It is the successor to the Khorasan Group, a small but dangerous organization of hardened senior Qaeda operatives that Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s leader, sent to Syria to plot attacks against the West. There may be practical limitations, as well. At the time, The War Zone was the first to suggest that his death could have been the work of a new, novel munition. His release brought a highly experienced operative back to the field, and after his arrival in Syria he slowly climbed the ranks to become Al Qaeda’s military boss and then the de facto leader there. Al-Badawi had been a member of Al Qaeda's franchise in Yemen and had been the alleged mastermind behind the deadly bombing of the U.S. Navy's Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Cole in 2000. In 2015, Mr. al-Aruri was one of five senior Qaeda figures freed by Iran in exchange for an Iranian diplomat held in Yemen. Before the events of this past week, there was only photographic evidence of one other known instance where the U.S. government had carried out a strike using this missile, in 2017, when it killed Al Qaeda's then-number two leader Abu Khayr al Masri, again in northwestern Syria. You can see how this payload would slot into where the explosive warhead would otherwise go in the image below: The payload area is roughly a foot and a half long and let's say the swords are roughly the same length, this would provide about a three and a half foot diameter kill zone, which is similar to what we see in the images of the vehicles that have been struck. There is one report that the AGM-114R9H, a designation first assigned in 2015, according to U.S. government records, is a "very low collateral damage" variant, while the AGM-114R9E is a "low collateral damage" version. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation. The kinetic, non-explosive missile deploys razor-sharp blades to tear apart the target. Production of the original R variant began in 2010 with the missile offering a multi-purpose warhead and the ability to work on both manned and unmanned platforms at various altitudes, thereby replacing a variety of earlier versions optimized for different platforms and target sets. The video below shows a view from the guidance system on an Israeli-made Spike missile, a man-in-the-loop design. The reference to the R9E subvariant may be in error given other available information and could actually be in reference to R9G. This came four days after another AGM-114R9X slammed into a minivan in the Syrian city of Atmeh, situated to the southwest of Afrin and Azaz. Not some phony bologna Middle Eastern extremist boogey-man group like al-Qaeda or al Nusra Front! It's not entirely clear how exactly they differ from the standard AGM-114R or the original AGM-114R9 subvariant. The targeted strike took place less than 10 miles from where U.S. forces recently conducted a raid that led to the death of ISIS' leader al-Baghdadi. If the high-velocity projectile did not kill him, the missile’s other feature almost certainly did: six long blades tucked inside, which deployed seconds before impact to slice up anything in its path. And Al Qaeda’s second-ranking leader, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, who was also a son-in-law to Osama bin Laden, died in a C.I.A. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Special thanks to Bellingcat's Nick Waters who alerted us to this image after Twitter user @obretix came across it. This includes the increased reliance on the GBU-39, a 250-pound small-diameter bomb used extensively in the 2016 and 2017 battles of Mosul and later Raqqa. At the time of the strike, he was carrying an identification card from Ahrar al-Sham, a militant group fighting against Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad that has received support from Turkey, among others, were the targets. https://www.bitchute.com/video/mNUb8xjnZDMI/, . “Khaled al-Aruri was one of Al Qaeda’s most senior figures worldwide and a major veteran of the cause, having begun work with Zarqawi in the late 1980s,” said Charles Lister, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism Programs.