
America's Missile That Uses Sword Blades Instead of Explosives Has Struck Again - clouddrover
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31375/americans-hellfire-missile-that-uses-swords-instead-of-explosives-struck-again-in-syria
======
nwallin
Regarding man in the loop: if you're a bystander, (and not the target) you
want a drone attacking the primary target as opposed to a manned platform.

With a manned platform, you have a chance of getting hit by a platform with a
rear weapons officer, (F-15E, F/A-18) to verify minimal bystanders. But
they're probably concentrating on not missing. Or you can get hit by a single
occupancy aircraft (F-16, F-35) who will be dropping pre programmed ordinance.

With a drone, you have three separate teams of people watching the video
steam. Anyone in that loop can say, "hey there are a lot of civilians here"
and everything's on pause until the target moves.

And now we have an explosiveless munition with limited opportunities for
collateral damage and this outlet is falling over themselves talking about
gruesome it is.

Having worked in the field makes me really sick of ignorant journalists
reporting on it. The outrage the antiwar press tends to carry makes their
ignorance more annoying than the journalists talking about AGI, quantum
computing, or deep learning.

~~~
ghettoimp
I want to agree with you, insofar as that being outraged over what appears to
be a more precise weapon makes very little sense.

On the other hand, it still seems horrible to kill people by remote control.
Supposing it becomes possible to very, very precisely kill exactly who you
want, from far away, with no judicial process, etc., is this good?

War should be painful for both sides, because if it is not, what stops us from
engaging in it?

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Supposing it becomes possible to very, very precisely kill exactly who you
> want, from far away, with no judicial process, etc., is this good?

This is only possible if the killing happens in total secrecy. The court of
public opinion is a judicial process, and an important one, despite having
only informal procedures.

~~~
yabadabadoes
The court of public opinion is open to desensitization and gaming. You can
actually reach the point where people are killed merely to test limits within
a safe backlash or to keep the public desensitized.

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remotecool
This is a good thing. Less casualties than what happens with explosive
warheads.

~~~
jcims
Yes and the past few articles I've seen about these have actually been largely
(and pleasantly) impartial. Unfortunately this hasn't stopped my from
reflexively scrutinizing them for some angle.

~~~
x86_64Ubuntu
Someone is dead, and by state actors. It's not wrong to scrutinize deaths
ordered by the state.

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tim333
For comparison a car being taken out by an old Hellfire missile
[https://youtu.be/dLv-7zqHdF4?t=12](https://youtu.be/dLv-7zqHdF4?t=12)

The old one was really overkill for a couple of guys in a car, more designed
to be used against tanks and probably sent shrapnel a considerable distance.

~~~
torstenvl
It can be, but I've seen people walk away from a Hellfire vehicle strike. My
guess in that particular video is that there was a secondary explosion from
the gas tank.

~~~
phaus
Weird shit happens with explosives. My friend I deployed with has a foot long
piece of shrapnel that almost hit him and a couple other people.

Could be a gas tank though.

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seriesf
The article's assertion that a man-guided weapon would somehow be more
accurate and consistent than a computer-guided weapon following a target-
designating laser strikes me as needing some supporting arguments.

~~~
torstenvl
It isn't that a manually guided weapon is inherently more accurate, it's that
manual guidance requires real-time video, which allows more eyeballs.

When the spotter identifies a building, and someone else tries to correlate
that description to a set of coordinates, and then a GBU is dropped to those
coordinates... human error can lead to target mismatch, resulting in terrible
tragedies like the Kunduz hospital incident.

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RickJWagner
The accompanying 'explanation' article suggests such a missile would kill
anyone within 3.5 feet of landing.

I'd need to go measure, but it seems the driver of a car and a passenger
seated in the back seat (opposite the driver) would not both be killed. So it
should be aimed _at maybe one or two people_ , while others in the car might
live.

Pretty amazing. Reduced deaths are a good thing, and it diminishes the value
of innocent 'human shield' usage.

~~~
jcims
I think that's 3.5' radius (edit:wrong). Both hits I've seen online have been
center-punched in the middle of the roof of the car...amazing precision.

~~~
thaumasiotes
The article is ambiguous on this:

> the missile, which is roughly three and a half feet wide when its blades are
> extended

That really sounds like a diameter and not a radius. But on the other hand:

> Supposedly, three people were killed in the vehicle when the bladed weapon
> smashed through the roof of the vehicle.

~~~
sq_
From an earlier article on the same site [0]:

> The payload area is roughly a foot and a half long and let's say the swords
> are roughly the same length, this would provide about a three and a half
> foot diameter kill zone, which is similar to what we see in the images of
> the vehicles that have been struck.

So it seems like 3.5ft diameter is The Warzone/The Drive's best guess based on
the length of a standard Hellfire and the vehicle damage.

[0] [https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31310/this-photo-
prove...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31310/this-photo-proves-how-
the-hellfire-missile-that-uses-blades-instead-of-explosives-works)

------
Invictus0
I don't really understand how it works. Do the blades move? Are the blades
deployed just before impact or after? Or is it basically a sword-wielding
boring machine that cuts through the target with sheer speed?

~~~
chrsstrm
It's likely something similar to how mechanical broadheads work. The blades
are situated so that in flight they are held closed with a small plastic
retaining ring but on impact with the target the blades cam open. It's very
low-tech but very effective. Here's some slow-mo shots of mechanicals in
action:

[https://youtu.be/6dv1QySWQ6I](https://youtu.be/6dv1QySWQ6I)

[https://youtu.be/PZjEhk-CkKc](https://youtu.be/PZjEhk-CkKc)

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lykr0n
This is a good thing. Surgical strikes will have lower casualties.

The amount of precision required to kill a moving vehicle without harming
other vehicles is impressive.

