by ROBERT BECKHUSEN

In December, Russia created a new heavy weapons regiment based in Nizhniy Novgorod. The regiment has both “TOS-1A Solntsepek flamethrowers and the Shmel-M infantry flamethrowers,” according the Interfax news agency.

The Russian media often refers to the TOS-1A and Shmel-M as flamethrowers, but the term is a bit of a misnomer in English. This hardware has little in common with those rare, flame-spewing weapons.

Instead, these are thermobaric launchers which propel a fuel-air round.

The round disperses a flammable cloud, which then ignites. The main targets are bunkers, caves and buildings—pretty much any enclosed space. These mixtures can burn, but they mainly kill through blast pressure and sucking out the oxygen from confined areas.

In 2014, the Kremlin announced three other new thermobaric units—one based in Volgograd Oblast and another in Ingushetia, according to the military news site VPK. The third unit formed in Sevastopol after the Russian invasion of Crimea.

In total, that makes four new “flamethrower” units created in a year.

The Shmel-M is a shoulder-launched thermobaric weapon. The TOS-1A is a multiple-rocket launcher mounted on a T-72 tank chassis. It can fire 24 220-millimeter rockets each packing a 100-kilogram warhead. The rockets’ range is about six kilometers.

It’s a ludicrously destructive—although comparatively short-range—piece of artillery … and it just looks mean.

But here’s another unusual fact. The regiments in Nizhniy Novgorod, Volgograd, Crimea and Ingushetia are nuclear, chemical and biological defense units. Besides rocket launchers, they have mobile laboratories and specialized vehicles for sniffing out and sanitizing contaminated areas.