The “Ninja Bomb” is believed to be a top-secret weapon jointly developed by both the Department of Defense and the CIA.
By Aaron Sull, World Israel News
The U.S allegedly killed two al-Qaeda senior officials leaders on Sunday with a missile filled with knives instead of explosives, reports Fox News.
According to the report, the weapon, officially named the AGM-114R9X but often referred to as the “Ninja Bomb,” struck an SUV carrying al-Qaeda leaders Jordanian Qassam ul-Urdini and Yemeni Bilal al-Sanaani.
Its existence, exposed by The Washington Post in 2019, is believed to be a top-secret weapon jointly developed by both the Department of Defense and the CIA that does not explode upon impact but rather shreds its target through six rotary blades.
Its purpose is to eliminate the target while also minimizing casualties.
“The result is a much smaller kill radius, which can limit the damage caused by the missile to the intended target area,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told Fox News.
“Such a feature is increasingly needed for counterterrorism campaigns, where the fighting is closer in and the environment around the target is more dense and likely to be filled with non-combatants.”
A 2019 article titled “How The Hellfire Missile That Uses Blades Instead Of Explosives Works,” published on thedrive.com, theorizes how the Ninja Bomb operates.
“It’s unclear when exactly the six skeletonized blades deploy during use, but it is likely that they extend out from the missile via fairings that pop-off shortly before its flight ends or swing-out through slots in the missile’s body,” the article states. “The payload area is roughly a foot and a half long and let’s say the swords are roughly the same length, this would provide about a three and a half foot diameter kill zone.”
“It is the ultimate precision air-to-ground weapon, surgical both in metaphor and application,” the article adds.
Although not confirmed by government officials, a video of the aftermath circulating on social media showing a relatively unscathed SUV has led analysts to believe that it was indeed the Ninja Bomb that killed the two terrorists.