OFSP - 08

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) might seem like a recent addition to warfare, but they are much older than one might think.

In 1849, the Austro-Hungarian empire used incendiary balloons in the siege of Venice. They were not very successful, with some of the balloons actually flying back in on the Austro-Hungarian line, but a precedent had been set. By the First World War, planes that flew by radio were being used by the British in Belgium. By the Second World War, the Nazis had developed the V-1 aircraft, which was fitted with a jet engine and a bomb and was used to strike cities in England long after the Nazis had lost the Battle of Britain.

After the Second World War, the USA used UAVs extensively in the Vietnam War and Israel used them in the 1967 War of Attrition, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the 1982 Lebanon War. It has been in the 21st Century, though, that their use has really taken off. The USA’s “Drone Strike” program greatly expanded their use and was the subject of much scrutiny during the War on Terror. Now, both Ukraine and Russia use UAVs extensively.

One of Russia’s main UAVs is the ORLAN-10 (Орлан-10) fixed wing drone. It drops an OFSP (OФCП) high explosive fragmentation bomblet that is not guided but is fin stabilized. The ORLAN-10 has been used in Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria, Libya, and by the Wagner group in Mali. Because it is hard to jam, it is effective at getting through defenses, so EOD Technicians will have to watch out for OFSP munitions in many countries.

To learn more about OFSP bomblets, download the EODynamics AB app on
#iOS or #andriod and examine the OFSP-08 in Augmented Reality!