Terrifying Top Secret Spinning Blades?
Barbie Latza Nadeau Tue, August 2, 2022
Ausaf Newspaper for Daily Dawn/Handout via Reuters
When Ayman al-Zawahiri, the post-Osama bin Laden leader of al Qaeda, was obliterated on the balcony of a pink house in a posh-for-Kabul district in the Afghan capital, neighbors heard a bang but did not see signs of an explosion.
A neighbor who lives nearby told Reuters that she heard a loud noise on Sunday but curiously did not see the usual chaos most Kabul residents associate with a bomb or missile attack, including smoke and fire. That has led the ballistics chattering class to presume the attack was carried out by the notorious “flying Ginsu”—which is named after the iconic super-sharp Japanese knives that were heavily advertised in the 1980s. It is pretty much exactly as brutal as it sounds, slicing through walls or the roofs of vehicles to destroy its target.
The weapon—officially called an R9X Hellfire missile—seems straight out of a James Bond brainstorming session. The missile does not carry a warhead or explosives, and instead uses kinetic energy and six devastating blades to take out its target, according to a Bellingcat review of the weapon.
The precision capability of the weapon means there is less chance of collateral damage. And in fact, there were no civilians killed in the hit on Zawahiri. The telltale sign of its use is that there is no explosion. In the case of Zawahiri, 71, only the windows of the balcony, where he was standing alone, were shattered.
The U.S. does not lay claim to keeping the Hellfire “flying Ginsu” in its arsenal, but several reports in recent years seem to show indisputable evidence that they were used in precision kills in Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. This is the first suspected use in Afghanistan, according to several news reports.
The Taliban, who might have let their guard down when it came to protecting the al Qaeda chief, condemned the attack. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid called it a violation of “international principles”—which may be a little rich for the terror group that has de-fingered, enslaved, and beheaded hundreds of people.
Several sources speaking to the Associated Press and Reuters say the CIA spearheaded the intelligence work that led to the attack. Pakistan’s government tweeted on Tuesday that the U.S. did not use their intelligence or territory, nor did the attack breach Pakistani airspace.
Reuters reports that Zawahiri had been living safely in the mountains until he was moved to Kabul when the Taliban took over in the wake of the swift U.S. withdrawal last year.
Hellfire R9X missile: the drone missile with razor-sharp blades used to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri
Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a US strike last weekend, President Joe Biden announced. The US military used its 'secret weapon', the Hellfire R9X missile, to kill him. What is this missile, and when did it enter active service? Where has it been used previously?
Written by Man Aman Singh Chhina ,
Updated: August 4, 2022
In this image provided by the US Army, contactors from General Atomics load Hellfire missiles onto an MQ-1C Gray Eagle at Camp Taji, Iraq, on Feb. 27, 2011.
The US military used its ‘secret weapon’ — the Hellfire R9X missile – to kill Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri on the balcony of a safehouse in Kabul on July 31.
Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon who had a $25 million bounty on his head, had helped coordinate the September 11, 2001, attacks that had killed nearly 3,000 people.
What is the Hellfire R9X missile?
Better known in military circles as the AGM-114 R9X, the Hellfire R9X is a US-origin missile known to cause minimum collateral damage while engaging individual targets.
Also known as the ‘Ninja Missile’, this weapon does not carry a warhead and instead deploys razor-sharp blades at the terminal stage of its attack trajectory. This helps it to break through even thick steel sheets and cut down the target using the kinetic energy of its propulsion without causing any damage to the persons in the general vicinity or to the structure of the building.
The blades pop out of the missile and cut down the intended target without causing the massive damage to the surroundings which would be the case with a missile carrying an explosive warhead
When did the Hellfire missile enter active service?
The Hellfire 9RX missile is known to have been in active service since 2017. However, its existence became public knowledge two years later in 2019.
It is a variant of the original Hellfire missile family which is used in conventional form with warheads and is traditionally used from helicopters, ground-based vehicles, and sometimes small ships and fast moving vessels. For several years now, the Hellfire family of missiles, including the ‘Ninja Missile’, are armed on Combat Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or drones that the US Military uses in offensive military operations around the world.
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Where has the Hellfire missile been used on previous occasions?
In 2017, the ‘Ninja Missile’ was reportedly used to kill the then No. 2 leader of Al Qaeda, Abu Khayr Al Masri, in Syria. It was also used against other targets in Syria at around the same time. The damage caused to the vehicles which carried the targets, particularly the shredded roofs of cars, gave the first clues that a normal warhead was not used on the missile and that it had sharp blades. It has also been used against Taliban targets in Afghanistan in 2020 and again in 2022.
What is known about the other Hellfire missile variants?
Hellfire is actually an acronym for Heliborne, Laser, Fire and Forget Missile and it was developed in the US initially to target tanks from the Apache AH-64 attack helicopters. Later, the usage of these missiles spread to several other variants of helicopters and also ground and sea-based systems and drones.
Developed by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, the Hellfire missile has other variants such as ‘Longbow’ and ‘Romeo’ apart from the ‘Ninja’.
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