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An air burst or airburst is the detonation of an explosive device such as an anti-personnel artillery shell or a nuclear weapon in the air instead of on contact with the ground or target. The principal military advantage of an air burst over a ground burst is that the energy from the explosion (as well as any shell fragments) is distributed more evenly over a wider area; however, the peak energy is lower at ground zero.
Air burst artillery has a long history. The shrapnel shell was invented by Henry Shrapnel of the British Army in about 1780 to increase the effectiveness of canister shot. It was used in the later Napoleonic wars and stayed in use until superseded in Artillery of World War I. Modern shells, though sometimes called "shrapnel shells", actually produce fragments and splinters, not shrapnel. [1]
Air bursts were used in the First World War to shower enemy positions and men with shrapnel balls to kill the largest possible number with a single burst. When infantry moved into deep trenches, shrapnel shells were rendered useless and high-explosive shells were used to attack field fortifications and troops in the open. The time fuses for the shells could be set to function on contact or in the air, or at a certain time after contact.
Early anti-aircraft warfare used time fuses to function when they reached the estimated altitude of the target. During World War II a "proximity fuze" was developed for antiaircraft use, controlled by a Doppler radar device within the shell that caused it to explode when near the target. The idea was later adapted for use against ground targets.
During the Vietnam War, air bursting shells were used to great effect to defend bases. This tactic was known as "Killer Junior" when referring to 105 mm or 155 mm shells, and "Killer Senior" when employed with larger howitzers. [2]
Some anti-personnel bounding mines such as Germany's World War II "Bouncing Betty" fire a grenade into the air, which detonates at waist level, increasing the blast radius and harm inflicted by detonation, shock wave, and flying splinters.
A relatively recent example of airburst munitions is the VOG-25P "jumping" 40 mm caseless grenade, which contains a secondary charge to launch it up to 1.5 meters above its point of impact before the main charge detonates. Another recent development are computer programmable air burst grenades with fire control system. Grenade launchers using this technology include the XM29, XM307, PAPOP, Mk 47 Striker, XM25, Barrett XM109, K11, QTS-11, Norinco LG5 / QLU-11 and Multi Caliber Individual Weapon System.
Orbital ATK developed air burst rounds for autocannons. [3] [4]
The air burst is usually 100 to 1,000 m (330 to 3,280 ft) above the hypocenter to allow the shockwave of the fission or fusion driven explosion to bounce off the ground and back into itself, combining two wave fronts and creating a shockwave that is more forceful than the one resulting from a detonation at ground level. This "mach stem" only occurs near ground level, exists around the entire perimeter of the expanding wave front near ground level, and is similar in shape to the letter Y when viewed from the side (see sliced view). Airbursting also minimizes fallout by keeping the fireball from touching the ground, limiting the amount of debris that is vaporized and drawn up in the radioactive debris cloud. For the Hiroshima bomb, an air burst 550 to 610 m (1,800 to 2,000 ft) above the ground was chosen "to achieve maximum blast effects, and to minimize residual radiation on the ground as it was hoped U.S. troops would soon occupy the city". [5]
Some nuclear weapons have a contact preclusion fuzing feature to prevent the backup contact fuze from detonating the weapon if the air burst fuzing fails. [6]
In conventional warfare, air bursts are used primarily against infantry in the open or unarmored targets, as the resulting fragments cover a large area but will not penetrate armor or field fortifications.
In nuclear warfare, air bursts are used against soft targets (i.e. lacking the hardened construction required to survive overpressure from a nuclear explosion) such as cities in countervalue targeting, or airfields, radar systems and mobile ICBMs in counterforce targeting.
Killer Junior and Killer Senior are techniques of employing artillery direct fire air bursts, first developed during the Vietnam War. [7] The technique involves a howitzer firing a high explosive (HE) shell using a mechanical time–super quick (MTSQ) artillery fuze set to cause an airburst over a target in very close proximity to the firing gun's position. Set properly, the shell would detonate approximately 10 meters (33 feet) above the ground at ranges of 200 to 1,000 meters.
