Damaged or burned munitions pose the greatest danger, as they may release radioactive dust hazardous to people and the environment. A gamma reading of 24 microsieverts per hour is roughly 80 times background and enough to flag debris as hazardous to anyone in prolonged contact, though a single brief exposure at that level is far below the dose that causes acute harm.
So if this is just a “higher cancer levels years from now” kind of thing, why would Russia bother adding uranium? Isn’t uranium expensive?
According to the article, it’s depleted uranium.
Which is the leftover part that’s not useful for making nukes with.
Still radioactive, it’s basically hazardous waste… That weighs more than lead.
So you put it in munitions, and the same size projectile has more force, more stopping power. So you get more damage out of each round, plus convenient disposal of toxic waste, plus the radiological contamination around your targets, which either ties up more resources or gives the people you’re shooting at cancer later. Or both! Or your own guys! veritable carnival of excitement
But this is weird because drones arent projectiles in that sense. This is pretty much equivalent to putting very slightly radioactive lead ballast in a drone. All it is doing is slowing the drone down and reducing it’s range. Very odd.
If they’re not expecting the drones to return, this could be a ‘salting the earth’ tactic.
Its a terrible way of doing that though, if you wanted to do that there are far lighter materials (i.e. you can carry more) and you’d disperse it as a powder from altitude.
Like I said, its weird.
I’m not surprised it makes little sense. Remember this was/is a “Special military operation”. Emphasis on Special…
They’re putting it in the munitions on the drones
Ah, I misunderstood. Its a missile ON another missile (the one way drone) for shooting down other drones that try and take it down and that missile has a usually tungsten fragment warhead which is being replaced with DU.
Still weird but not completely baffling in that case.
The drone is a kamikaze drone. It delivers the warhead and destroys itself.
The uranium is armor piercing. That’s why they use it.
As I said, drones arent projectiles in that sense.
A uranium (or tungsten, or even jacketed lead) dart hitting a target straight on with a sharp point while going multiple times the speed of sound is armour penetrating. Just putting a heavy metal in a subsonic aircraft carrying high explosive does nothing to help it penetrate armour and likely would impede it.
The R-60M missile uses a continuous rod warhead – the DU is apparently included for “enhanced fragmentation”.
The west has been using depleted uranium for years, Israel loves it
Thats just a side effect. The primary purpose of the uranium in the warhead is its armor piercing capabilities.
Enriched uranium is expensive. Uranium ore isn’tEdit: They did not use uranium ore
This is depleted uranium, not uranium ore. It’s actual refined uranium, but not the right sort of uranium for use in fission reactions like nuclear power plants or bombs
Alright, I stand corrected. I admittedly did not read the article before commenting, so I did not know they used depleted uranium.
Although my point about uranium ore being cheap is still technically correct 🤓
But it is radioactive. But given the mess around Chernobyl, drop in a bucket.
For armor piercing capabilities. And no it’s cheap because it’s radioactive and isn’t useful for very many things.
Lots of awful things about war. This is one in the endless list.
Depleted uranium warheads for extra spicy impacts.
Lots of people didn’t read the article…lots of bad replies here.
"Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) documented six more cases of Russian forces using munitions with uranium components against Ukraine, found in Geran-2 attack drones that struck Chernihiv Oblast between April and June 2026.
… Russia mounts old Soviet R-60 air-to-air missiles on the Geran-2 drones, and the uranium sits in those missiles’ warheads. The purpose is the arms race in the sky: the R-60 turns a strike drone into an air-to-air weapon meant to kill the Ukrainian aircraft and helicopters that intercept incoming drone swarms. What the SBU is now documenting is that the radioactive warhead configuration is not a one-off but a recurring feature of the strikes."
The uranium is in the warhead for armor piercing capabilities. Everything hit by it then becomes radioactive. And because of the setup, the drone parts that remain especially are radioactive because it is a kamikaze attack. The uranium explodes out in all directions.
It’s depleted uranium, the US used things like these in the middle east, maybe not launched from a drone but same concept.
I assume it’s for fragmentation to hit the planes that are often employed to hunt down the drones. Drone swarms already include duds to distract the defenses, then they started adding duds with tiny explosive charges, then it became apparent that planes getting hit by the explosions of drones they were shooting down was a significant threat, so I guess they added shrapnel to make it more likely to happen. Depleted uranium isn’t that unusual in warfare, it’s mostly used for its density.
US dumped 2,200 tonnes of radioactive uranium rounds in Iraq.
Make Moscow radioactive till this stops.
