Weapons

USAF’s ultra-lethal carbon fibre bomb approved for export

The United States plans to export an advanced, tungsten-laden bomb that is designed to cause less collateral damage than its predecessors, but be more lethal.

The 227kg (500lb) BLU-129/B was originally produced by Aerojet Rocketdyne as a quick reaction capability for the war in Afghanistan as a way of reducing civilian deaths by using a cabon-fibre-wound composite shell casing to limit the blast radius. Its development followed one particularly disastrous airstrike on a wedding party in 2008 that killed dozens of women and children along with a number of Taliban insurgents.