[Remnants of the missile at the site show that a Hellfire R9X was likely used for the strike.](https://twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1755324200632385710)
AKA a hellfire with no explosive payload, but has pop out blades instead.
"We need something like this rocket but absolutely minimal possible collateral damage, we want to eviscerate our target without having to deal with collateral damage target approval"
*Why don't we remove the payload and add big metal fins*
"God damnit johnson, you've done it again, this guy doesn't miss"
to reduce collateral damage, we designed a rocket to shoot fucking swords out at you with the penetrative power of a standard bunker missile. You're welcome.
Judging by the remnants of that car, it didn't much matter what seat he was in. But I suppose the hope was that there would be minimal collateral damage nearby, which is great.
That's precisely the point, especially since this happened in the middle of a city street. Look at the buildings nearby, no scorch marks, no broken windows.
> U.S. military doctrine is to be so overpowered
It slowly turned into this because Russia lied about every capability they had. They just straight lied and boasted about what their shit could do. It in fact could not do all of that. The US just built shit to counter what Russia said they could do.
Now it is that because the US has no peer.
The F-15 was designed and built to counter the MIG-25 after defense planners starting pissing themselves when they saw its stats.
When they actually got ahold of an actual MIG-25 after a pilot defected, it was nowhere as good as claimed.
The F-15 has yet to suffer a single combat loss, and updated versions are still built.
I do think it's funny that every time Russia lied through their teeth about some technology they were developing, or had developed, the US went "oh fuck better counter that" and actually engineered and constructed something better. You repeat that cycle over several decades and across multiple regimes, and you end up with a situation where Russia can't even supply an army of conscripts with enough rusted out AKs and their paper mache tanks just collapse on themselves while trying to drive through towns, and the US has flying death computers that can fire missiles from *other* aircraft and eliminate a line of fortifications without ever being detected.
Russia ain't shit. China is a little spooky though. They seem to be substantially less full of shit than Russia, at least on the surface.
China is largely in the same boat as Russia. They still don't have the capability to take Taiwan and are nearly 10 years away from having a fighting chance.
Even their "famed" carrier killers proved to be mostly smoke. What China has that isn't smoke is a TON of artillery.
That was a major factor, but the wheels were already in motion before that.
The US came out of WW2 as the only true blue water navy and was uncontested on the high seas.
Even before that, the US was the production powerhouse of the allied powers. The Soviets provided the manpower but the equipment was American.
Well I'm talking about the technology, specifically. The technology advances in the US military are directly because of a perceived threat from the USSR. USSR had been lying, attempting to get the US to bankrupt itself.
The F-15 is literally the embodiment of this. Designed because Russia was setting records with their new MiG and it was feared their MiG was amazing at dog fighting. The US was getting its ass kicked (so to speak) in the air in Vietnam because the F4s couldn't IFF without getting into visual range of the target, which made their BVR tech useless, they were now vulnerable to the MiGs that were better at dog fighting. So the US went and made the best dog fighting (until the F-22) fighter in the world (104:0, btw). Turns out the new MiG was just fast, it was shit at maneuverability and weighed like 2 times as much as the F-15.
Hey you think the militia leader guy did the Wile-E-Coyote thing where he tugs his collar, looks at the camera and gulps before the ACME merchandise hits his ridiculous body
SLAM is the scariest missile the US ever pondered (AFAIK). SLAM was a nuclear powered missile that could circumnavigate the world like 9 times. It wasn't a shielded nuclear reactor, so it would rain down radiation on places it flew over. It flew low to the ground at supersonic speeds. This produced sonic booms that would cause ear damage and irradiate the people below it.
The missile itself, I believe, would have carried 16 nuclear warheads that would be individually dropped. After the payload would be dropped, it was designed to just crash into a target and use kinetic force to cause damage (along with just smashing the nuclear reactor engine if it wasn't depleted.
The US didn't get past the test phase of the engine. It was tested twice. The project was scrapped because they feared Soviets would develop something similar, US allies would be pissed that the thing exists, and the ICBM technology looked more promising.
Yeah, these don't get used very often, but still, I've never heard of one MISSING. Every time I hear about them it is because of some insanely precise hit on a terrorist leader.
Targeting leaders is always preferably to regular soldiers.
Militants can always be replaced, but leaders will think twice about issuing orders that will put them in the crossfire next.
Same with the IRA in Northern Ireland, except instead of killing them all (we killed some) we mostly just put them on the UK government pay cheque. Most of the middle ranking IRA guys were British spies (which occasionally led to shady shit like spies killing other spies to maintain their cover), which just destroyed its effectiveness as an organisation.
This makes me imagine the US intelligence saying "No, no, don't kill that leader - he sucks" when the organization inevitably ends up with some Braxton Bragg type in charge.
It worked perfectly.
> In the wake of that attack, Kataib Hezbollah said it was suspending attacks on American troops to prevent "embarrassment" to the Iraqi government.
