London Bombs
Jul. 23rd, 2005 06:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringAs soon as I heard the details of the squibbed explosions, I knew it was a major breakthrough. The would-be suicide bombers had about as much chance of escaping as the proverbial snowflake. And once the police began questioning them, all sorts of leads would open up.
Obviously the explosive wasn't. During my time in uniform I got to play around with all sorts of things that went bang, and when I was a sergeant I was the bloke in the regiment charged with destroying things that didn't go bang when they should have. This mostly consisted of wrapping placcy around the mine/shell/grenade, sticking in a detonator, lighting the fuse and retiring to a safe distance. The key to getting it all to work is to use explosions to trigger increasingly less sensitive explosives. Detonators are pretty sensitive, and will explode without much effort. We were trained to "crimp" them to the fuse by holding the pliers off to one side, so if the act of crimping set them off, they wouldn't blow off anything too important.
The circular primer was less sensitive, and the slab or plastic was about as safe as you could get. You can throw placcy around, burn it, drop it, run over it with a tank and it won't go off.
And then the mortar round or grenade or whatever. You'd aim the destruction at the most sensitive point, generally the fuze. End result was always a satisfying bang and a nice clean crater when you went back to check.
So what happened in this latest incident was that the det triggered the primer (because a det wouldn't have enough force to blow out windows by itself - you can safely set them off under a sandbag) but the main charge didn't fire. The would-be suicide bomber is left alive with everyone looking at him. Lots of eyewitnesses, DNA, personal possessions, fingerprints, so even if he gets away from the immediate scene, it's only a matter of time.
And then you catch him and start looking at what he's been doing and who he's been talking to.
Obviously the explosive wasn't. During my time in uniform I got to play around with all sorts of things that went bang, and when I was a sergeant I was the bloke in the regiment charged with destroying things that didn't go bang when they should have. This mostly consisted of wrapping placcy around the mine/shell/grenade, sticking in a detonator, lighting the fuse and retiring to a safe distance. The key to getting it all to work is to use explosions to trigger increasingly less sensitive explosives. Detonators are pretty sensitive, and will explode without much effort. We were trained to "crimp" them to the fuse by holding the pliers off to one side, so if the act of crimping set them off, they wouldn't blow off anything too important.
The circular primer was less sensitive, and the slab or plastic was about as safe as you could get. You can throw placcy around, burn it, drop it, run over it with a tank and it won't go off.
And then the mortar round or grenade or whatever. You'd aim the destruction at the most sensitive point, generally the fuze. End result was always a satisfying bang and a nice clean crater when you went back to check.
So what happened in this latest incident was that the det triggered the primer (because a det wouldn't have enough force to blow out windows by itself - you can safely set them off under a sandbag) but the main charge didn't fire. The would-be suicide bomber is left alive with everyone looking at him. Lots of eyewitnesses, DNA, personal possessions, fingerprints, so even if he gets away from the immediate scene, it's only a matter of time.
And then you catch him and start looking at what he's been doing and who he's been talking to.
