Russia’s 40-Tube Grad Launcher Goes Up in Flames After Precision Drone Hit, Video

Ukraine’s 68th Separate Brigade destroyed a Russian multiple-launch rocket system in a drone strike on July 20, with footage showing the vehicle erupting in powerful secondary detonations.

The strike was carried out by the brigade’s unmanned systems battalion.

“The Dovbush Hornets know how to make an MLRS a good one. The recipe is the same, and so is its physical state,” the unit wrote.

The brigade declared the launcher “out of the race,” describing the explosions that followed as “another detonating salute.”

The vehicle seen in the video resembles the widely used Soviet-designed BM-21 Grad, although its exact model has not been officially confirmed.

The BM-21 Grad—its name meaning “Hail”—is among the world’s most widely deployed multiple-launch rocket systems. Developed in the early 1960s, it entered Soviet service in 1963 and has since appeared in wars around the globe.

Mounted on a Ural-4320 high-mobility truck, the system carries 40 launch tubes for 122mm rockets. It can fire its entire salvo in roughly 20 seconds, saturating an area of up to 14.5 hectares.

Depending on the ammunition, the Grad can strike targets up to 40 kilometers, or about 25 miles, away. Its crew can reload the launcher in approximately seven minutes and leave its firing position within about a minute of completing a salvo.

Previously, Ukrainian drone operators destroyed a full battery of Russian BM-21 Grad multiple launch rocket systems on the Pokrovsk axis, in what appears to be a coordinated strike involving multiple units.

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