Monday, August 27, 2007

Now that is cool

Explosives-geek and writer David Hambling recently did a short piece for Noah Shachtman's DANGER ROOM blog on Navy beach-clearing experiments using continuous-rod warheads. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a CR warhead is cylinder of explosives jackets in ductile metal rods that are welded together at opposite ends. When the warhead goes off, the rods deform into a ring of hot metal that can deeply into targets. CR warheads are typically used on anti-aircraft missiles because their effect radius can compensate for a mediocre guidance package.

This is a picture from the Wikipedia entry for CR warheads and there are only two words that can possibly describe it: flippin' sweet. (Note: A reader pointed out that this may be a picture of a Canadian pipe bomb and not a CR warhead. Either way, it is still an amazing photo.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Correction to my previous comment -- the device was a Canadian Pipe Bomb and it was posted on Danger Room, as you'll know.

Robot Economist said...

Yeah, something about the blast configuration wasn't adding up. Its still pretty cool looking though.