Sunday 22 March 2020

daisy-cutter

On this day in 1970, under the auspices of the programme Commando Vault to develop and deploy progressively more destructive conventional explosives in the war effort, the United States Army first dropped the BLU-82 (Bomb Live Unit) on troops in North Vietnam and Laos, so nicknamed the above as it was designed not for combat but to clear helicopter landing zones in dense jungle and due to its broad but shallow explosive capabilities, it did not leave a crater. The type and stronger iterations were used up until 2008 (the last live ammunition practise pictured) in various campaigns before being replaced by the MOAB.