That's what I was going to say. Since the exact composition and function of SR explosives (and other rounds) are not detailed [1], you could very well say SR grenades and other bang-bangs are thermobaric munitions. Or you could say the IP grenades are, but regular ones are not. Whatever fluff works for you.


[1] With the exception of the lame bronze-cored AV rounds, which have too much detail.

And there's C-4 too. But that's easily explained away by how a kilogram of it won't hurt anybody more than a meter away and thus cannot possibly reflect to hurt someone behind a corner. Umm, yeah. I'm with you, mfb!

Actually, FAE equals thermobaric (or really volumetric weapons, they belong to the same family). The second to last line in the first paragraph of that linked article to the Aus. DoD mentions it. Thermo = heat, Baric = pressure. The heat of the explosion over a large area creates an intense pressure wave. The Russians like to call them vaporization bombs (since the fuel is vaporized into the air before detonation) or, more commonly, vacuum bombs. You don't get burned unless your at ground zero, you get crushed by the shockwave.

For SR effects, treat as per FAE rules on M&M p112. I usually made the RPO-A using 4 liters of Rating 10 FAE, and putting it on a rocket engine. That would produce a 1m inital blast radius with 20D damage, then -1 Power/m radiating out. So the actual blast range turns out to be something like 42m in diameter.

Arethusa, you said it. No mention at all that We (i.e Americans) aren't the first to use this technology. Also, the bursting munition rifle component is be resurrected as the XM25, while the KE rifle is being developed as the XM8. The current plan is to use them seperately.

BTW, 25mm thermobaric shells? While 2 to 4 liters of underoxided fuel makes sense, I'm not sure what two tablespoons full of the stuff's going to do. It doesn't seem like a whole lot of munitions. Granted the Russians got 30mm grenades loaded with the stuff, but those are much larger than the warheads on the XM29/XM25/XM303 25mm shells.

I had always understood this to be the difference between FAE and thermobaric:
FAEs first release a rapidly expanding aerosol cloud, which then detonates. The burn speed of the explosives is very, very slow, and there is some "afterburn" effect. Thermobaric explosives detonate right away with a rather slow burn speed and there is significant "afterburn" effect.

However, it seems a whole lot of people use the terms interchangeably, and it is damn near impossible to get hard, technical data on how exactly all the different weapons work, so I'll admit that I may well have been wrong.

And you'll be better of forgetting about the SR FAEs. With the canon rules, you should never buy more than the minimum possible amount (your GM shall rue the day he agreed to sell it 1 gram at a time), and then of the highest rating stuff you can get, going for hand grenades instead unless you can get them at at least rating 10 or more.