The secret of the M30A1 lies in a huge number of tungsten BBs arranged around an explosive core – about 182,000 of them. The design is from a technology known as Lethality Enhanced Ordnance developed by Orbital ATK, later acquired by Northrop Grumman. This approach uses computer modeling to calculate the optimum size, number, density and placement of fragments to ensure that a warhead produces the maximum possible effect against a specific type of target. The developers claim that the M30A1 produces the same sort of lethality as the cluster warhead. This blanketed an area of over four football fields per rocket, so a salvo of six would blanket half a square mile.

Imagine riding along, you're suddenly on the floor somehow and everyone is dead or dying around you.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

As much as I don't like such advanced weapons capable of killing hundreds or thousands in a single blow, they are used in the "appropriate" way and are so much better than cluster munitions that leave behind deadly unexploded granades

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Jesus wept. I've always had a morbid fascination with weapons and this one definitely "satisfies" the morbid part. I agree with the other person. This is better than cluster munitions since it will result in far fewer civilian casualties, but it's also tremendously fucked. It makes me feel about as icky as thermobaric bombs do.

I hate to think what the improvement to this idea will look like. I'm sure it will be improved upon, since Northrop now has plenty of field data showing the effectiveness of this design.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

We really put a lot of time and effort to find the best ways to kill each other.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Thats the one! I had forgotten how you could see all the punctures in the windshields. But when not a single tire survives, it indicates a very high density of shrapnel. I saw someone else commenting here that this could have been a Bradley, and while a Bradley could probably also have decimated an unarmoured column like this one, I don't think we would be seeing this kind of damage if that was the case.