Thermobaric weapons under fire again

War is ugly and inhumane but seemingly inevitable - there are roughly 50 wars being fought somewhere on the planet at any given time and the statistics show that we’re a long way from living peacefully together. One of the problems with warfare, is that it is inevitably conducted in areas where there are non-combatants - civilians are very fragile in a war zone. Which brings us to perhaps the most interesting story of the week. The news was put on the agenda by David Hambling in Defensetech, a military insider news service, and covers a new weapon in use by the US Marines - the SMAW-NE.

Now (Shoulder-Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapons (SMAW) have been in use for two decades, using High Explosive Anti-Armor (HEAA) rockets against tanks and High Explosive, Dual Purpose (HEDP) rockets against bunkers, masonry and concrete walls, and light armor. But it’s the new Novel Explosive (NE) rockets which are causing all the fuss. The Novel Explosive is a thermobaric charge so destructive it can be used to demolish buildings - which makes it very handy for quelling the resistance in a building full of people shooting at you.

The term "thermobaric" is derived from the effects of temperature (the Greek word "therme" means "heat") and pressure (the Greek word "baros" means "pressure") on the target. Thermobarics first disperse a flammable mist of underoxidised fuel which ignites to create a gigantic explosion of immense destructiveness. The explosion of the SMAW-NE is effective in three main ways. Firstly, it is accompanied by a massive fireball which incinerates all in its path. Secondly, it creates a massive pressure wave capable of rupturing the internal organs of all those nearby and so powerful that it can reduce load-bearing walls to rubble and bring down buildings. Finally, the explosion also sucks all the oxygen out of the air, asphyxiating anyone in the immediate vicinity . Basically, if you’re in the building when it hits, it’ll kill you.

Wired magazine wrote about thermobaric devices and the coming of this weapon a few years ago, and it quoted Human Rights Watch arms researcher, Reuben Brigety as saying, "this significantly increases the firepower that can be put in a single person's hands." "I'm not aware of any other conventional munitions used by a single person that can have the same destructive power."

Thermobaric devices are tailor-made for some situations, and there’s a much bigger BLU-118/B Thermobaric Weapon in use, which is very good against Hard and/or Deeply Buried Targets (HDBTs), and no place on Earth has more military targets tunneled in rock than Afghanistan. See these excellent diagrams showing the inventiveness of the Afghani trogolodites from the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The airblast propagation of the BLU-118/B makes it ideal for detonation within such a tunnel system and that’s what it is being used for. The BBC has an excellent diagram explaining how thermobaric bombs work.

The US Military sees thermobaric weapons as very useful and is pressing ahead with the Thermobaric Weapon Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD). This leverages existing concepts and efforts in energetic payload technology (explosives), warhead case survivability, guidance, and operational tactics.

The thermobaric weapon integrates, demonstrates and delivers an improved weapon system for the functional defeat of tunnel targets. Functional defeat refers to eliminating a facility's capability to perform its intended function, even though the structure itself may remain largely intact. It relies on denial, disruption, degradation, or destruction of one or more of the critical elements in the tunnel necessary to perform its mission (personnel, equipment, or environmental support). The demonstration will be completed this year.

The ACTD is intended to provide an improved military capability that would require fewer weapons for functional defeat, provide longer duration shutdown, compared to similar conventional attacks, and be less sensitive to intelligence gaps and uncertainties.

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