The six-bladed configuration has reportedly earned the nicknames "ninja bomb" and "the flying Ginsu," the latter being a reference to a brand of knives sold through television infomercials starting in the 1970s. The advertisements featured energetic pitchmen slicing through everything from fruits and vegetables to wood blocks and commercial plastic piping.

The exact configuration of the R9X variant is unclear and the Journal was not able to obtain any pictures of it with its blades either stowed or deployed as they would be before impact. A diagram the newspaper put together from descriptions it received, which you can see below, shows the blades extending out laterally from the warhead section of the missile.

The Wall Street Journal published its scoop of the weapon, reportedly designated the AGM-114R9X, on May 9, 2019. Anonymous U.S. government sources told the newspaper that the U.S. military had only fired them operationally "about a half-dozen times," but had done so against targets in Libya , Syria , Iraq, Yemen , and Somalia. It is unclear whether this includes CIA-directed strikes that have utilized the missile.

The U.S. military, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency, are reportedly using a specialized version of the ubiquitous Hellfire missile that swaps out the explosive warhead for inert ballast and an array of sword-like blades that pop out right before it impacts its target. The weapon is designed to give the U.S. government a way to target individual terrorists and militants with an extremely low chance of collateral damage, even to individuals very close by. It was reportedly the weapon responsible for killing Al Qaeda's then-number two leader, Abu Khayr Al Masri, as he drove in Syria in 2017, a strike that clearly involved some sort of mysterious munition, something that The War Zone was the first to call attention to.

The standard AGM-114R, which has been in production since 2010, features an armor-penetrating warhead wrapped in a fragmentation sleeve that gives it a multi-purpose capability against both armored vehicles and soft targets. Since its introduction, a number of subvariants have also become available. This includes the R2 version that adds in a "height of burst" capability that detonates the warhead approximately three feet from the impact point, creating an airburst effect. There is also an R1, R3, R8, and R13 variants, details of which do not appear to be readily available, and an R5 type specifically for export to U.S. allies and partners.

US Army A chart showing details of various common AGM-114 variants, including the AGM-114R.

There are at least four other versions of the R9 subvariant, as well. "Their [Air Force Special Operations Command's] Hellfire variant, AGM-114R9, has an extremely low collateral damage warhead," according to the October 2018 edition of The Precision Strike Digest, the official publication of the Precision Strike Association. U.S. Special Operations Command introduced the R9E in 2014 and the R9H in 2016, and there is also reportedly an R9G variant, but there is no additional information on the differences between them.

SOCOM A slide regarding U.S. Special Operations Command's Hellfire inventory as of 2016.

Some sources have indicated that the R9E has a "Low Collateral Damage" warhead, while the R9H is an improved "Very Low Collateral Damage" type. However, General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems builds the warhead for the R9E and describes it as an "advanced blast fragmentation warhead [that] penetrates and defeats a suite of diverse targets," which would seem to contradict this. At the same time, the U.S. Air Force has applied the "low collateral damage" description to blast-fragmentation munitions that simply have a reduced explosive filler.

GD-OTS A screengrab from General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems' website's entry on the R9E warhead.

It is possible that the entire R9 sub-series is focused on ways to reduce the risk of collateral damage. Another R9 variant may even have an entirely inert warhead, which would already reduce the risk of collateral damage substantially, while the R9X adds in the blades to help increase kill probability. At the time of the Al Masri strike, without knowing the exact weapon involved, The War Zone noted that using a small munition with an inert warhead would increase the risk of failure, especially against a moving target, given that it would need to be very precisely hit the individual in question. The move to add sharp protrusions to the inert Hellfire design would seem to confirm these limitations.