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Army 'vacuum' missile hits Taliban Michael Smith - June 22, 2008 British forces in Afghanistan
have used one of the world's most deadly and controversial missiles to fight
the Taliban. Apache attack helicopters have
fired the thermobaric weapons against fighters in buildings and caves, to
create a pressure wave which sucks the air out of victims, shreds their
internal organs and crushes their bodies. The Ministry of Defence (MoD)
has admitted to the use of the weapons, condemned by human rights groups as
"brutal", on several occasions, including against a cave complex. The use of the Hellfire AGM-114N
weapons has been deemed so successful they will now be fired from RAF Reaper
unmanned drones controlled by "pilots" at Creech air force base in
Nevada, an MoD spokesman added. Thermobaric weapons, or vacuum
bombs, were first combat-tested by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s
and their use by Russia against civilians in Chechnya in the 1990s was
condemned worldwide. The secret decision to buy the
Hellfire AGM-114N missiles was made earlier this year following problems
attacking Taliban fortified positions. British Apache pilots
complained that standard Hellfire antitank missiles were going straight through
buildings and out of the other side. Even when they did explode, there were
limited casualties among the Taliban inside, particularly when a building
contained a number of rooms. American Apache pilots overcame
the problem in Iraq with the thermobaric Hellfire. The weapons are so
controversial that MoD weapons and legal experts spent 18 months debating
whether British troops could use them without breaking international law. Eventually, they decided to get
round the ethical problems by redefining the weapons. "We no longer accept the
term thermobaric [for the AGM-114N] as there is no internationally agreed
definition," said an MoD spokesman. "We call it an enhanced blast
weapon." The redefinition has allowed
British forces to use the weapons legally, but is undermined by the publicity
of their manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, which markets them as thermobaric. When the American military
bought them in 2005, President George W Bush said: "There are going to be
some awfully surprised terrorists when the thermobaric Hellfire comes
knocking." Despite the Bush rhetoric, it
is unlikely anyone targeted by the missile would know much about it. The laser-guided
missile has a warhead packed with fluorinated aluminium powder surrounding a
small charge. When it hits the target, the
charge disperses the aluminium powder throughout the target building. The cloud
then ignites, causing a massive secondary blast that tears throughout any
enclosed space. The blast creates a vacuum
which draws air and debris back in, creating pressure of up to 430lb per sq in.
The more heavily the building is protected, the more concentrated the blast. The cloud of burning aluminium powder
means victims often die from asphyxiation before the pressure shreds their
organs. Jim Gribschaw, Lockheed
Martin's programme director for air-to-ground missiles systems, said the
thermobaric Hellfire was "capable of reaching around corners to strike
enemy forces hiding in cases, bunkers and hardened multi-room complexes." Human Rights Watch argues they
are "particularly brutal" and that their blast "makes it
virtually impossible for civilians to take shelter". Nick Harvey, the Liberal
Democrat defence spokesman, said: "It is staggering the MoD has added
these weapons to Britain's arsenal in cloak-and-dagger secrecy. Parliament has
never assented to their use." He added: "Gordon Brown
claimed the moral high ground when Britain supported a ban on cluster munitions
but leaving a loophole for these weapons casts a different picture on the true
position." The MoD said: "We are
conscious of the controversial aspects [of this weapon] but it is being used
sparingly and under strict circumstances where it is deemed appropriate by the
commander on the ground." A spokesman added that it could "achieve objectives with the minimum coalition casualties and reduced collateral damage". |