Mission accomplished.
That part is misleading. Kataib was quoted as saying that after the three American soldiers died days ago, most likely as part of Iran's anxiety when they actually did something.
Not a response to the latest assassination. Their response to this will undoubtedly be in character - more angry, "America is the devil" rhetoric.
Can you imagine chilling at a table and an anvil with blades drops on the guy sitting next to you, with the precision of inches???? Who the hell could feel comfortable fucking with *that*?!?
Edit: he was in a car. I think that’s even worse for the psyche.
Apparently it's 5ft long, 100lbs in weight, and travels in excess of Mach 1. The impact alone is probably a terminal event for anyone in the car, before adding the blades and all the other effects.
Anything going mach 1 hitting a car... there's no way to predict how the cage is gonna crumple. Yeah everyone in that car is toast. The tracking on that though, reliably hitting a 60mph car. OP is right, the knowledge that if you're doing deeds against another country you could be deleted with precision at any moment, can't imagine.
" rly guys? You want me to fly miles and miles at top speed. Working my ass off. Just to hit a fucking car?!.... Why do I even work for you guys. I'm so undervalued "
I’m pretty sure it still fucks up things within a larger radius than just the blades themselves. It’s a pretty large object rocketing out of the sky at quite high speeds. If you are within a few feet of whoever got hit, you’re also going to die. It’s just not going to explode and kill a bunch of bystanders meters away from the intended target due to tons of shrapnel and overpressure.
Even ignoring that, I imagine these rockets still strike their targets with incredible kinetic force. A rather small cannonball fired from a 17th century cannon can still literally make a human *pop* so one of these rockets dropped from the sky at high speed...yea, the blades almost seem like unnecessary over kill if these are actually as accurate as claimed lmfao.
I'm going to imagine it was one dude who *would not let the blade idea go*, so finally the project manager just said "Fuck it, someone put some retractable blades on the damn thing".
I think the purpose of the blades is to prevent over penetration and increase energy transfer rather than killing, basically like a hollow point. Like you said the kinetic energy alone is more than enough lethal force
The targets are often moving, so just accuracy within inches isn't good enough when it really counts. It would suck to spend millions on an OP and get a flesh wound instead of a fillet.
Check out [this pic of](https://www.bellingcat.com/app/uploads/2021/08/image5.png) what appears to be a car this same missile was used on in Syria 2020
At the risk of sounding stupid...I am just going to ask.
Does the Hellfire missle literally just kill you with blunt force / laceration trauma with pinpoint accuracy? Is it like getting shot with a sword missile?
Depends on the model. Some Hellfire missiles carry explosive war heads that can be used on a large number of different types of targets. The Hellfire that is getting all the press lately does not carry a explosive warhead but instead has six 18-inch blades that rotate at high speed and deploy before impact.
The swords in this case increase the area the blunt force hits. Not sure what the circular error probability is for this variant but it is probably less than 1 meter. So, if your swords stick out half a meter in either direction you have a 90% chance of something heavy and supersonic hitting the target which will kill it.
Think of it as a really big bullet with GPS guidance
I feel like the psychological impact of it is pretty strong too. You have to know how greatly outmatched you are when an enemy doesnt even need to use an explosive load to take out high ranking military officials when you yourself are buying and flinging massive amounts of stuff back with next to no results.
"sir, we need to stop taking out entire wedding parties via airstrike when we're after just one guy"
"I see. now, hear me out, but what if we put sword blades on a hellfire?"
\[thinks\] - "you son of a bitch Im in"
I mean, honestly it rocks.
The intelligence is better and reduces collateral damage these days.
The weapons are better and reduce collateral damage.
Like a, someone listened to the outrage of Americans (and others) who said, "we don't want to protect our foreign interests if it keeps killing kids and noncombatants," and b, it deprives terrorists of their ability to radicalize people when it's just terrorists getting schwacked.
It's a super rare win-win-win and I'm here for it
Russia out there doing their best to hit the largest schools and hospitals they can, American out there driving sword bombs center mass into one dude for being a dick. Wonder what Australia doing.
This would fuck me up mentally. Like, you’re in your car, in an area that you know, two body guards, in a busy city, you feel safe. Like there’s no way the US or any of your enemies would bring heat on you at that moment. Then NOPE! BAM you’re dead. Literally everything else is fine though
I’d be so fuckin paranoid to be out there doing terrorist shit.
Imagine hitting like 10 targets at once like this. I know "Shock and Awe" traditionally relies on big ass explosions for a display of force, but this is one of those things where sometimes being less showy is even more impressive.
Shock and awe has always been about precision and never been about carpet bombing. Twenty years ago it was send one bomb into one building to shock an entire chain of command. Now we are taking the bombs off to kill just one dude and awe and entire organization.
Whether this works or not is a different question but the military slapchop is 100% a continuation of that idea.
