Suicide weapons - Definition and Overview

Suicide weapons are weapons designed to kill individuals or destroy military targets at the cost of the user's life. They are typically based on explosives.

Today, the most common suicide weapons are antipersonnel bombs carried by a single person. Such bombs are typically used to carry out terrorist attacks (suicide bombings are less common, although not unknown, in conventional warfare). Suicide bombers strap explosives (often covered with nails, screws, or other shrapnel) to their bodies (or otherwise carry them) into populated areas and detonate them. Suicide bombings by Palestine terrorists against Israeli civilian targets are frequent occurances in the Arab-Israeli_conflict.

The Pacific Theater in World War II bore witness to the twentieth century's most infamous wartime use of suicide weapons, namely Japanese Kamakaze suicide attack pilots. Late in the war, as the tide turned against Japan, Kamakaze pilots were deployed to attempt to crash their aircraft into American ships in the Pacific. The Japnese even developed specialized aircraft (the Ohka) for the tactic. (Nazi Germany also developed suicide planes (the Selbstopfer), although their designs included a feature for the pilot to escape, and it is unlikely that they ever saw combat.) A successful Kamakaze attack would both kill the plane's pilot and sink the target ship. Related tactics included the Kaiten suicide minisub, which a single Japanese pilot would steer into an American ship.

Kamakaze attacks were mimiced in the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon by flying hijacked civilian aircraft into them.