Shahed 136 drones were among the weapons used in the recent attack on Israel by Iran. According to Wikipedia, these are fitted with a 110-pound warhead, but no other detail is provided. They don’t fly very fast (115 MPH max), and the vehicle as a whole isn’t terribly heavy (440 pounds), so it doesn’t seem like they’d be able to get the warhead through anything much stronger than a stud wall.
Having said all that, I’m certainly no expert. So…experts, what sort of damage can be done with a warhead of this size on a delivery device like this?
I was watching an Al Jazeera live stream as the drones were still in the air (from a link in our thread at the time) and at that moment they started to interview some former US military guy who described the bomb. I don’t remember all of his details, but it is basically pretty low yield and coated in shrapnel, sort of like a nail bomb (though he didn’t use that term). Basically, he said that it dangerous to people standing nearby but ineffective to any hard target.
Even if it is half shrapnel, 50lb or so of decent quality explosive is nothing to ignore. Presumably it’s not deisgned the way an artillery shell would be, to impact at very high velocity for penetration, but most random targets are not hardened. I believe the expert on TV said it was not armour-ppiercing but could definitely do decent damage to the average structure. I guess the real question is - how accurate is it to hit specific targets - i.e. can it aim for through a front door rather than the solid concrete wall a dozen feet over? Will that still work if the Russian GPS signal is being jammed?
As a terror weapon against the population. It will kill, it will injure, but it is a terror weapon to scare the population that Iran can, will, and did strike the heart of Israel.
It’s a show of force in support to Hamas and the internal population of Iran.
Most importunity, it’s a test of Israeli defenses, especially if Iran holds to its bravado it will unleash ten times as many drones and missiles next time. Iran may have learned from this and adjust its tactics for the next round.
Do you have a cite for that? Not to be snarky but rather because I became interested in WWII “precision” daylight bombing while watching Masters of the Air and read this fascinating piece Daylight Precision Bombing.
I was amazed by stuff like:
Historian Stephen L. McFarland has explained the geometry of it, using the example of a B-17 flying at 160 mph at 23,000 feet and dropping a 600-pound bomb. The bomb was released at a distance, measured on the ground, of 8,875 feet from the target. It was in flight for 38 seconds. If the speed calculated for the airplane was off by two mph and the altitude wrong by 25 feet, that made a difference of 115 feet in where the bomb would land.
The limited yield of the bombs added to the problem. A 500-pound bomb, standard for precision missions after 1943, had a lethal radius of only 60 to 90 feet. It dug a crater just two feet deep and nine feet wide. With bombing accuracy measured in hundreds of feet, it took a great many bombs to get the job done.
Such high ratios of ordnance expended to results achieved were not unusual in war, nor were they unique to AAF bombers in World War II. The Army fired 10,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition for each enemy soldier wounded and 50,000 rounds for each enemy killed. It took the Germans an average of 16,000 88 mm flak shells to bring down a single Allied heavy bomber.
M107 shells are extremely deadly weapons. The expected lethal radius for a 155mm high explosive projectile is reportedly between 50 and 150 meters and the expected casualty radius is between 100 and 300 meters.
Correct, unguided bombs from 80 years ago did not strike with any precision. They were lucky if they hit the right city; you can forget about targetting specific buildings or targets.
A Shahed drone (or a modern bomb or even artillery shell) has satellite based positioning systems, computerized guidance, and maneuverable wings. It’s about as far from dropping a vaguely aerodynamic WW2 era bomb as a paper airplane is from a 747.
accuracy is one thing, the other is power of the explosive. Are modern explosives like C4 notably better than what was in a WWII era bomb? After all, Hitler was what - 10 feet from a briefcase full of explosives and pretty much unscated due to an intervening oak table.
(Same sort of wood, I assume, used in every action movie where someone hides behind a turned over table or a bar counter during a close-range gunfight…?)
I assume part of the injury radius of some of these bombs has to do with the shrapnel packing more than anything. Another factor would be the shape of the charge and blast wave?
Not sure what you mean by better. They used many different compositions in WWII for different uses. Explosive power is measured against the power of TNT. TNT has a Relative Effectiveness Factor of 1.0 (RE). The RE of C4 is 1.34 and many of other explosives are somewhere around the level of TNT. What C4 has going for it is it is extremely stable and basically impossible to blow up unless you want to blow it up.
It’s kind of misleading. The “lethal” radius referred to in your cite is actually referring to its effectiveness on the intended targets, which were not people. It was factories, buildings and materiel. The lethal radius was always around 60-90 feet, because they would change the size of the bomb based on the type of the target. The bomb size was just as important as the number of bombs. A building of particular construction deemed to require a 500 lbs bomb to destroy it would require that bomb to be within 60-90 ft to cause effective damage. Something rated to require a 100 lbs bomb would need that bomb to land within 75-100 ft to be effective, etc.
On the other hand, the statement about the 155mm munition is talking about “kill” radius and “casualty” radius. It’s talking about people. Also, it means people standing in the open, not people inside of bunkers, behind walls, etc.
See here for an explanation of choosing the right bomb:
“…the 100-pound bomb has the necessary power and effect to destroy…heavy factory buildings… [but] needed to land very close to their target (75-100 feet) to have the intended effect.”
“While the 500-pound bomb could cause serious damage to a target, its lethal radius was only 60-90 feet”.