British pilots in Afghanistan are firing an increasing number of "enhanced blast" thermobaric weapons, designed to kill everyone in buildings they strike, the Ministry of Defence has revealed.
Since the start of this year more than 20 of the US-designed missiles, which have what is officially described as a "blast fragmentation warhead", have been fired by pilots of British Apache attack helicopters. A total of 20 were also fired last year after they were bought by the MoD from the Americans last May.
The missiles are a variant of the AGM-114N Hellfire missile, described by the Pentagon as "designed to produce higher sustained blast pressure in multi-room structures.
Scary stuff, Tony but the NYT has admitted that a recent US massacre may have been 'against the rules':http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_military_made_mistakes_in_Afghan_airstrikes_NYT_999.html
ReplyDelete@ Benji.
ReplyDeleteThe AFP news agency claims the defence department has tried to release an unclassified summary of the investigation as well as a video but has been hampered by the desires of the top military officers to edit the final version.The 'investigation' report is being delayed as a result.