A fragmentation grenade is an anti-personnel weapon

Anti-personnel weapon

An anti-personnel weapon is one primarily used to incapacitate people, as opposed to attacking structures or vehicles.The development of defensive fortification and combat vehicles gave rise to weapons designed specifically to attack them, and thus a need to distinguish between those systems and...

 that is designed to disperse shrapnel

Fragmentation (weaponry)

Fragmentation is the process by which the casing of an artillery shell, bomb, grenade, etc. is shattered by the detonating high explosive filling. The correct technical terminology for these casing pieces is fragments , although shards or splinters can be used for non-preformed fragments...

 upon exploding. The body is made of hard plastic or steel. Flechettes, notched wire, ball bearings or the case itself provide the fragments. When the word grenade is used without specification, and context does not suggest otherwise, it is generally assumed to refer to a fragmentation grenade.

These grenades were sometimes classed as defensive grenades because the effective casualty radius of some matched or exceeded the distance they could be thrown, thus necessitating them being thrown from behind cover. The Mills bomb

Mills bomb

Mills bomb is the popular name for a series of prominent British hand grenades. They were the first modern fragmentation grenades in the world.-Overview:...

 or F1 grenade are examples of defensive grenades where the 30–45 m casualty radius matched or exceeded the 30 m that a grenade could reasonably be thrown. An example of offensive use is that Soviet Army

Soviet Army

The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...

 paratroopers during the cold war

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 were trained to throw fragmentation grenades from an altitude of about 100 m if the ground below them was held by enemy forces.

Modern fragmentation grenades such as the United States M67 grenade

M67 grenade

The M67 grenade is a fragmentation hand grenade used by the United States Military and Canadian Forces, where it is referred to as the C13. The M67 is a replacement for the M61 grenade used during Vietnam and the older Mk 2 "pineapple" grenade used since World War II.-Composition:The M67 Grenade...

have a wounding radius of 15 m (half that of older style grenades, which can still be encountered) and can be thrown about 40 m. Fragments may travel more than 200 m.