[ml1954]

So I'm supposed to believe that 380 tons of HDX/RDX were looted 18 months ago by Iraqi insurgents, yet NONE of it has ever been used against the coalition! This is the most incredible load of bull I have witnessed to date.

That is an excellent point. Also, if my calculations are right, 380 tons of this explosive, assuming that each ton is equivalent to 10 tons of TNT (a pure guess and hopefully too high), would be in total equal to 3.8 kilotons of TNT, or a 3.8 kiloton nuke. This is roughly about a quarter of the size of the Hiroshima bomb. And this is only if all 50 or 100 or however many truckloads of the stuff were detonated all at once. Even if true, these explosives are not even close to WMDs, so what's the big deal.

[HawaiianGecko]

 

	Correct. RDX is nothing more than plastic explosives. RDX is considered the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives.  It was invented in 1890 and was used in the first "plastic explosives" created. For 380 tons of it to be "looted" 18 months ago, yet NOT show up in a car bomb to date tells me this whole story is a load of crap.  Absolutely none of the I.E.D.s that have been blowing up in and around Baghdad have been from RDX and/or HDX, although if I were inclined to build a bomb I most certainly would prefer to use a bit of easy to use, easy to mold, easy to detonate, yet extremely safe to work with RDX. It's like a bunch of looters robbing a bank but not spending a single dime of the booty over an 18 month period.  I'm just not buying it. For what it's worth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDX It is a colourless solid, of density 1.82 g/cm³. It is obtained by reacting concentrated nitric acid on hexamine. It is a heterocycle and has the shape of a ring. It starts to decompose at about 170°C and melts at 204°C. Its structural formula is: hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine or (CH2-N-NO2)3 At room temperatures, it is a very stable product. It burns rather than explodes, and only detonates with a detonator, being unaffected even by small arms fire. It is less sensitive than pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN). However, it is very sensitive when crystalized, below -4°C. .