@morgfair Yes, thermobaric weapons are horrible when used against people. Back in the Vietnam War days we called them fuel-air bombs. Honeywell was the primary maker of them, if I remember correctly. Large ones are sometimes called the poor man's nuke.

As far as I know, they are not banned by international law. The U.S. used them in the Afghanistan war.

The main use for large ones is to flatten buildings over a wide area. In Vietnam they were used to flatten large areas of jungle.

The ones the Russians are using are small versions of these weapons apparently intended to be used against human targets.

They probably should be banned, at least for use against personnel. On the other hand, large ones used for bunker busting, rooting out terrorists hiding in caves, disabling North Korea's nuclear stockpile, they might prevent escalation to nuclear weapons.