America's New 'Knife Missile' Uses Six Blades To Slice Terrorists, Leaves Civilians Unharmed
One of the common complaints among opponents of the war on terror is that no matter how precise our strikes might be, they still can end up harming civilians. Well, where there’s a will, there’s a way — and that’s how the U.S. military ended up with the “knife missile.”
The “knife missile” or “ninja bomb” (depending on which nickname you think sounds cooler) is a modified Hellfire air-to-ground missile. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) on Thursday first reported its existence. The official name for it, according to the sources is the R9X.
Instead of explosives, however, the R9X uses six blades that deploy just before impact. The result is the terrorist gets sliced to ribbons while collateral damage is exponentially reduced.
“To the targeted person, it is as if a speeding anvil fell from the sky,” one source told The Journal.
However, to civilians in the vicinity, it’s almost as if nothing had happened.
In fact, another nickname for the device is the “flying Ginsu” because — much like the knife of 1980s television infomercial fame — it can slice through metal, glass and concrete with no issue.
The secret R9X missile is designed to destroy individual terrorist targets without harming surrounding civilians and could potentially kill a car’s front seat passenger without harming the driverhttps://t.co/FVhkegsStI
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) May 9, 2019
In fact, in one high-profile strike where the weapon was allegedly used, the target car’s windshield wasn’t even shattered when the blade passed through the roof.
The R9X was developed as part of a request of the Obama administration to reduce collateral damage from strikes.
It has been in development since 2011, and a version of the R9X was considered as an option to kill Osama bin Laden.
It’s only been deployed “about a half-dozen times,” The Journal reported, both by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense.
Neither the CIA nor the Pentagon would comment, but two of the strikes could be confirmed by The Journal.
The first was against Jamal al-Badawi, the al-Qaeda mastermind behind the USS Cole bombing, who was killed in January 2019 in Yemen.
Ars Technica notes that while the Pentagon has confirmed the strike against al-Badawi, it hasn’t confirmed the type of weapon used against him.
In February 2017, the website also reported, an R9X in Syria killed al-Qaeda second-in-command Ahmad Hasan Abu Khayr al-Masri.
The earlier strike may have given a clue as to the existence of the R9X; a huge hole could be seen in the roof of al-Masri’s car, but no explosion was in evidence.
One of the key takeaways of the R9X ought to be that the United States is far from barbaric in the way it wages war. Jamal al-Badawi helped mastermind an attack that killed 17 U.S. soldiers in the 2000 USS Cole bombing in Yemen. This was done indiscriminately by loading up a boat with explosives, parking it next to the Cole and detonating them.
The United States specifically developed a weapon that would minimize the risk of killing civilians during targeted air strikes. It used it against him to ensure that he and his associates were likely the only ones who would perish.
If you need to wonder who was really bloodthirsty here, you need to look no further.
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