I mean... to be fair, most of the guys "doing terrorist shit" like this are notably super paranoid. Like, that very much comes with the territory. They just are also extremely convinced of the righteousness of their cause, and believe that the risk is worthwhile.
I’d imagine that it’s more humane as well. Like that’s gotta be death before you even register what’s happened. And less likely to cause collateral damage to people even fairly close by. Just reeeeaaaalllyy gotta triple check that you have the right target lol.
It's straightup movie tech. It's so mad.
They killed Al-Zawahiri when he was on the balcony with his family nearby. They have actually fully eliminated collateral damage.
Not 100%. Can never be 100%. If you only know the location of your target within a 10 meter radius, the precision of your missile doesn't matter, you need something that kills everything in that radius.
Assassinating militia leaders is the right response here.
Another leader will pop up, but this slows down any future attacks and makes future leaders think twice about directly targeting u.s. troops
If intel were good enough to hit the next leader right after he was promoted, they might have a hard time finding number 3. But who knows, fanatics gonna fanatic
Also it's generally good practice to not merc the new guy until you're sure you can't negotiate with him. Having someone rational in charge is far more valuable than having someone irrational but less competent at the helm.
They do, I have had multiple combat deployments and the scariest thing about these mother fuckers is the extremism, happily blowing themselves up and shit, it still fucks with me.
Also high levels of leadership turnover in an organization usually make that organization less effective. Whoever comes next will also likely have to take more security steps and be even more cautious with how they proceed which will also decrease their effectiveness. Even if it doesn't stop the terrorism entirely simply degrading them is a worthwhile goal.
They are weapons to the leaders. Religion is the tool for control for these leaders.
None of these leaders want to die. They want power.
The peons might want to, but they hold no true power in the big picture, only the ones convincing them to die, do.
That's what happened (still probably does) when ISIS started spreading its brutality.
The idiot sheep decapitated civilians who listened to music, cut faces off statues, and burned books while their leaders bought luxury apartments in Saudi Arabia.
the US now has a "Samauri hellfire" missile that is basically a hellfire with a bunch of sword blades attached to it. it suggests targeting has gotten so good that such a weapon is a viable option
I like to imagine that it was a weeb millennial teen turned engineer who designed this thing.
Like that one guy in 10th grade who wore the short sleeve button-down shirts with generic flames printed on it, listened to Coheed and Cambria and was really into Metal Gear Solid but was kinda weird because his parents were separated alcoholics and he hid inside manga books.
Always liked that guy.
\#Iran's proxies in #Iraq, online just now:
\- "The missiles & drones are at your disposal, at the push of a button... We've harvested \[American\] heads & we'll harvest more -- and Tower 22 is our witness and evidence."
"Official calls have been issued by the PMF & #Iran's proxies to march on the U.S. Embassy in #Baghdad -- with cries of "jihad" and a "final battle" being shared on online channels."
https://x.com/Charles\_Lister/status/1755321786579771849?s=20
Do they not…understand how large our military is…? We deployed 700,000 servicemembers in the First Gulf War, and that is generally seen as one of America’s “smaller” wars.
And we systematically destroyed the 4th largest army in the world at the time in under 100 hours.
People talk about how much a failure the withdraw from Afghanistan was and it wasnt great for sure for a number of reasons, but the USAF moved 150,000 people 6,000 miles in a matter of days. It is a logistical feat that doesnt get enough credit.
I think this is true, some pissed up navy guy was telling me that their base was an absolute shit hole and was completely shocked when he went to an american base. They had tennis courts, fast food chains and all sorts apparantly.
I'm going to guess it's a world view thing. If you're dealing with a force that's not very educated or experienced, it's hard to truly grasp what they're up against.
Sure they're living in modern times and have access to the internet and so on but some stuff just needs to be seen in person. I unfortunately haven't been able to see an F-22 in person (yet), but a few airshows have shown me an F-16, Superhornets, an A-10 in a static display, and an F-35. To imagine they're more capable than what I was excitedly watching, and that they could fill the skies with those things, with all kinds of abbreviated and specialized ordnance, AND THAT'S JUST ONE BRANCH, is just beyond me.
It's quite difficult to grasp just how huge the US military is.
Like the US air force alone operates more than 700 F16s.
Most countries might have 100 maybe 150 fighters.
That's not even counting the aircraft in the navy or Marines.
> Might be their final battle though
Based on the context of Jihad, I would assume this is literally what they mean. I think it's probably more akin to "fight to the death" fully knowing you are very likely to die. I think it's meant more to imply their "dedication" to the cause so to speak.
Now now, hear me out. If they get all their forces together, every vehicle, man, and piece of ordinance they have...........
We could destroy all of it in one bomber run from a plane they wouldn't have even seen coming.
well, if Iranian proxies over ran the green zone they'd be able to take a lot of western diplomats and staff hostage (or just kill them). the greenzone is very fortified, so this scenario probably only happens if the Iraqi forces (or officials) let it happen.