~~~
astine
Hopefully it'll result in fewer innocent deaths. Though I can still see ways
for this to go wrong. Become overconfident in our ability to hit a target and
then miss. Not to mention, a lot of the innocent casualties of American
bombing haven't come from using bombs but from just picking the wrong target
to begin with.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Sure, but if they miss (or pick the wrong target), it's _still_ fewer innocent
casualties.

~~~
astine
Oh sure. I'd rather they shoot this at someone than a fricken hellfire
missile. But how much did it cost to develop? We still have the possibility
that just assassinating people from the sky at all creates more terrorists
than it kills. In which case we're expeding a lot of effort to solve the wrong
problem.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
It's my impression that the _collateral damage_ was creating more terrorists.
I'm not sure that just "death from above" of terrorists is the issue.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
In the absence of any really really convincing evidence to the contrary, it
seems like remote control assassinations by a foreign power actively work
against winning the hearts and minds of the local populace. Unless the locals
getting assassinated are truly despised by everyone around them. After all,
they have to take it as a matter of faith that they themselves can't possibly
be "wrongly" targeted, and precedent suggests otherwise

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jay_kyburz
warning: very graphic video embedded in post with shredded bodies.

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cyberferret
Don't most air to air (or surface to air) missiles operate on a similar
principle? The explosive warhead itself is not usually what destroys the enemy
aircraft, but rather, the warhead is set to detonate within _proximity_ of the
enemy plane, releasing a bunch of metal shrapnel that acts like a spinning
buzzsaw and literally shreds nearby aircraft to pieces (look at pictures of
the recovered MH17 wreckage for evidence of this pattern).

~~~
bart_spoon
This isn't shrapnel. Most bombs involve some kind of killing power via
shrapnel. This one doesn't even seem to explode. It just extends six, 3 foot
long swords from the main body prior to impact, dicing everything in the
immediate radius. Precisely because of the lack of shrapnel/explosion, the
risk of collateral damage to nearby people is supposedly greatly reduced. As
long as you aren't within the killing radius of the blades, you theoretically
shouldn't be harmed.

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whyenot
I'm not a fan of targeted assassinations, but if the US is going to do them,
at least with a weapon like this they can largely avoid the injury and death
of innocent bystanders.

~~~
TomMckenny
I know targeted assassination is frowned on but I don't know why. Surely
leaders trying to assassinate each other is better than sending teenagers to
die by the thousands while the leaders stay home and benefit.

~~~
dx87
In theory, requiring full scale war disincentivizes war, so a peaceful
solution is more likely. If targeted assassinations became the norm, you'd
probably end up in a scenario where the country with the most advanced
assassination techniques could exert much more influence since they wouldn't
have to try and justify it to their own population. The most powerful country
would basically be a vengeful god; completely untouchable and capable of
smiting anyone that doesn't fall in line.

~~~
DubiousPusher
As opposed to the amazing world where the nation with the ability to field the
biggest and best conventional force is the hegemon. I'm struggling to see the
ethical difference.

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onetimemanytime
coming soon: cars with 4 inch steel plates welded on roof.

~~~
seriesf
An anti-tank kinetic energy round (non-explosive) can penetrate foot-thick
armor when fired horizontally, much more when fired straight down from an
aircraft.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Nobody is firing an anti-tank KE round out of a drone. If an AC-130 is
shooting at you well then you have other problems. For someone who is
particularly concerned about this threat model it wouldn't be hard to stick a
concealed plate in the roof. Probably won't stop the missile but will probably
prevent the "blades" from coming through or at least prevent them from coming
through expanded.

~~~
seriesf
I was mostly lampooning the threat model implied by base-model Hyundai with
4-inch solid steel roof, but why can't an MQ-9 fire a KE weapon? Aren't they
light and compact compared to the 500-pound munitions the MQ-9 is capable of
delivering? People think "drone" and don't realize the MQ-9 is bigger than the
A-10.

~~~
onetimemanytime
They can. They can also fire "bombs" but we're talking about this particular
weapon. It all depends how it was designed, for all we know it was designed to
just penetrate a normal car roof. It might be a cat and mouse game for a
while, and the cost of adding some sort of armor is virtually zero for them.
Who knows, it might work.

Pretty sure they can also make a missile that fires 20 30mm rounds, 10 yards
or whatever distance is needed to pepper the entire car, before crashing in
the car.

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tehjoker
Glad it's more precise in theory, but a) why are we fighting again? b) So
often they kill the wrong person anyway because it's so easy for them to kill,
why bother with being extra careful on the confirmation? c) Trump, in 2017,
loosened further the already weak safeguards on conducting strikes, so the
number of civilian casualties has increased. d) Why are we fighting again?

EDIT: 2018 -> 2017, my how time flies.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170414143558/https://www.nytim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170414143558/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/us/politics/rules-
of-engagement-military-force-mattis.html)

~~~
x86_64Ubuntu
The narrative direction for "drone strike tech" doesn't really allow us to ask
"what is this for again". The main direction of the narrative is supposed to
be "wow, look at how many more "terrorists" we can kill without killing
civilians". Of course, the whole process for who and how someone gets slapped
with the plastic term "terrorist" and how it's decided they should die isn't
to be brought into the picture.

~~~
tehjoker
Yea, that's why it's so important to remind people when these gee whiz tech
articles come out that this is just literally war propaganda for a 100%
illegal war.

