Drones

Grenade Drone Promises An End To Cover, Forever

A loitering munition is a hybrid offspring of cruise missiles and drones. It is a grenade with rotors, a bomb with wings, and a bad day for somebody down the line. This week, the Israel Defense Forces announced a purchase of Spike Firefly Loitering Munitions, a six-and-a-half pound flying bomb built into a weird drone.

In terms of size and function, the Firefly is essentially a longer-range, more accurate grenade.

Like a grenade, the point of the Firefly is to put an explosion somewhere immediately useful but far from the person launching it. The flying bomb can travel up to 1,600 feet in an urban setting and almost 3,300 feet in open terrain, traveling at a speed of 36 mph. The Firefly’s explosive payload, a 350 gram “omnidirectional fragmentation warhead,” contains almost twice as much explosive as the standard M67 Fragmentation Grenade used by the U.S. military.