The US has used the mysterious Hellfire R9X missile a few times in recent years.
The United States said the night before Tuesday that it had killed an al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri with an airplane strike. The attack targeted al-Zawahiri’s home in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
A representative of the US administration said that al-Zawahiri was standing on the balcony of the house at the time of the attack.
The news agency AFP writes that based on the photos taken from the scene, it appears that the United States used an unexploded Hellfire R9X missile in the attack. The photos showed no traces of the explosion. The same is indicated by the fact that no one else was injured in the attack, even though there were members of al-Zawahiri’s family in the house, according to a representative of the US administration.
Neither the US Department of Defense nor the CIA have publicly acknowledged the existence of the R9X missile.
However, details of the mysterious weapon have been leaked to the public in recent years and it has started to be called, among other things, a flying ginsu. The name refers to popular kitchen knives advertised on television in the 1980s in the United States.
Instead of an explosion, the R9X missile’s destructive power is based not only on kinetic energy, but also on the six knife-like blades contained in the missile, which protrude from the missile’s body just before impact.
The missile has been used in several countries
The US has carried out a few strikes with the missile in recent years. The US has started using the R9X missile to kill leaders of extremist groups to avoid bystanders.
Former British Army officer Nick Waters wrote the Investigative Journalism Network a year ago Bellingcat’s (you will switch to another service) pages that the US has carried out several of these strikes in Syria. In addition, the missile has reportedly been used in Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan.
Waters writes that the US has usually hit targets inside the car with the R9X. The missile could have gone through the roof of the car and killed people, but the front and rear of the car could have remained almost intact.
Standard Hellfire missiles are known for their powerful explosions and for the fact that they often cause destruction in the surroundings of the target and often bystander victims.