The killing of al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri by the United States is raising several questions on the weapons capabilities possessed by the country. As per the AFP report, al-Zawahiri was killed by two missiles fired at his Kabul home — but pictures showed no sign of an explosion, and US officials say no one else was harmed.
This shows that the US used the macabre Hellfire R9X, a warhead-less missile believed to be equipped with six razor-like blades extending from the fuselage that slices through its target but does not explode, to kill him.
The Hellfire R9X, also called the “ninja bomb”, has become the US munition of choice for killing leaders of extremist groups while avoiding civilian casualties.
The R9X first appeared in March 2017 when al-Qaeda senior leader Abu al-Khayr al-Masri was killed by a drone strike while travelling in a car in Syria. However, the Pentagon or CIA — the two US agencies known to undertake targeted assassinations of extremist leaders — have never publicly acknowledged it.
What is the Hellfire R9X?
As per The Week, the AGM-114 Hellfire missiles are air-to-ground, laser-guided, subsonic missiles with significant anti-tank capacity. The Hellfire missile has several variants, depending on its warhead, guidance system, and its physical variations. A latest and peculiar addition to the line of Hellfire missiles is the Hellfire R9X, which uses pop-out sword blades to kill targets with minimal collateral damage—designed for targeted killings. According to Al Arabia, this may have been the variant of the Hellfire missile used to assassinate Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
Also, according to the Wall Street Journal, the R9X, which was developed reportedly under the Obama administration, with focus on reducing civilian casualties, “comes equipped with a different kind of payload: a halo of six long blades that are stowed inside and then deploy through the skin of the missile seconds before impact to ensure that it shreds anything in its tracks”. Unlike a traditional Hellfire missile, it rarely left any marks—no scorches, or burns other than cracks or points of entry.
Al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born surgeon who assumed the leadership of al-Qaida after the killing of Osama bin Laden, died at 71 in a drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan. Zawahiri had a $25 million bounty on his head and he helped coordinate Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
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