British Army deploys new weapon based on mass-killing technology
Pastor Dale Morgan
British Army deploys new weapon based on mass-killing technology*
John Byrne
Published: Thursday August 23, 2007
A new 'super-weapon' being supplied to British soldiers in Afghanistan
employs technology based on the "thermobaric" principle which uses heat
and pressure to kill people targeted across a wide air by sucking the
air out of lungs and rupturing internal organs.
The so-called "enhanced blast" weapon uses similar technology used in
the US "bunker busting" bombs and the devastating bombs dropped by the
Russians to destroy the Chechen capital, Grozny.
Such weapons are brutally effective because they first disperse a gas or
chemical agent which is lit at a second stage, allowing the blast to
fill the spaces of a building or the crevices of a cave. When the US
military deployed a version of these weapons in 2005, DefenseTech wrote
an article titled, "Marines Quiet About Brutal New Weapon."
According to the US Defense Intelligence Agency, which released a study
on thermobaric weapons in 1993, "The [blast] kill mechanism against
living targets is unique--and unpleasant.... What kills is the pressure
wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which
ruptures the lungs.… If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate,
victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the
burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and
propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as
lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as most chemical agents."
A second DIA study said, "shock and pressure waves cause minimal damage
to brain tissue... it is possible that victims of FAEs are not rendered
unconscious by the blast, but instead suffer for several seconds or
minutes while they suffocate."
"The effect of an FAE explosion within confined spaces is immense," said
a CIA study of the weapons. "Those near the ignition point are
obliterated. Those at the fringe are likely to suffer many internal, and
thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear
organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and
possibly blindness."
British defense officials told the UK Guardian that British bombs were
"different."
"They are optimized to create blast [rather than heat]", one said,
speaking on the standard condition of anonymity in Britain. The official
added that it would be misleading to call them "thermobaric."
Officials told the Guardian the new weapon was classified as a soldier
launched "light anti-structure munition" and that the bombs would be
more effective because "even when they hit the damage is limited to a
confined area."
"The continuing issue of civilian casualties in Afghanistan has enormous
importance in the battle for hearts and minds," said Liberal Democrat
leader Sir Menzies Campbell in the article. "If these weapons contribute
to the deaths of civilians then a primary purpose of the British
deployment is going to be made yet more difficult."
According to Campbell, the deployment of the weapons was not announced
to Parliament.