R6 Gadgets and Utility Guide (2026): Every Secondary Gadget

Guns win duels; utility wins rounds. Every operator in Rainbow Six Siege carries a unique ability and a choice of general gadgets, and the team that spends its utility in the right order usually beats the team with better aim. This guide covers the fourteen general gadgets that appear across Ubisoft's operator pages in Siege X, what each one is for, how defenders and attackers stack them, the anti-gadget tools that remove them, the map's own destructible "ingredients", the two neutral elements, fire and electricity, and the order an execute spends its utility in. The values are current for Operation Split Fire up to the Y11S3.3 patch of 3 November 2026.

The fourteen general gadgets

General gadgets (also called secondary gadgets) sit next to each operator's unique ability. You don't pick freely from all seven: Ubisoft's operator pages list two or three per operator — Thermite gets Smoke and Stun Grenades, Fuze a Hard Breach Charge and a Smoke Grenade, Mute a Bulletproof Camera and a Nitro Cell, Wamai a Deployable Shield, a Proximity Alarm and a Nitro Cell. What each one does, with values from Ubisoft's notes and the community wiki:

Two of these changed hands this season. Operation Split Fire took Dokkaebi's Impact EMP Grenades away and gave her Breach Charges, and Thatcher no longer throws EMP grenades at all: his Y10S4 remaster replaced them with the E.G.S. Disruptor, which finds electronic devices through walls and shuts them off.

Attack utility: what each grenade is for

Attack utility has five jobs, and a good team brings at least one tool for each. This is how our coaches group them:

Defence utility: building a site

Defensive gadgets work best stacked. One Barbed Wire slows an attacker; a wire in a doorway behind a Deployable Shield, watched by a Bulletproof Camera, makes that doorway a death trap. The values worth knowing, from the community wiki and Ubisoft:

The seventh, the Observation Blocker, projects a barrier that only drones and cameras can see: it hides traps, fortifications and positions from the attackers' intel. IQ's Electronics Detector finds it, and an EMP, explosives or gunfire destroy it. Our defense setup guide puts these into full site setups.

Anti-gadget: removing the other team's utility

Every gadget can be removed, and some operators exist to do exactly that. Ubisoft tags them Anti-Gadget. The ones you will meet most in Split Fire:

The anti-gadget fight is mostly about timing. Our coaches' rule: attackers clear the denial right before the gadget that needs the wall to be clear, not at the start of the round, because a defender who sees his battery die has time to replace it. Ubisoft's Bandit page says the same from the other side: count the EMPs and Twitch drones you have seen and be ready to redeploy.

The map is utility too

Siege X added destructible "ingredients" to the maps, and System Override's modernized Emerald Plains, Kanal and Outback added more. Ubisoft describes three:

Think of them as free gadgets that belong to whoever uses them first. A defender can shoot an extinguisher to smoke and concuss an attacker pushing past it; an attacker can shoot a gas pipe to block a rotation with fire. Ubisoft notes the AI in its Versus AI modes reacts to them but doesn't use them; human players should.

Fire and electricity, the neutral elements

Two effects in Siege now belong to nobody. Since Siege X, electricity "will destroy any device that touches it" regardless of team, and it no longer injures operators: it slows them instead. Fire works the same way, and the Y11S3.2 patch (13 October 2026) raised its damage from 12 to 14 HP to make standing in or crossing fire more punishing. The patch lists every source of fire:

Two practical consequences. First, don't put your own gadgets near your own electricity or fire. Second, fire is now a real zoning tool: a Goyo canister or a Capitão bolt on a plant spot buys more time than it did in September. The Y11S3.3 notes also fixed a bug where some throwable gadgets stayed deactivated after a disrupt-electronics effect wore off, so an EMP'd gadget now really does come back.

Spending utility in order

The most common utility mistake isn't a bad throw. It's a good throw at the wrong time. Our coaches' execute order for attack, which the infographic below lays out with the gadgets for each step:

1. 01 IntelDrone the site and the denial

   You can't clear what you haven't found. See the drone guide.

2. 02 ClearRemove the denial on the wall

   Disruptor, Shock Drone, Kludge Drone or EMP, right before the breach.

3. 03 IsolateSmoke the angles onto the breacher

   Nobody swings a wall they can't see through.

4. 04 BreachOpen the wall or hatch

   Hard breach, then the soft walls around it.

5. 05 EnterStun, then swing

   Flash right before the entry; a frag for the corner you can't clear.

6. 06 Plant + holdSmoke the plant, Claymore the flank

   Then hold the angles onto the defuser.

What changed this season

Gadget values move with almost every patch. The utility changes in Operation Split Fire so far, newest first:

Ubisoft's 2 November 2026 Community Checkpoint says the small mid-season "refinement" patches like Y11S3.3 end here: from Y11S4, the .1 and .3 patches will carry fewer but bigger changes. Check our Y11S4 guide when the new season lands.

Common utility mistakes

Utility connects every part of the game. The reinforcements and rotations guide covers the hard-breach fight in detail, the attack strategy guide builds full executes, and operator roles explained shows which operators bring which specialty.