THE US Department of Defense wants to build an X-ray bomb. The unusual device could knock out chemical and biological weapon sites without spreading hazardous material over a wide area, as is the risk with the explosives currently used.
In April, when the US, UK and France struck facilities associated with chemical weapons in Syria, like labs and training centres, they had to be careful not to hit any storage sites. Although high-temperature incendiary warheads have been developed that should neutralise any chemical and biological weapons they hit, there is still a risk that a stray missile could instead damage a facility and cause it to leak.
To try to avoid this risk in the future, the US Department of Defense is working on using a strong burst of X-rays to render chemical and biological weapons useless, without damaging the vessels containing them.
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The Department of Defense has contracted specialist electronics company Hyperion Technology Group to develop a prototype. The device will fit inside an existing warhead casing, on a bomb or a missile.
The idea is that, at high enough exposure levels, X-rays destroy bacteria, spores and other biological agents. X-rays would also break down complex molecules like organophosphate nerve gases, such as sarin. However, a simple gas like chlorine would be unaffected.
A dose of X-rays is measured in a unit called Grays. A recent study from the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology found that doses of less than 13 Grays could activate bacterial spores like anthrax rather than killing them, so higher levels of radiation would be needed. Around 10,000 Grays would be enough to destroy stored anthrax spores, according to a previous study from the US Department of Energy. For comparison, a normal chest CT scan is less than 0.01 Gray.
X-ray intensity decreases rapidly with distance, so the weapon would have to get very close to the target. Anyone nearby would receive a fatal dose of radiation, causing failure of the cardiovascular and central nervous systems.
“The idea is that a strong enough burst of X-rays would wipe out bacteria, spores and nerve agents”
The technology could potentially be used as a terror weapon, says Robert Bunker at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, in Pennsylvania.
“This technology… could be utilised against human beings to cause injuries and fatalities stemming from its radiation sickness effects,” says Bunker. He points to the case of Glendon Scott Crawford, who was convicted in 2016 of attempting to build an X-ray weapon to expose people to lethal doses of radiation from a truck.
However, Bunker says the bomb would probably be designed so that the technology powering it incinerated on impact, to avoid others getting hold of it.
Under international law, a weapon is legal if it does not cause any unnecessary suffering. This means the use of an X-ray bomb would not necessarily be unlawful if it is the only way to achieve a lawful military objective, says Marco Roscini at the University of Westminster in London.
The technology behind the bomb is not publicly available, but the Department of Defense has previously experimented with ways of converting explosive energy into an X-ray pulse for a similar purpose.
Using an explosion to rapidly compress matter, such as helium and aluminium, a team in the US was able to produce extremely high pressure normally found only inside stars. Under these conditions, rather than binding together with outer electrons as normal, the inner electron shells of adjacent atoms may bind together. These high-energy bonds are unstable and when they break they produce energetic radiation such as X-rays. It is not known whether this technology is the basis of the current project.
Work on the project will commence in July and run for two years.
The US Department of Defense did not respond to 91av‘s request for comment.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Building an X-ray bomb”
