China has significantly enhanced safety of the world's most powerful explosive: Report

A research team in China has claimed to have significantly enhanced the safety of the world’s most potent explosive by designing a five-fold boost to its shock resistance capacity, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.

As per the scientists, this innovation could lead to the acceleration of large-scale application of the explosive in wars which could further make the Chinese weapons far superior in terms of destructive power.

Deemed to be the most lethal non-nuclear explosive in existence, CL-20 when blasted, can beget fierce shock waves with exploding pressures that are many times higher than other common explosives like TNT and RDX.

Recently, Chinese defence researchers, with the help of 24 hypersonic projectiles, sank an entire US aircraft carrier cavalcade in the South China Sea.

According to military experts, the weapons used by China had CL-20 warheads.

According to a US Energetics Technology Centre study commissioned by the Pentagon in 2021, the mass production of CL-20 is extremely difficult but China is the only country to so far possess such industrial capability.

The study also claims that China has used the explosive in some of its newest weapons.

But the use of CL-20 is still restricted due to its sensitivity to shock, the SCMP report cited explosive scientist Guo Changping from the Sichuan Military and Civilian Co-Innovation Centre for New Energetic Materials as saying.

“CL-20 has a high mechanical sensitivity, which makes it prone to safety accidents during its development, production, storage, transport and use, due to friction and impact. Its safety performance needs to be improved,” Guo’s team said in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Chinese Journal of Explosives and Propellants in April.

“We are seeking a new method to break through the current technology barriers. It will inspire the design and preparation of high-security, high-energy propellants and explosive formulas of the future,” the scientists added.

China's CL-20 research closely linked to nuclear weapons programme

According to some state media reports in recent years, China’s CL-20 research is closely linked to its nuclear weapons programme.

More potent detonative devicescan lower the size of nuclear weapons and allow intercontinental ballistic projectiles to travel further.

Explosive expert Professor Yu Yongzhong, who engineered ignitable devices for China’s nuclear warheads, conceived the idea of utilising cage-shaped compounds as the new method of researching high-energy explosives.

He suggested changing the “two-dimensional” flat ring structure of detonation devices to a “three-dimensional” cage-like structure.

This led to the synthesis of 797#, which is the world's first cage structure explosive material in 1979.

According to some experts in the US defence industry, China has already integrated CL-20 into a number of weapons systems and has invested research resources for the mass production of the most deadly non-nuclear explosive in factories.

(With inputs from the agencies)

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