The Pentagon is hurrying to find new explosives
Most of America’s existing ones date from the second world war
America’s wars are high-tech affairs. Many of the bombs and missiles with which it has attacked the Houthis in recent days, as part of an effort to protect shipping in the Red Sea, were guided to their targets by lasers or signals from satellites.
But the business ends of such weapons are looking rather long in the tooth. RDX and HMX are the two most common explosives in American weapons. RDX was invented in 1898. HMX dates from 1941. As Bob Kavetsky, who runs the Energetics Technology Centre (ETC), a research group in Maryland, puts it, America’s explosives have been made with mostly “the same processing, literally, since World War II”.
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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline "More bucks, bigger bangs"
From the January 20th 2024 edition
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