The U.S. military has made a splash by posting a video showing how drones are used to drop grenades, but American media outlets have been quick to snipe at the move, suggesting that it only highlights the U.S. military’s outdated approach compared to global trends.

[Report by Zhang Qian] According to the “War Zone” website in the United States on the 21st, the U.S. Army recently uploaded a video on social media platform X showing a drone dropping a grenade. The report claimed that the intention of this video was to “show off” the work done by the U.S. Army in deploying small armed drones, but it highlighted the fact that the U.S. Army and other branches are lagging behind global trends in related technology.
“Have you seen a drone dropping a grenade?” An official account for the U.S. Army posted on its X platform earlier on the 21st, asking, “Come and see the first time soldiers from the Seventh Training Command, the Joint Multinational Training Group of Ukraine, and the 173rd Parachute Regiment deployed a drone system to drop live grenades at the German Grafenwoehl Military Training Base.”
The tone of the post, the content of the video, and the comments all significantly deviate from the global development of small armed drones. For anyone who has followed the field’s progress over the past decade, the question “Have you seen a drone dropping a grenade?” would be met with a resounding affirmative response.
The post has since been deleted, but the attached video is still circulating online.
On the 10th of this month, the Pentagon announced a major reform aimed at accelerating the deployment process of small drones (including armed ones) across the entire military, equipping thousands of drones. The “War Zone” website described this new policy as a “major shift” for the U.S. military, which had previously made slow progress in extensively deploying drones. However, the website also commented that it remains to be seen how the U.S. military will implement the new drone policy and the impact it will have on policies and practices. Despite several initiatives, the U.S. military still lags behind in the large-scale deployment of drone systems, especially at the grassroots level. Observations from the Ukrainian battlefield further highlight the significant gap between the current scale of U.S. military drone applications and global trends.