The Problem
A Customer Needed Fire.
Delivered From the Air.
The requirement was specific — a payload that could be carried and released by a small commercial drone, survive the drop, initiate reliably at ground impact, and produce enough sustained heat to ignite target materials.
No electrical connections. No complex fuzing. Simple, low-cost, repeatable. The kind of problem that looks straightforward until you start working through the physics of impact initiation, burn rate, and payload geometry at small scale.
OTH solved it. The result was a fin-stabilized, impact-initiated incendiary device that burns at 4,000°F for more than 20 seconds — enough time to do the work it was designed to do.
The Approach
Simple Methods.
Effective Results.
The initiation system uses simple inertial mechanics — no electronics, no batteries, no signal required. The device arms during flight and initiates on contact with the ground. Reliability comes from the physics, not from complexity.
The housing was 3D printed — fin-stabilized for consistent nose-down orientation during drop. Safety pins prevent inadvertent initiation during handling and deployment. The incendiary payload was selected and sized to meet the burn temperature and duration requirements within the weight and volume constraints of the target drone platform.
This project established the OTH approach to R&D — iterate, test, refine. Build what works, not what looks good on paper.
