It is among the most horrific weapons in any army's collection: the thermobaric bomb, a fearsome explosive that sets fire to the air above its target, then sucks the oxygen out of anyone unfortunate enough to have lived through the initial blast.
Last year, the U.S. military used such weapons for the first time in combat, to incinerate suspected underground al-Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan. In the next few months, the U.S. Army will start putting this sweeping power in the hands of individual soldiers.
My Wired News story has the details.
THERE'S MORE: As several readers noted, the Russians have used single-soldier thermobarics in the past. But the Russian "wet" thermobarics were considered by American military scientists to be too dangerous for our troops.
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