THERMOBARIC TERRORISTS?

The ther­mo­baric bomb is just about the most vicious weapon you can imag­ine — ignit­ing the air, suck­ing the oxy­gen out of an enclosed area, and cre­at­ing a mas­sive pres­sure wave crush­ing any­thing unfor­tu­nate enough to have lived through the con­fla­gra­tion.
So pray — pray hard — that this Defense News story is all wrong:

Thermobaric bombs, which the U.S. mil­i­tary is striv­ing to per­fect, may also be emerg­ing as a weapon of choice for ter­ror­ists, accord­ing to a bomb expert at Battelle, a research insti­tute…
There have been no attacks with ther­mo­baric bombs in the United States, but their use is sus­pected in many ter­ror­ist bomb­ings in Russia and other coun­tries and proven in a few cases, said Tom Burky, Battelles top explo­sives expert.
Thermobarics use an explo­sion to ignite fuel, often metal­lic fuel such as alu­minum. The burn­ing fuel cre­ates a slower and more sus­tained shock wave than a con­ven­tional explo­sion, which makes it bet­ter at break­ing down walls and destroy­ing peo­ple and equip­ment, Burky said.
Thermobaric explo­sives have been used… for decades by non-​​NATO mil­i­taries. In the 1960s, the for­mer Soviet Union devel­oped a vari­ety of ther­mo­baric weapons, includ­ing shoulder-​​fired weapons and artillery shells.
The U.S. mil­i­tary didnt get inter­ested in them until the 1990s. The U.S. Air Force devel­oped a big ther­mo­baric bomb to drop into caves in Afghanistan, and the Army is work­ing on a ther­mo­baric 25mm round…
Much of the infor­ma­tion about ther­mo­baric weapons has been clas­si­fied. Thats a prob­lem for home­land secu­rity first respon­ders such as police and fire­fight­ers, Burky said. They are not being pro­vided with impor­tant infor­ma­tion about ther­mo­baric weapons, such as safe stand­off dis­tances, how the much more pow­er­ful blast of a ther­mo­baric weapon would be deflected and chan­neled by build­ings and how to ren­der ther­mo­baric weapons safe, he said.

January 28th, 2004 | Ammo and Munitions | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.