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from the sharks-with-frickin-swords-on-their-heads dept.
Submitted via IRC for carny
This Photo Proves How The Hellfire Missile That Uses Blades Instead Of Explosives Works
After the most recent known use of the AGM-114R9X Hellfire missile, a weapon that uses blades instead of explosives to kill its target with minimal collateral damage, literally smashing and slicing through them, evidence of exactly how the bizarre weapon works has come to light. Imagery from the scene of the attack, located less than 10 miles from where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in Syria, shows what appears to be the core of the weapon and its deadly appendages. It appears to be a gruesome, but stunningly effective device.
The image, seen at the top of this story, shows a thick central hub structure that would act as a penetrator with six swing-out skeletonized blades. Basically, anything in the radius of the blades would die.
[...] The payload area is roughly a foot and a half long and let's say the swords are roughly the same length, this would provide about a three and a half foot diameter kill zone, which is similar to what we see in the images of the vehicles that have been struck. It is the ultimate precision air-to-ground weapon—surgical both in metaphor and application.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday December 10 2019, @06:13AM (5 children)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @06:31AM (2 children)
Hell, 100lbs of marshmallows traveling at 1600kph impacting .5m away would have a high probability of lethality in the right surroundings.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Tuesday December 10 2019, @05:17PM (1 child)
"He died a delicious death."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @11:23PM
"Marshmallowed be thy name"
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday December 10 2019, @11:51AM (1 child)
Yup, and that photo really doesn't show anything except the standard twisted mass of metal you get when an object flying at high speed ploughs into something on the ground. You could label it "Remains of MH17" and it'd be just as informative. For all we know this was a bog-standard Hellfire whose warhead didn't detonate. Or maybe something slightly exotic like a continous-rod warhead that didn't detonate.
As you point out, you don't need some exotic sword-flinging dervish weapon, anything hitting at a high enough speed will cause considerable damage.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @01:54PM
Considering that the original Israeli version was just a Hellfire with a dummy warhead and that it could easily scrap a car, I must agree with you.