Revelation 9: 6-12, The First Woe

Five trumpets have been sounded. Each has announced something falling from heaven to strike the one-third of the earth.

Revelation 9: 6, Looking for a way to die

6 In those days, people will look for a way to die but won’t find it. They will want to die, but death will escape them.

This falling star, that follows the fifth trumpet, set loose locusts. This time there appears to be no real destruction (of "one-third") as previously, but pain and suffering.
The suffering is a torture to the people of the world, for they seem unable even to die!

Revelation 9: 7-12, The first woe

7 The locusts looked like horses ready for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold. Their faces looked like human faces. 
8 Their hair was like women’s hair. Their teeth were like lions’ teeth. 
9 Their chests were covered with something that looked like armor made out of iron. The sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. 
10 They had tails that could sting people like scorpions do. And in their tails they had power to hurt people over and over for five months. 
11 Their king was the angel of the Abyss. In the Hebrew language his name is Abaddon. In Greek it is Apollyon. His name means Destroyer.

12 The first terrible judgment is past. Two others are still coming. 

Much has been made of the descriptions of the locusts, as if they describe some futuristic, science fiction form of warfare.  Maybe they do ... but more likely they are simply hideous and frightening.

Someone, somewhere, has tried to identify them with military helicopters.  As if some such identification is useful to us.  My reaction to those attempts is that it skips two millennia of readers who would never have imagined such an identification.

The NIV footnotes say that Abaddon and Apollyon mean "Destroyer".  The star that fell with the fifth trumpet seems to be the "angel of the Abyss", that is Satan, Destroyer.

More woes will come.