The term Killer Junior was applied to this technique when used with 105 mm or 155 mm howitzers, and the term Killer Senior applied to its use with the M115 203 mm (8-inch) howitzer. [8] The term "Killer" came from the call-sign of the battery which developed the technique. The technique was later perfected by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Dean, commander of the 1st Battalion, 8th Field Artillery Regiment, of the 25th Infantry Division Artillery.[ citation needed ]
Killers Junior and Senior were developed as alternatives to the Beehive flechette rounds previously used against nearby enemy troops. The advantage of the Killer techniques over Beehive is that the airburst projects fragments in all directions, and is able to wound enemies crawling or lying in defilade, whereas the flechettes of a Beehive round would simply fly harmlessly over a low target.
Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and led to heavy, fairly immobile siege engines. As technology improved, lighter, more mobile field artillery cannons developed for battlefield use. This development continues today; modern self-propelled artillery vehicles are highly mobile weapons of great versatility generally providing the largest share of an army's total firepower.
Shrapnel shells were anti-personnel artillery munitions which carried many individual bullets close to a target area and then ejected them to allow them to continue along the shell's trajectory and strike targets individually. They relied almost entirely on the shell's velocity for their lethality. The munition has been obsolete since the end of World War I for anti-personnel use; high-explosive shells superseded it for that role. The functioning and principles behind Shrapnel shells are fundamentally different from high-explosive shell fragmentation. Shrapnel is named after Lieutenant-General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842), a British artillery officer, whose experiments, initially conducted on his own time and at his own expense, culminated in the design and development of a new type of artillery shell.
A flechette is a pointed, fin-stabilized steel projectile. The name comes from French fléchette, meaning "little arrow" or "dart", and sometimes retains the acute accent in English: fléchette. They have been used as ballistic weapons since World War I. Delivery systems and methods of launching flechettes vary, from a single shot, to thousands in a single explosive round. The use of flechettes as antipersonnel weapons has been controversial.
A proximity fuze is a fuze that detonates an explosive device automatically when it approaches within a certain distance of its target. Proximity fuzes are designed for elusive military targets such as airplanes and missiles, as well as ships at sea and ground forces. This sophisticated trigger mechanism may increase lethality by 5 to 10 times compared to the common contact fuze or timed fuze.
A shell, in a military context, is a projectile whose payload contains an explosive, incendiary, or other chemical filling. Originally it was called a bombshell, but "shell" has come to be unambiguous in a military context. Modern usage sometimes includes large solid kinetic projectiles, which are more properly termed shot. Solid shot may contain a pyrotechnic compound if a tracer or spotting charge is used.
The Butterfly Bomb was a German 2-kilogram (4.4 lb) anti-personnel submunition used by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. It was so named because the thin cylindrical metal outer shell which hinged open when the bomblet deployed gave it the superficial appearance of a large butterfly. The design was very distinctive and easy to recognise. SD 2 bomblets were not dropped individually, but were packed into containers holding between 6 and 108 submunitions e.g. the AB 23 SD 2 and AB 250-3 submunition dispensers. The SD 2 submunitions were released after the container was released from the aircraft and had burst open. Because SD 2s were always dropped in groups the discovery of one unexploded SD 2 was a reliable indication that others had been dropped nearby. This bomb type was one of the first cluster bombs ever used in combat and it proved to be a highly effective weapon. The bomb containers that carried the SD 2 bomblets and released them in the air were nicknamed the "Devil's Eggs" by Luftwaffe air and ground crew.
The B28, originally Mark 28, was a thermonuclear bomb carried by U.S. tactical fighter bombers, attack aircraft and bomber aircraft. From 1962 to 1972 under the NATO nuclear weapons sharing program, American B28s also equipped six Europe-based Canadian CF-104 squadrons known as the RCAF Nuclear Strike Force. It was also supplied for delivery by UK-based Royal Air Force Valiant and Canberra aircraft assigned to NATO under the command of SACEUR. In addition, certain U.S. Navy carrier based attack aircraft such as the A3D Skywarrior, A4D Skyhawk, and A3J Vigilante were equipped to carry the B28.
