From AP:
Israel could have used smaller weapons against Hamas to avoid deaths in Gaza tent fire, experts say
...Even the smallest jet-launched munition may be too big when civilians are near because of how they explode and can send fragments far, defense experts said.Based on images and satellite photos of the debris field, two defense experts said the bombs used were likely U.S.-made 250-pound (113-kilogram) GBU-39 small-diameter bombs.Though they're smaller than many other weapons the U.S. has provided to Israel, these bombs can still create a wide swath of damage. The entire 250-pound shell and components are designed to spew fragments that can travel as far as 2,000 feet (600 meters).“You essentially have two bombs they use that the fragments can travel 600 meters in a densely packed area. So that just doesn’t check out if they’re trying to limit casualties,” said Trevor Ball, a former Army explosive ordnance demolition technician.
The GBU-39 is known as the SDB - Small Diameter Bomb. As far as I can tell, it is the smallest bomb available for deployment by fighter jets. It was designed specifically to minimize collateral damage. It carries only 17 kilograms of explosives.
I have no idea where this "expert" got the information that the GBU-39 can send fragments 2000 feet away. The blast radius for the bomb is generally known to be 26 feet, Videos I've seen show it is used to destroy objects the size of trucks, not ships.
Perhaps some fragments can anomalously travel a couple of hundred feet, but to say they are "designed" to spew fragments 2000 feet is an out and out lie.
To give perspective, the "kill radius" of a modern hand grenade is 16 feet. That means that the GBU-39 blast radius is about equivalent to three hand grenades (2,200 square feet.)
If the GBU-39 is the smallest bomb possible to launch from the air, then what else could Israel do to eliminate Hamas leaders?
One expert answers:
Israel, for example, in this strike could have used a smaller anti-personnel weapon called the mini-Spike, which would not have created as wide an area of debris, if it was targeting specific Hamas leaders, Cancian said.
I do not pretend to be a military expert by any means. But the mini-Spike is a weapon carried by a soldier on the ground and has a range of only 1,200 meters. Were there IDF soldiers, equipped with mini-Spikes, within 1,200 meters of the target, ready and waiting to deploy? Doesn't that seem improbable?
When intelligence comes in about high value targets that can move, an army prioritizes killing them while they know where they are and doesn't have the luxury to come up with elaborate alternative plans that might have a slightly lower chance of collateral damage.
This armchair quarterbacking is absurd. These "experts" know next to nothing about what the actual, in the moment battlefield conditions were that made Israel apparently choose a GBU-39 as the best weapon at that point in time.
Maybe the people interviewed are experts in explosives, but they know nothing about real-time targeting decisions. Real military experts praise Israel in that arena.
From everything we know, the civilians nearby were not killed by debris from the bomb but from the fire that was ignited by secondary explosions of Hamas munitions. The people were killed by a fire ignited by Hamas explosives, not Israeli bombs! This is not even mentioned in the AP article. Anticipating such a result is the domain of psychics. The actual facts of the incident destroy the entire premise of the article. After all, even a single bullet could have accidentally set off Hamas explosives, too.
Beyond that, the entire article is written with the implication that if there were a couple of civilians "scattered" nearby then Israel should not have shot the Hamas leaders at all. Yet under international law, if the value of the target is high enough, the attackers are absolutely allowed to target it even with civilian casualties. AP and the "experts" are demanding a standard for Israel than no army in history has ever achieved, and that no army in history has ever been expected to achieve.
To write an entire article like this applying double standards to only Israel is not analysis - it is antisemitic libel.
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