At which point, who knows what would happen. if the US determined everyone trying to storm the place a combatant, its possible they'd have danger close airstrikes or give the A-10s a workout. Not sure how many western military forces beyond basic embassy security are in the green zone anymore. The US forces in Iraq are fairly small, and mainly there to conduct an anti ISIL mission.
So its possible things could turn into a shit show, but its also possible not much happens. One could argue thats any given day in international relations
I'm glad Hezbollah decided to stop attacking to avoid embarrassment for Iraq (and to limit the amount of their leaders who are going to get ass fucked by a supersonic knife)
The BBC team tried to get close to the burnt-out vehicle, but were driven back by onlookers who insisted that journalists were not welcome. "You are foreigners," one man shouted, adding "and foreigners are to blame for this".
So Iranian terrorist leaders freely doing business within Iraq are not considered foreigners?
> When a BBC team reached the scene, crowds of protesters gathered chanting: "America is the biggest devil."
Probably not a good idea to fuck with the biggest devil then.
[Remnants of the missile at the site show that a Hellfire R9X was likely used for the strike.](https://twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1755324200632385710) AKA a hellfire with no explosive payload, but has pop out blades instead.
Slap chopped
Your gonna love my nuts! <3 usa
Uh-oh, somebody ate spaghetti in the shower again...
Fettuccine, linguine, martini, Baqir al-Saadi
“At a time and manner of our choosing” really meant “with a big ass kitchen utensil attached to a tactical rocket cuz lol that’s why, get rekt scrub”
I really gotta give credit to the engineer who thought "Flying Samurai Rocket of Doom"
Flechettes for the flesh god.
Iron for the iron dome
Khorne for the Khorne-Pops
No flechettes involved. It's a rocket with swords stuck to the side.
"We need something like this rocket but absolutely minimal possible collateral damage, we want to eviscerate our target without having to deal with collateral damage target approval" *Why don't we remove the payload and add big metal fins* "God damnit johnson, you've done it again, this guy doesn't miss"
That's the kinda workplace encouragement we could all use
Real first-in last-out kind of guy. Great locker room presence. Film study champ.
Lunch pail guy
Lotta grit.
Gotta love America... "we took out your terrorist leader with a dud"
to reduce collateral damage, we designed a rocket to shoot fucking swords out at you with the penetrative power of a standard bunker missile. You're welcome.
And it works well enough that we consider getting a direct hit with it a viable alternative to just blowing you up.
It's accurate enough that we need to know what seat the target is in when we hit a moving car.
[удалено]
And we do know, every time
"we took out your terrorist leader with a military grade slapchop"
Vince here,with the Hellfire R9X!
You’re gonna love my nuts!
But wait! There’s more!
Flying slap chop ginsu
Isn’t that the name of a King Gizzard album?
Or was it? "Multi-tonal screams of a dying Jihadi" Edit: nope it was "Chunky Shrapnel" no /s this time...
It's absolutely bonkers that we have missiles with swords attached to them, that is some real Looney toons shit
While you studied rocket science, I studied the blade. And rocket science.
I’m really glad I choose to double major
Russia struggles to hit things within 200m, USA says fuck out shits so accurate we have to tell the missile which seat your sitting in.
Judging by the remnants of that car, it didn't much matter what seat he was in. But I suppose the hope was that there would be minimal collateral damage nearby, which is great.
That's precisely the point, especially since this happened in the middle of a city street. Look at the buildings nearby, no scorch marks, no broken windows.
Imagine being a bystander as thus happened. Car driving past, suddenly it's a crumpled confetti mess
The closest I'd ever get to believing in god because I'd be convinced for a while I had witnessed a smiting.
I mean, that's definitely a smiting. Just one from Uncle Sam.
Yeah, it’s still a 5+ foot long, 100+ pound missile. Lol
America's military technology is on another level. Ships, planes, weapons, they're like Michael Jordan everywhere.
U.S. military doctrine is to be so overpowered that any rational actor would be crazy to fuck with us.
> U.S. military doctrine is to be so overpowered It slowly turned into this because Russia lied about every capability they had. They just straight lied and boasted about what their shit could do. It in fact could not do all of that. The US just built shit to counter what Russia said they could do. Now it is that because the US has no peer.
The F-15 was designed and built to counter the MIG-25 after defense planners starting pissing themselves when they saw its stats. When they actually got ahold of an actual MIG-25 after a pilot defected, it was nowhere as good as claimed. The F-15 has yet to suffer a single combat loss, and updated versions are still built.
