New al-Qaida threat: Thermobaric bombs

New al-Qaida threat: Thermobaric bombs

worldnetdaily.com

FROM JOSEPH FARAH'S G2 BULLETIN
New al-Qaida threat: Thermobaric bombs
Packs power like a nuke, but easier to build, blow up

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Posted: September 29, 2008
5:40 pm Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

The bomb was delivered in a truck that contained what investigators believe was aluminum powder in addition to grenades and artillery shells. The aluminum power is believed to have been responsible for the accelera...

(visit the link for the full news article)

Wow! All you have to do is add metal powder? I don't know if its wise to share this kind of easy to use dangerous information. Heck, I might even try my hand at it :lol

I bet copycats will be springing up all over.

Some curious miscreants may want to experiment with this.

It's as easy as those foodstuffs you can buy from a grocery that says "just add water."

worldnetdaily.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I don't know if you know this, but powdered aluminium is the main ingredient in solid rocket fuel. If it's powdered fine enough it's highly explosive.

I really don't recommend you trying to buy some though, I'm sure you would come under immediate investigation

Interesting. I was wondering how the bomb had such a wide area of destruction and after reading about the metal powder, it seems like a logical concept as metal powder would transfer heat more effectively than air...especially aluminum which has excellent thermal properties.
I wonder how copper would fare or if aluminum is used because it is lighter and would travel further given the same energy? Then again, a heavier element would most likely carry more ballistic potential, but it sounds like someone's already done the legwork on this.

edit: I see as the post above mentioned, being explosive might have something to do with why they use aluminum powder also. Yeah, that'll work.

I think metal can be vaporized into a gaseous state. Metal gasses would be more dense than the gas created by the explosion, so it probably has implications on the compression wave as well. Perhaps more energy is conserved by using lighter particles as well which allows the blast wave to propagate as it normally would where adding all kinds of shrapnel would absorb energy from the initial blast and turn it into kinetic energy.

I am pretty sure they developed thermobarics for use as cavebusters...fill the cavity with lots of heat and pressure.

As fascinating as bomb chemistry is, I still consider it one of the dark arts. Bad mojo.

[edit on 30-9-2008 by 4N6310]

Thermobaric weapons are basically staged runaway chemical reactions
that use an aerosolized fuel and air mixture to magnify the percussive
effect of a secondary explosive.

It's not really a secret and you can use ANY aerosolized material
including coal dust, grain dust, and even flour which was the cause
of a NUMBER of destructive explosions in Early-American Industrial
society (i.e. pre-1900) ... Even today people HAVE TO BE CAREFUL
when handling vaporous/volatile fuels such as Propane & Natural Gas,
or Gasoline in nearly empty tanks or workers trouncing around
in dusty grain elevators or flour mills because a spark at the wrong
time can really ruin your day with a thermobaric-like explosion.

Modern FAE (Fuel Air Explosive) weapons used multi-stage
explosions to allow a primary fuel to disperse and aerosolize
and a secondary delayed explosion to ignite the dispersed fuel
within either an enclosed space (such as a cave or bunker)
or within canyons or lower terrain to magnify the BOOM
to as to tear bodies to bloody shreds or to obliterate
bricks & mortar structures into so much rubble!

They're effective, deadly and since they're fairly easy to make
from common materials, need to be watched carefully if such
an attack is contemplated. I do understand that simple water
sprays MAY (Not sure) be enough to disrupt an aerosolized
mixture so I suggest you hope for rain....or use the giant
rain towers used by movie studios to fake rain in order
to protect any major event.

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Thought i'd interject into this conversation because I absolutely
have nothing better to do than waste the night away on a computer
unable to sleep....:-(

reply to post by 4N6310


From what i remember on the discovery channel, copper tends to 'spall' at high temperature, turning into a molten projectile which can penetrate the armour of tanks etc and bounce around the inside killing anything in its path, sounds too volatile to be used as an accelerant but ideal for peircing / shrapnel purposes.

We've all probably seen video of the "MoaB" (Mother of all Bombs) known as the daisy cutter. It contains aluminum powder as well. It's a big physical item too, delivered by parachute. So, the use of aluminum powder is well know - trouble is, if they're just starting to use it, then that means someone in their organization is getting smarter and starting to do even more reserch - so we may start to see even more of these in the streets.

so now `al-ciada` has the ability to make the very alest US weapon types does it....

Originally posted by Thebudweiserstuntman
reply to post by 4N6310

 

From what i remember on the discovery channel, copper tends to 'spall' at high temperature, turning into a molten projectile which can penetrate the armour of tanks etc and bounce around the inside killing anything in its path, sounds too volatile to be used as an accelerant but ideal for peircing / shrapnel purposes.

Gotchya, so that's why they tend to use copper discs for EFP IEDs(explosively formed projectile improvised explosive devices).
I guess the aluminum just ignites.

Not that I am planning on doing this, but I think it would be nice to use a powder that smells really good like strawberries, vanilla or something like that.
*POP* "*sniff*Mmmm is that strawberry shortcake that I smell?" *BOOOM!*

Perhaps they shouldn't allow me to make weapons...

you could call it the 'trickle-down' of technology, from Hezbollah using remote-control planes as UAVs to AQ now suspected of building crude FAEs

once the info-genie is out of the bottle, it's almost impossible to get it back in

Originally posted by yellowbeard
I don't know if you know this, but powdered aluminium is the main ingredient in solid rocket fuel. If it's powdered fine enough it's highly explosive.

I really don't recommend you trying to buy some though, I'm sure you would come under immediate investigation

Not if you are an artist, making your own paints. Say, from an art store.

But it's the Iron Oxide that gets everyone all the time. I mean, if you could only drop steel wool into a jar of water to make iron oxide, then it would be easy.

OMG! Did I say that stuff out loud?

[edit on 30-9-2008 by sir_chancealot]

Look, while aluminum powder will conflagrate and can indeed release a lot of energy, it is a far cry from a true thermobaric weapon in the modern sense of the word. The key element of the technology is an effective and optimal dispersal and timing, and that's simply not achievable in a crude device. It's like a difference between a nuke and a dirty bomb.

I think the article is heavy on sensationalism.

Aluminium powder and anything else?

Are we talking a thermate bomb here?

Not really a 'new' Al Qaida threat...

en.wikipedia.org...

Thermobaric and fuel-air explosives have been used by terrorists since the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing in Lebanon which used a gas-enhanced explosive mechanism, probably propane, butane or acetylene.[5] The explosive used by the bombers in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was based on the FAE principle, using three tanks of bottled hydrogen gas to enhance the blast.[6]In 2002, Jemaah Islamiyah bombers used a shocked dispersed solid fuel charge[7], based on the thermobaric principle, to attack the Sari nightclub in the 2002 Bali bombings.[8]

I really enjoy how the article describes itself as a paraphrase of the 'real' article you can access for 99 dollars a year.

I ahave also never been a fan of the 'news' presented by WorldNetDaily...
en.wikipedia.org...

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WND has been criticized as unreliable[12][13] and "far-right,"[14] and critics have referred to it as WorldNutDaily.[15] Notably, WND columnist Jerome Corsi was criticized for his publications, and Farah has defended him.[16]

Personally, I find it hard to believe that Al Qaida were the perpetrators of the attack in Pakistan. But then again, I am under the belief that Al Qaida is a CIA fallacy...
So maybe they did do it...
DocMoreau