🔗 Thermobaric Weapon

🔗 Technology 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Weaponry 🔗 Explosives

A thermobaric weapon, aerosol bomb, or vacuum bomb is a type of explosive that uses oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion. In practice, the blast wave typically produced by such a weapon is of a significantly longer duration than that of a conventional condensed explosive. The fuel–air explosive is one of the best-known types of thermobaric weapon.

Most conventional explosives consist of a fuel–oxidizer premix (black powder, for example, contains 25% fuel and 75% oxidizer), but thermobaric weapons are almost 100% fuel and so are significantly more energetic than conventional condensed explosives of equal weight. Their reliance on atmospheric oxygen makes them unsuitable for use under water, at high altitude, and in adverse weather. They are, however, considerably more destructive when used against field fortifications such as foxholes, tunnels, bunkers, and caves, partly because of the sustained blast wave and partly by the consumption of the oxygen inside it.

Many types of thermobaric weapons can be fitted to hand-held launchers.