status/1691375533584535552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 15, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The second video (above) somewhat complements the story of this episode - as you can see, after the FPV drone hit, one of the soldiers caught on fire, some of them ran away, while the crew probably decided not to stay completely in the open and decided to drag the vehicle a little further into the forest.

After that, Russian soldiers who remained in the infantry fighting vehicle fled, trying to hide among the trees in the forest. After that, a cluster munition hit the enemy vehicle, causing the BMP to catch fire and subsequently detonate the ammunition. The fate of the escaped soldiers remains unknown, but it is possible that they also received their "portion" of cluster munitions.

The supply of cluster munitions to Ukraine was announced more than a month ago as part of one of the US defense aid packages, while the US has recently received the first report on how the Ukrainian Armed Forces use these munitions on the battlefield.

At the same time, in late July, the first photo of the M864 cluster munitions from the US in the Ukrainian Armed Forces appeared - they have a range of up to 30 km from the M777 howitzer, and the munition itself has 72 cluster sub-elements.