Airborne Combat Engineer

Why are ball bearings popular for warheads & IEDs?

Apparently, judging from this article, ball bearings have a longer effective range from the center of the blast of an IED or missile warhead than nails or irregularly-shaped metal shrapnel.

Witnesses in Israel reported a deadly radius of 450-600m from the missile warheads lobbed in by the Hezbollah this summer.

The relatively small Claymore mine (with just 1.5 lbs. of C-4) introduced in the Vietnam era could propel 700 spheres causing injury out to 250m, and death out to 50m.

Shaped projectiles which would naturally assume a nose-forward orientation might have even more range. Surely somebody has or is studying this. Or, it's already been ruled out as impractical.

NOTE: A-C-E does not make any bombs or IEDs. Nor does it encourage or condone such activities. This is merely to satisfy a matter of curiosity, based on the earlier post showing Humvee damage. And, the bad guys already know this.

Russian depot disposed of

[LINK] break.com video

An old Russian bomb depot became an inventory of weapons for the Taliban. The US army took custody of the depot and in one large explosion destroyed all the weapons.

Why didn't we do this with all the warehouses we found during the invasion of Iraq, instead of leaving them to be raided for IED-making materials?

Bomb-hunting robot

[LINK] engadget [via Defense Tech]

The STARRAY, which apparently underwent extensive military testing with live ordinance late last year, is capable of detecting explosives between 40 seconds and 5 minutes (depending on quantity and distance) all the while handling harsh terrain, crossing ditches, or climbing stairs.

Acetone Peroxide (AP)

This Wikipedia entry tells about AP, the poor terrorist's explosive.

A google search will lead one to detailed instructions for production using readily available materials.

But, if not done properly, it will either not go off at all or, worse, go off at an inopportune time.