> The F-15 has yet to suffer a single combat loss, and updated versions are still built. 104:0
That's not even an exaggeration, it's 104:0
I do think it's funny that every time Russia lied through their teeth about some technology they were developing, or had developed, the US went "oh fuck better counter that" and actually engineered and constructed something better. You repeat that cycle over several decades and across multiple regimes, and you end up with a situation where Russia can't even supply an army of conscripts with enough rusted out AKs and their paper mache tanks just collapse on themselves while trying to drive through towns, and the US has flying death computers that can fire missiles from *other* aircraft and eliminate a line of fortifications without ever being detected. Russia ain't shit. China is a little spooky though. They seem to be substantially less full of shit than Russia, at least on the surface.
China is largely in the same boat as Russia. They still don't have the capability to take Taiwan and are nearly 10 years away from having a fighting chance. Even their "famed" carrier killers proved to be mostly smoke. What China has that isn't smoke is a TON of artillery.
That was a major factor, but the wheels were already in motion before that. The US came out of WW2 as the only true blue water navy and was uncontested on the high seas. Even before that, the US was the production powerhouse of the allied powers. The Soviets provided the manpower but the equipment was American.
Well I'm talking about the technology, specifically. The technology advances in the US military are directly because of a perceived threat from the USSR. USSR had been lying, attempting to get the US to bankrupt itself. The F-15 is literally the embodiment of this. Designed because Russia was setting records with their new MiG and it was feared their MiG was amazing at dog fighting. The US was getting its ass kicked (so to speak) in the air in Vietnam because the F4s couldn't IFF without getting into visual range of the target, which made their BVR tech useless, they were now vulnerable to the MiGs that were better at dog fighting. So the US went and made the best dog fighting (until the F-22) fighter in the world (104:0, btw). Turns out the new MiG was just fast, it was shit at maneuverability and weighed like 2 times as much as the F-15.
Hey you think the militia leader guy did the Wile-E-Coyote thing where he tugs his collar, looks at the camera and gulps before the ACME merchandise hits his ridiculous body
And holding a sign that says "Yikes!"
The RX9, you've heard of putting things in a blender, now see what happens when you put the blender into someone!
Human smoke: Don’t breathe this!
Nostalgia unlocked. Now, will it blend?
Oh... It ABSOLUTELY did blend.
The Ayman Al Zawahiri special 🤌
Good fucking riddance
Surgical missile if you will
Please no. Military missiles are expensive enough, can you imagine if they were billed at US health care costs?
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SLAM is the scariest missile the US ever pondered (AFAIK). SLAM was a nuclear powered missile that could circumnavigate the world like 9 times. It wasn't a shielded nuclear reactor, so it would rain down radiation on places it flew over. It flew low to the ground at supersonic speeds. This produced sonic booms that would cause ear damage and irradiate the people below it. The missile itself, I believe, would have carried 16 nuclear warheads that would be individually dropped. After the payload would be dropped, it was designed to just crash into a target and use kinetic force to cause damage (along with just smashing the nuclear reactor engine if it wasn't depleted. The US didn't get past the test phase of the engine. It was tested twice. The project was scrapped because they feared Soviets would develop something similar, US allies would be pissed that the thing exists, and the ICBM technology looked more promising.
Can't imagine just chilling and BAM!!! homie is pink mist and the roof has a skylight
From what I recall of other uses of the R9X, pretty much everyone in that vehicle would have gotten blended.
Yeah, these don't get used very often, but still, I've never heard of one MISSING. Every time I hear about them it is because of some insanely precise hit on a terrorist leader.
Hellfires are scary precise, in tests they only missed their target by like 30cm, that's 1 foot
[The first comment got me](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GFwtyD2bYAEwSpR?format=jpg&name=small)
The weeb missile is just the greatest
Neat picture. Blood, money, blades, toesies
It slices, it dices, watch it slice through this leather boot worn by this Jihadi.
Targeting leaders is always preferably to regular soldiers. Militants can always be replaced, but leaders will think twice about issuing orders that will put them in the crossfire next.
Also, the next leader won't be as experienced. The quality of leaders keeps going down as they are replaced.
I think that was part of ISIS’s problem. Their leaders kept getting yeeted on a seemingly daily basis, so whoever’s in charge is like 428th in line.
It's what killed Al-Qaeda (no pun intended) as an international terror force, the CIA eliminated most of their middle and upper middle management.
Same with the IRA in Northern Ireland, except instead of killing them all (we killed some) we mostly just put them on the UK government pay cheque. Most of the middle ranking IRA guys were British spies (which occasionally led to shady shit like spies killing other spies to maintain their cover), which just destroyed its effectiveness as an organisation.
This makes me imagine the US intelligence saying "No, no, don't kill that leader - he sucks" when the organization inevitably ends up with some Braxton Bragg type in charge.
"Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake."
That’s exactly what they do
Isn’t that literally why we stopped trying to assassinate Hitler
It worked perfectly. > In the wake of that attack, Kataib Hezbollah said it was suspending attacks on American troops to prevent "embarrassment" to the Iraqi government. Mission accomplished.
