IMX-101 is a high-performance insensitive high explosive composite mixture developed by BAE Systems and the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

to replace TNT in artillery shells, starting as soon as 2011. IMX stands for "Insensitive

Munitions Ammunition (informally ammo) is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. Ammunition is both expendable weapons (e.g., bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines) and the component parts of other weapo ...

eXplosives", which refers to the purpose of IMX-101: to provide explosive force equivalent to TNT without its sensitivity to shocks such as gunfire, explosions from

improvised explosive device An improvised explosive device (IED) is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action. It may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery shell, attached to a detonating mecha ...

s, fire, and shrapnel. For example, it is believed that a training incident in Nevada which killed seven Marines would not have occurred with the new explosive. On March 23, 2013, the

ordered $780 million worth of the explosive, with a production of millions of pounds annually, to be produced by BAE at

Holston Army Ammunition Plant Holston Army Ammunition Plant (HSAAP) manufactures Research Department Explosive ( RDX) and High Melting Explosive (HMX) for ammunition production and development. It is government-owned and contractor-operated (GOCO) facility that is part of th ...

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to ...

. The new explosive will cost $8 per pound, compared to $6 per pound for TNT. ''

Time Magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on M ...

'' called IMX-101 one of the "50 best inventions of 2010".

Composition

IMX-101 is composed of 2,4-dinitroanisole (DNAN), nitrotriazolone (NTO), and

nitroguanidine Nitroguanidine - sometimes abbreviated NGu - is a colorless, crystalline solid that melts at 257 °C and decomposes at 254 °C. Nitroguanidine is an extremely insensitive but powerful high explosive. Wetting it with > 20 wt.-% water effe ...

(NQ). The nominal composition is 43.5 wt% DNAN, 36.8 wt% NQ, and 19.7 wt% NTO. Trace amounts of ''N''-methyl-''p''-nitroaniline (MNA) are included in some formulations to aid in processing. A formulation containing about 24 wt%

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It h ...

and 76 wt% IMX-101 is called ALIMX-101 and is currently investigated as an insensitive replacement for H6 and PBXN-109 in Mk82 style bombs. The performance of PAX-28, a

thermobaric A thermobaric weapon, also called an aerosol bomb, a vacuum bomb or a fuel air explosive (FAE), is a type of explosive that uses oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion. The fuel–air explosive is one of the b ...

, containing a mixture of

RDX RDX (abbreviation of "Research Department eXplosive") or hexogen, among other names, is an organic compound with the formula (O2N2CH2)3. It is a white solid without smell or taste, widely used as an explosive. Chemically, it is classified as a ...

, DNAN, Al, AP and MNA was found to have an indoor explosive equivalency factor of 1.62 when compared to

Composition B Composition B, colloquially Comp B, is an explosive consisting of castable mixtures of RDX and TNT. It is used as the main explosive filling in artillery projectiles, rockets, land mines, hand grenades and various other munitions. It was als ...

. OSX-12 is being studied as a replacement to PAX-28.

Processing

, IMX formulations are melt- castable without

thermal degradation Thermal decomposition, or thermolysis, is a chemical decomposition Chemical decomposition, or chemical breakdown, is the process or effect of simplifying a single chemical entity (normal molecule, reaction intermediate, etc.) into two or more ...

, and are thus processed into munitions by a melt pour process starting with a batch

melt kettle Melt may refer to: Science and technology * Melting, in physics, the process of heating a solid substance to a liquid * Melt (manufacturing), the semi-liquid material used in steelmaking and glassblowing * Melt (geology), magma ** Melt inclusio ...

heated by a steam

heat exchanger A heat exchanger is a system used to transfer heat between a source and a working fluid. Heat exchangers are used in both cooling and heating processes. The fluids may be separated by a solid wall to prevent mixing or they may be in direct conta ...

References

{{Reflist Explosives

Composition

Processing

See also

Further reading

References