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Watch: Thermobaric Rocket Flame Thrower In Action
Published 4 years ago
The Ukrainian Army recently announced that they have received hundreds of RPV-16 thermobaric rocket launchers, also called rocket flame throwers. The name itself was awesome enough that we decided to present some footage of this wicked weapon in action.
The RPV-16 fires a high-explosive 93mm thermobaric (fuel-air explosive, or “vacuum bomb”) warhead. The thermobaric properties combust the oxygen around the target, resulting in a massive fiery explosion.
The warhead also has fragmentation capabilities, firing deadly shrapnel in all directs. Between the insanely hot, massive fireball and the shrapnel, the RPV-16 has a kill/casualty radius of 164 feet. This thing is a beast.
Like the man-portable backpack flamethrowers of the past, the RPV-16 can kill enemy hiding inside trenches and hardened bunkers. However, the old school flamethrowers required that the operator expose himself for a significant amount of time while he torched his target. The RPV-16 allows the operator to step out from cover for only a second to fire the munition, and then duck back into relative safety while the warhead does all the work.