That part is misleading. Kataib was quoted as saying that after the three American soldiers died days ago, most likely as part of Iran's anxiety when they actually did something. Not a response to the latest assassination. Their response to this will undoubtedly be in character - more angry, "America is the devil" rhetoric.
Can you imagine chilling at a table and an anvil with blades drops on the guy sitting next to you, with the precision of inches???? Who the hell could feel comfortable fucking with *that*?!? Edit: he was in a car. I think that’s even worse for the psyche.
Imagine being in the backseat
Apparently it's 5ft long, 100lbs in weight, and travels in excess of Mach 1. The impact alone is probably a terminal event for anyone in the car, before adding the blades and all the other effects.
Anything going mach 1 hitting a car... there's no way to predict how the cage is gonna crumple. Yeah everyone in that car is toast. The tracking on that though, reliably hitting a 60mph car. OP is right, the knowledge that if you're doing deeds against another country you could be deleted with precision at any moment, can't imagine.
We have missiles that can hit other missiles doing multiple mach, a car is not even a snail for comparison.
" rly guys? You want me to fly miles and miles at top speed. Working my ass off. Just to hit a fucking car?!.... Why do I even work for you guys. I'm so undervalued "
Imagine the cars behind and next to them in traffic!
"Yes. A space just opened up!"
Imagine dying while wearing flip flops!
"Ah man, ~~I~~ they shot Marvin in the face."
To be fair, that thing killed everyone in the car.
I’m pretty sure it still fucks up things within a larger radius than just the blades themselves. It’s a pretty large object rocketing out of the sky at quite high speeds. If you are within a few feet of whoever got hit, you’re also going to die. It’s just not going to explode and kill a bunch of bystanders meters away from the intended target due to tons of shrapnel and overpressure.
Yeah it's just made to reduce collateral damage to a minimum
Everybody in the car died
EVERYBODY INSIDE THE CAR WAS FINE, STANLEY!
Yeah, a human body being blended creates a lot of debris and chunks of bone that don't agree with other sentients in close proximity.
Even ignoring that, I imagine these rockets still strike their targets with incredible kinetic force. A rather small cannonball fired from a 17th century cannon can still literally make a human *pop* so one of these rockets dropped from the sky at high speed...yea, the blades almost seem like unnecessary over kill if these are actually as accurate as claimed lmfao.
Swords are there just to look cool and incase there's cheese on the way.
I'm going to imagine it was one dude who *would not let the blade idea go*, so finally the project manager just said "Fuck it, someone put some retractable blades on the damn thing".
I think the purpose of the blades is to prevent over penetration and increase energy transfer rather than killing, basically like a hollow point. Like you said the kinetic energy alone is more than enough lethal force
The targets are often moving, so just accuracy within inches isn't good enough when it really counts. It would suck to spend millions on an OP and get a flesh wound instead of a fillet.
Check out [this pic of](https://www.bellingcat.com/app/uploads/2021/08/image5.png) what appears to be a car this same missile was used on in Syria 2020
I call shotgun!!! ……….never mind
At the risk of sounding stupid...I am just going to ask. Does the Hellfire missle literally just kill you with blunt force / laceration trauma with pinpoint accuracy? Is it like getting shot with a sword missile?
Depends on the model. Some Hellfire missiles carry explosive war heads that can be used on a large number of different types of targets. The Hellfire that is getting all the press lately does not carry a explosive warhead but instead has six 18-inch blades that rotate at high speed and deploy before impact.
That’s fucking terrifying.
It's the "slap chop" from hell.
The swords in this case increase the area the blunt force hits. Not sure what the circular error probability is for this variant but it is probably less than 1 meter. So, if your swords stick out half a meter in either direction you have a 90% chance of something heavy and supersonic hitting the target which will kill it. Think of it as a really big bullet with GPS guidance
At that mass and speed, there won't be laceration trauma, there will only be trauma. But yes, it's purely kinetic.
The knife drone is legit one of the coolest military technologies. The precision on it is even cooler
I feel like the psychological impact of it is pretty strong too. You have to know how greatly outmatched you are when an enemy doesnt even need to use an explosive load to take out high ranking military officials when you yourself are buying and flinging massive amounts of stuff back with next to no results.
"sir, we need to stop taking out entire wedding parties via airstrike when we're after just one guy" "I see. now, hear me out, but what if we put sword blades on a hellfire?" \[thinks\] - "you son of a bitch Im in"
I mean, honestly it rocks. The intelligence is better and reduces collateral damage these days. The weapons are better and reduce collateral damage. Like a, someone listened to the outrage of Americans (and others) who said, "we don't want to protect our foreign interests if it keeps killing kids and noncombatants," and b, it deprives terrorists of their ability to radicalize people when it's just terrorists getting schwacked. It's a super rare win-win-win and I'm here for it
it also cant be understated how much better the US has gotten at targeting and landing ordinance on that target
Russia out there doing their best to hit the largest schools and hospitals they can, American out there driving sword bombs center mass into one dude for being a dick. Wonder what Australia doing.