The British No. 69 was a hand grenade developed and used during the Second World War. It was adopted into service due to the need for a grenade with smaller destructive radius than the No. 36M "Mills bomb". This allowed the thrower to use a grenade even when there was little in the way of defensive cover. In contrast, the much greater destructive radius of the Mills bomb than its throwing range forced users to choose their throwing point carefully, in order to ensure that they would not be wounded by the shrapnel explosion of their own grenade.
The XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) System, also known as the Punisher and Individual Semiautomatic Air Burst System was an airburst grenade launcher with programmable ammunition derived from the XM29 OICW. It was fielded to soldiers serving in the War in Afghanistan in 2010, after which malfunctions and 2013 program budget cuts delayed official entry into service, planned for early 2017. In early 2017, the contract with Orbital ATK was cancelled, calling the future of the entire program into question. The program was officially terminated on 24 July 2018.
Beehive was a Vietnam war era anti-personnel round packed with metal flechettes fired from an artillery gun most popularly deployed during that conflict. It is also known as flechette rounds or their official designation, antipersonnel-tracer (APERS-T). Typically, artillery gunners fire using indirect fire, firing at targets they cannot see by line of sight, with information provided by a forward observer. However, during the Vietnam War, there was a demand for a munition that could be fired directly at enemy troops, in cases where an artillery unit was attacked.
Upshot–Knothole Grable was a nuclear weapons test conducted by the United States as part of Operation Upshot–Knothole. Detonation of the nuclear weapon, a W9 warhead, occurred 19 seconds after its deployment at 8:30am PDT on May 25, 1953, in Area 5 of the Nevada Test Site.
The S&T Daewoo K11 DAW is a multi-weapon resembling the earlier US Objective Individual Combat Weapon in concept, design and operation. It consists of two separate weapons combined into a single unit: a lower assault rifle chambered to fire 5.56×45mm NATO rounds and an upper 20×30mm grenade launcher firing both conventional and air-bursting "smart" grenades, along with its integrated digital sighting unit.
Fragmentation is the process by which the casing, shot, or other components of an anti-personnel weapon, bomb, barrel bomb, land mine, IED, artillery, mortar, tank gun, or autocannon shell, rocket, missile, grenade, etc. are dispersed and/or shattered by the detonation of the explosive filler.
An airburst round is a type of tactical anti-personnel and anti-aircraft explosive ammunition, typically a shell or grenade, that detonates in midair, causing air burst effect fragment damage to enemy personnel or aircraft. In the latter case, airburst rounds are used in anti-aircraft or "zenith" cannon, known in military slang as FLAK or ack-ack.
Ammunition is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. Ammunition is both expendable weapons and the component parts of other weapons that create the effect on a target.
In military munitions, a fuze is the part of the device that initiates function. In some applications, such as torpedoes, a fuze may be identified by function as the exploder. The relative complexity of even the earliest fuze designs can be seen in cutaway diagrams.
A grenade is an explosive weapon typically thrown by hand, but can also refer to a shell shot from the muzzle of a rifle or a grenade launcher. A modern hand grenade generally consists of an explosive charge ("filler"), a detonator mechanism, an internal striker to trigger the detonator, an arming safety secured by a transport safety. The user removes the transport safety before throwing, and once the grenade leaves the hand the arming safety gets released, allowing the striker to trigger a primer that ignites a fuze, which burns down to the detonator and explodes the main charge.
An artillery fuze or fuse is the type of munition fuze used with artillery munitions, typically projectiles fired by guns, howitzers and mortars. A fuze is a device that initiates an explosive function in a munition, most commonly causing it to detonate or release its contents, when its activation conditions are met. This action typically occurs a preset time after firing, or on physical contact with or detected proximity to the ground, a structure or other target. Fuze, a variant of fuse, is the official NATO spelling.
A contact fuze, impact fuze, percussion fuze or direct-action (D.A.) fuze (UK) is the fuze that is placed in the nose of a bomb or shell so that it will detonate on contact with a hard surface.
The number 106 fuze was the first British instantaneous percussion artillery fuze, first tested in action in late 1916 and deployed in volume in early 1917.
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