ISIL using fuel air explosives for IED's?

War Is Boring:
On July 3, 2016, Islamic State carried out its deadliest attack ever when it employed a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device — a VBIED — against crowds of people along a busy street in Karrada, Iraq.

The attack claimed the lives of 324 innocent civilians, many of them children. More than 200 additional civilians were injured in the attack.

On July 28, the BBC released an article summarizing some key characteristics of the Karrada explosion, which set it apart from other IED attacks carried out by ISIS thus far. It seems the militants deployed a new kind of bomb.

Consider — there was no visible crater at the seat of the explosion. The explosion did not cause serious structural damage to the nearest buildings. Many witnesses report sensing extreme heat after the blast. And several experts estimate that the initial blast killed 20 to 30 people, whereas the remaining 300 were killed by secondary fires.

These characteristics are unique, because they appear to indicate that ISIS did not rely exclusively on conventional explosives for the main charge in the Karrada VBIED.
...
Fuel air explosion, or FAE, weapons were designed to overcome the shortcomings of conventional explosives and are characterized by their superb incendiary effects, as well as the absence of large blast craters. They usually consist of fuel-rich gels or slurries and a “burster” that, upon detonation, disperses the fuel component as an aerosol cloud and then either ignites or detonates it.

The continual combustion of the outer layer of fuel molecules as they come into contact with the air will generate additional heat that maintains the temperature of the interior of the fireball and thus sustains the detonation. In other words, FAE weapons create a large and relatively long-lasting fireball.
...
 There is much more.

ISIL continues to develop weapons of mass murder to be used against noncombatants.  It is a further demonstration of its lack of inhibitions when it comes to killing people.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more