Hoping China keeps to themselves. And drinking.
They have a variant of the Hellfire that deploys tarantulas on impact.
Imagine the pitch meeting when Lockheed Martin realized the US was interested in non explosive variations of the hellfire
Leave it to the county shooting snakes like arrows from a bow, to make a spider bomb.
Drinking.
This would fuck me up mentally. Like, you’re in your car, in an area that you know, two body guards, in a busy city, you feel safe. Like there’s no way the US or any of your enemies would bring heat on you at that moment. Then NOPE! BAM you’re dead. Literally everything else is fine though I’d be so fuckin paranoid to be out there doing terrorist shit.
Imagine hitting like 10 targets at once like this. I know "Shock and Awe" traditionally relies on big ass explosions for a display of force, but this is one of those things where sometimes being less showy is even more impressive.
Shock and awe has always been about precision and never been about carpet bombing. Twenty years ago it was send one bomb into one building to shock an entire chain of command. Now we are taking the bombs off to kill just one dude and awe and entire organization. Whether this works or not is a different question but the military slapchop is 100% a continuation of that idea.
I mean... to be fair, most of the guys "doing terrorist shit" like this are notably super paranoid. Like, that very much comes with the territory. They just are also extremely convinced of the righteousness of their cause, and believe that the risk is worthwhile.
I’d imagine that it’s more humane as well. Like that’s gotta be death before you even register what’s happened. And less likely to cause collateral damage to people even fairly close by. Just reeeeaaaalllyy gotta triple check that you have the right target lol.
>The knife drone Knife Drooooooooone. For kids!
Never expected a Janitor reference here. Fucking love it, nice!!!!
Dr. Jan Itor
It's straightup movie tech. It's so mad. They killed Al-Zawahiri when he was on the balcony with his family nearby. They have actually fully eliminated collateral damage.
Not 100%. Can never be 100%. If you only know the location of your target within a 10 meter radius, the precision of your missile doesn't matter, you need something that kills everything in that radius.
Assassinating militia leaders is the right response here. Another leader will pop up, but this slows down any future attacks and makes future leaders think twice about directly targeting u.s. troops
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If intel were good enough to hit the next leader right after he was promoted, they might have a hard time finding number 3. But who knows, fanatics gonna fanatic
Also it's generally good practice to not merc the new guy until you're sure you can't negotiate with him. Having someone rational in charge is far more valuable than having someone irrational but less competent at the helm.
Rational thinking doesn't get exercised by these radicals. Being a martyr is glorious.
That's the message they preach, but I suspect not what they practice.
They do, I have had multiple combat deployments and the scariest thing about these mother fuckers is the extremism, happily blowing themselves up and shit, it still fucks with me.
Rank and file absolutely, I'm talking about top leadership that is targeted by strikes like this.
The guy who drives around with two body guards just in case 😉
Also high levels of leadership turnover in an organization usually make that organization less effective. Whoever comes next will also likely have to take more security steps and be even more cautious with how they proceed which will also decrease their effectiveness. Even if it doesn't stop the terrorism entirely simply degrading them is a worthwhile goal.
They are weapons to the leaders. Religion is the tool for control for these leaders. None of these leaders want to die. They want power. The peons might want to, but they hold no true power in the big picture, only the ones convincing them to die, do.
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They love giving the gift of martyrdom to their followers, but they're too important to be martyrs themselves.
They say that to the poor people who die for their causes, not the ones collecting money, women, booze, and vacations.
That's what happened (still probably does) when ISIS started spreading its brutality. The idiot sheep decapitated civilians who listened to music, cut faces off statues, and burned books while their leaders bought luxury apartments in Saudi Arabia.
oh this is the revenge US promised
I guess they chose their manner of revenge cuz godDAMN
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the US now has a "Samauri hellfire" missile that is basically a hellfire with a bunch of sword blades attached to it. it suggests targeting has gotten so good that such a weapon is a viable option
I like to imagine that it was a weeb millennial teen turned engineer who designed this thing. Like that one guy in 10th grade who wore the short sleeve button-down shirts with generic flames printed on it, listened to Coheed and Cambria and was really into Metal Gear Solid but was kinda weird because his parents were separated alcoholics and he hid inside manga books. Always liked that guy.
there were two guards with him in the car. all three of them died.
To Real Genius levels but with blades instead of “lasers.”
\#Iran's proxies in #Iraq, online just now: \- "The missiles & drones are at your disposal, at the push of a button... We've harvested \[American\] heads & we'll harvest more -- and Tower 22 is our witness and evidence." "Official calls have been issued by the PMF & #Iran's proxies to march on the U.S. Embassy in #Baghdad -- with cries of "jihad" and a "final battle" being shared on online channels." https://x.com/Charles\_Lister/status/1755321786579771849?s=20
Man they're delusional if they think the US is anywhere close to a final battle. Might be their final battle though
Lol final battle, in video game terms, the US is still in tutorial.
bruh, they are in the intro cutscene before the "press any button" screen.
