The AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground guided missile was built to kill tanks. On July 31, 2022, two of them, launched from a United States Air Force unmanned drone over Afghanistan, killed Ayman al-Zawahiri instead. Al Zawahiri had been leader of al Qaeda since the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. In bin Laden’s time he was the organisation’s operational brain.