What the thermobaric bomb used by Russia is and how it works

The oxygen that turns into a blaze of death, the pressure that crushes organs and bodies: the thermobaric devices, a bomb and a missile, used by the Russians in Kursk against Ukrainian forces are considered among the deadliest conventional weapons developed so far. The device is also called a vacuum bomb because, as the Treccani writes, 'at the moment of explosion it deprives the environment in which it deflagrates of air'.

In technical terms, a thermobaric bomb works in two stages: an explosive charge disperses fuel into the air, which is transformed on contact with oxygen into a flammable cloud that can infiltrate buildings, tunnels, and unsealed environments. A second charge ignites the cloud, generating a high-temperature explosion and a sustained shockwave of pressure and heat that devastates the area within range.

The first use is US: in the 1960s, the CBU-55, a cluster bomb, was made to hit Vietcong hiding in tunnels and forests. It came back into vogue in the 1990s, in Iraq above all, but also in Afghanistan to flush out Qaedist followers of Osama bin Laden in caves during the hunt for the sheikh of terror. The Soviets did not want to be outdone, and even developed the weapon for other uses, such as projectiles for anti-tank rocket launchers and grenade launchers. The bombs dropped from the sky in fact showed wide criticalities in the field, as the Russians had to observe in the Afghan war. The wind, the morphology of the affected valleys ended up exposing Moscow's infantry to the effects of the explosions.

As was also the case with the first versions of the Odab-500, Russian fighter jets dropped a new generation 500-kilogram bomb at Kursk today. Nothing to do with 'the father of all bombs', the 7-tonne device developed in 2007 that has an explosive power similar to that of a tactical nuclear weapon. In Ukraine, where Moscow has deployed TOS-1 rocket launcher systems capable of using these devices, Kiev has also decided to use small thermobaric charges mounted on war drones launched against Russian defences.

Su-30SM and Su-35S fighters bombed Ukrainian units in the Russian Kursk region last night, the Moscow Defence Ministry announced today, as reported by Tass. "The crews of Su-30SM and Su-35S fighter jets struck Ukrainian personnel and equipment in the Russian border region of Kursk," a statement read. After receiving confirmation from reconnaissance that all targets were eliminated, the crews successfully returned to their base. Earlier, the ministry had announced that a multi-purpose supersonic Su-34 fighter-bomber had last night carried out an attack on a group of Ukrainian military men and equipment in a border area of the Kursk region with a 500 kg Odab-500 air-to-air explosive bomb. Subsequently, the ministry had announced that it had hit the deployment site of foreign mercenaries on the southern outskirts of Sudzha, also in the Kursk region, with a thermal-barrel missile.