For a year, U.S. officials have been saying that taking out a terrorist threat in Afghanistan with no American troops on the ground would be difficult but not impossible. Last weekend, the U.S. did just that -- killing al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri with a CIA drone strike. Other high-profile airstrikes in the past had inadvertently killed innocent civilians. In this case, the U.S. carefully chose to use a type of Hellfire missile that greatly minimized the chance of other casualties. Although U.S. officials have not publicly confirmed which variant of the Hellfire was used, experts and others familiar with counterterrorism operations said a likely option was the highly secretive Hellfire R9X -- know by various nicknames, including the "knife bomb" or the "flying Ginsu."

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. Israel shared three cell phone numbers used by Qasem Soleimani with U.S. intelligence in the hours before American drones unleashed Hellfire missiles on the Iranian general last year, Yahoo News reported Saturday. The revelation sheds new light on the role that Israel played in the killing of Soleimani, who the State Department says was responsible for hundreds of U.S. troop deaths as the head of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force. The drone strike occurred shortly after midnight on Jan. 2, 2020, as Soleimani and his entourage were leaving Baghdad's international airport.

The US military is massively speeding the development of AI to reduce soldier casualties, according to Fox News on Thursday. The establishment of high-speed, multi-domain warfare by 2030, in which AI technology can take advantage of'networks' to hit multiple targets with Hellfire missiles as a means of decreasing the risk faced by soldiers in the field is a primary objective of the Army's emerging AI Task Force. Easely outlined the current difficulty of amalgamating data, explaining that today's methods have "stovepiped" sensor systems, which organise vast amounts of incoming data. AI will streamline and "fuse" disparate sources to build a "sensor fusion" throughout multiple combat platforms. The Brigadier General included Multi-Spectral sensors and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) as examples of technologies that will benefit from AI-empowered data processing.

A report from the Wall Street Journal has revealed the US is using a new type of dive-bombing'missile' that kills targets without exploding. The weapon called the R9X, or the'flying Ginsu,' is designed to crush targets by dropping through buildings and cars with the help of a six large blades that deploy seconds before impact. According to the report, the goal of the weapon is to reduce unintended casualties caused by other more standard missiles that typically detonate and engulf both targets and their surroundings. Hellfire missiles may be effective, but they often endanger innocent bystanders. The R9X or'flying Ginsu' is a weapon developed by the US military to precision-target individuals.

Militants firing from bombed-out buildings had ambushed a U.S.-backed militia on a rubble-strewn street in Raqqah, Islamic State's self-declared capital and one of its last urban strongholds. The militia was pinned down and their commander wanted the drone to take out the gunmen. The pilot studied the surveillance video streaming onto his screen. A captain, he instructed the staff sergeant at his side to set the drone's target sights and powered up a Hellfire missile under its wing. "Rifle," the pilot said and the missile soared away.