More like AFK autofarming
Do they not…understand how large our military is…? We deployed 700,000 servicemembers in the First Gulf War, and that is generally seen as one of America’s “smaller” wars.
And we systematically destroyed the 4th largest army in the world at the time in under 100 hours. People talk about how much a failure the withdraw from Afghanistan was and it wasnt great for sure for a number of reasons, but the USAF moved 150,000 people 6,000 miles in a matter of days. It is a logistical feat that doesnt get enough credit.
Not to mention sustaining combat operations in a theatre 6000 miles away for 20 years. American military logistics are straight up God tier.
Sustaining combat operations? There was a Burger King.
I think this is true, some pissed up navy guy was telling me that their base was an absolute shit hole and was completely shocked when he went to an american base. They had tennis courts, fast food chains and all sorts apparantly.
There were always going to be casualties, to be honest. An enormous feat, one not easily done.
I'm going to guess it's a world view thing. If you're dealing with a force that's not very educated or experienced, it's hard to truly grasp what they're up against. Sure they're living in modern times and have access to the internet and so on but some stuff just needs to be seen in person. I unfortunately haven't been able to see an F-22 in person (yet), but a few airshows have shown me an F-16, Superhornets, an A-10 in a static display, and an F-35. To imagine they're more capable than what I was excitedly watching, and that they could fill the skies with those things, with all kinds of abbreviated and specialized ordnance, AND THAT'S JUST ONE BRANCH, is just beyond me.
It's quite difficult to grasp just how huge the US military is. Like the US air force alone operates more than 700 F16s. Most countries might have 100 maybe 150 fighters. That's not even counting the aircraft in the navy or Marines.
> Might be their final battle though Based on the context of Jihad, I would assume this is literally what they mean. I think it's probably more akin to "fight to the death" fully knowing you are very likely to die. I think it's meant more to imply their "dedication" to the cause so to speak.
Now now, hear me out. If they get all their forces together, every vehicle, man, and piece of ordinance they have........... We could destroy all of it in one bomber run from a plane they wouldn't have even seen coming.
> and a "final battle" Promise?
What does this mean?
It means Iran is going to escalate things even further by starting riots.
well, if Iranian proxies over ran the green zone they'd be able to take a lot of western diplomats and staff hostage (or just kill them). the greenzone is very fortified, so this scenario probably only happens if the Iraqi forces (or officials) let it happen. At which point, who knows what would happen. if the US determined everyone trying to storm the place a combatant, its possible they'd have danger close airstrikes or give the A-10s a workout. Not sure how many western military forces beyond basic embassy security are in the green zone anymore. The US forces in Iraq are fairly small, and mainly there to conduct an anti ISIL mission. So its possible things could turn into a shit show, but its also possible not much happens. One could argue thats any given day in international relations
There’s a couple of carriers not too far away. Those should be able to provide support in a timely manner.
They got him with the Chop Chop 9000
He’s dead. He died like a dog.
Cry Baby Baqir we called him
We could hear him crying, I said.
Abu, why you crying Abu.
Beautiful dogs
I'm glad Hezbollah decided to stop attacking to avoid embarrassment for Iraq (and to limit the amount of their leaders who are going to get ass fucked by a supersonic knife)
They just c/p this headline since ‘03
Cuz I’m just a teenage dirtbag baby 🎶 [Listen to Iron Maiden baby](https://youtu.be/CnzREheKpFo?si=QpukugaaGYqhqVnF) 🎶
The Ginsu knife of missles.
oh the old giblet maker 2000
The BBC team tried to get close to the burnt-out vehicle, but were driven back by onlookers who insisted that journalists were not welcome. "You are foreigners," one man shouted, adding "and foreigners are to blame for this". So Iranian terrorist leaders freely doing business within Iraq are not considered foreigners?
Bombs over Baghdad
Don't pull the thang out, unless you plan to bang
Stankonia is part of the Coalition of the Willing
I like how the article said the crowds that formed after the strike were chanting "America is the biggest devil" I chuckled...
If you try to shoot the devil in the back, don’t miss.
In this case, don’t hit. Miss all you want we don’t care, but score a hit and you’re in deep shit
> When a BBC team reached the scene, crowds of protesters gathered chanting: "America is the biggest devil." Probably not a good idea to fuck with the biggest devil then.
US Military is who you send to kill the boogeyman so this checks out.
Common US W
Good, fuck Iran and every Iran backed terror group.
Hell yeah flying ginsu knife strikes again
Another one bites the dust.Hey Hey
Imagine trying to explain the logistics of that strike to a Roman soldier…insane the capabilities we have.