My reaction to this is kind of… hard to pin down.
What that is is apparently a drone-launched, modified Hellfire missile with an inert warhead and “a halo of six long blades that are stowed inside and then deploy through the skin of the missile seconds before impact, shredding anything in its tracks,” to quote both the Wall Street Journal and Task and Purpose. The idea is to concentrate the sudden, violent death in a much smaller radius while still thoroughly killing the target, and if this report is true then this apparatus certainly seems to do that.
‘Antiseptic,’ however, this apparatus is not. I hesitate to call it a weapon because it’s like something out of a military-themed horror FPS. And let’s be honest; it’s an assassination tool. Not that I object to assassinating high-level terrorists and the odd dictator — quite the contrary! — but there’s just something clinical about this one. And maybe just a little bit hungry, too.
Does that sound superstitious? Probably. I still just wouldn’t spend a lot of time alone in a room with these things, and anthropomorphism be damned.
Moe Lane
I’m sure you remember Real Genius from the 80s with Val Kilmer? This is the kinetic version of what they’re trying to build in that movie.
Yeah, if John Carpenter had been the director. (I was reminded of that movie too.)
I dunno. To me, this sounds like something you deploy against targets that aren’t vulnerable to conventional weapons. Were the blades silver? Were they covered in runes? Perhaps the ‘inert’ warhead was a big payload of something astrally active.
That is a large part of the… issue? …I’m dealing with regarding this thing. The blades seem a bit overkill-y for a mundane target.
See, this was pleasantly bemusing before I had time to notice the sourcing was legit, and now I’m getting more unsettled the longer I spend pondering it. But I think I’ve about talked myself into the likelihood that it really is about what it’s claimed to be about (“a longstanding ‘left seat, right seat’ problem).
.
But.
.
It tweaks the brain in unpleasant ways. Gonna be a strong drink after dinner, tonight. And definitely no absinthe in it.
Not really. There’s no warhead, which means no explosion. And while an impact on the torso or head will kill someone, hitting elsewhere likely won’t (though the victim will probably lose a limb).
And then there’s always the possibility that you miss entirely and hit the seat right next to Mr. al-Masri, instead of the one that he’s sitting in.
The blades mean that you’ve got a bigger target area.
No. There is a warhead, it’s just not explosive. The blade just ensure it penetrate whatever protective package the target is sitting in, such as a car. The kinetic transfer of the it hitting anywhere near the target will ensure it get plastered.
You can think of it as a really big bullet.
Ooh, maybe there was Fae/Genie protection that the silver would negate!
I was about to make a joke about updating that ridiculous USA Today “possible modifications to AR-15” picture with this, but delightfully, someone’s already made that joke (although they didn’t actually make the edit, just incorporated it by reference.)
The teenage boy in my head is squeeing at the impractical and overcomplicated awesome.
And for some reason, wants to paint it fluorescent orange.
I was thinking hot pink, just to piss the mullahs off more.
To do that, you’d draw a pig’s snout on the front of it.