War in Ukraine: Cluster Warheads, First Successful Use… What is the Palianytsia Missile Drone ?

The weapons used on the front are multiplying and Ukraine recently announced a new thing: a missile-launching drone named Palyanytsia.

The weapons used on the front to fight Vladimir Putin's Russia are diverse. On August 25, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the first successful combat use of a missile-launching drone named Palyanytsia, reports the Kyiv Independent.

A successful first

If, after its incursion into the Kursk region, Ukraine is now facing a Russian response, with a terrible attack in Poltava, the country with the yellow and blue flag can count on a new weapon, which has already proven its effectiveness.

“The first successful combat use of our new weapon, the Ukrainian long-range rocket-launching drone “Palianytsia”, has taken place. It was designed in Ukraine to destroy the enemy's offensive potential. The production of rocket-launching drones will grow, just like that of our long-range attack drones, the effectiveness of which we see almost daily,", wrote Volodymyr Zelensky.

Features

But what are the characteristics of this new weapon ? "The Palyanytsia is a relatively small missile. Its explosive charge is a few dozen kilos, not 400 kg or more like in full-size cruise missiles,”, defense expert Andrii Kharuk told the Ukrainian independent media outlet.

"It is equipped with a fragmentation warhead of about 20 kg or another type of warhead, and I assume that it has a flight range of between 500 and 700 kilometers,", em Federico Borsari, a member of the Leonardo Fellowship program, said. of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

“The Palyanytsia is certainly something that Ukraine needed and did not have before. The Neptune (Ukrainian-made subsonic cruise missile) does not have sufficient range, the Tochka-U (Soviet-made tactical ballistic missile) has a limited range and is also a very obsolete missile that Russia can easily intercept with its air defense systems”, Borsari says.