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Russia Tests World's Largest Non-Nuclear Bomb
mahesh_gharat writes "Russia has tested the "Father of all bombs," a conventional air-delivered explosive that experts say can only be compared with a nuclear weapon in terms of its destructive power.The device is a fuel-air explosive, commonly known as a vacuum bomb, that spreads a high incendiary vapour cloud over a wide area and then ignites it, creating an ultra-sonic shock wave and searing fireball that destroys everything in its wake."
It's on Russian TV news channel web site:
http://www.1tv.ru/news/n108915
To play, click on a bomb's image in the right upper corner shown after flash loading.
http://www.deagel.com/Land-Attack-Cruise-Missiles/Kh-15_a000869001.aspx
May I suggest you stop using Wikipedia as the source of your "expertise"? Or just shut the fuck up. Whatever works for you.
What's interesting is *who* is getting pushed for the elections which will happen soon, not the ordinary and mundane mechanics of parliamentary democracy.
Yes, during WWII it was actually quite common for planes to attack surface ships with iron bombs, or even just strafe them with machine gun fire. That became problematic with the availability of air cover from aircraft carriers and better ship-mounted defensive systems, so it went out of style until cruise missiles were developed and standoff attacks were made possible.
The Russians seem to think so.
In 1999, the Russian Army evacuated the city of Grozny of civilians, leaving (obstensibly) only the dug-in insurgents in the city. Russian forces then cordoned the city and laid waste to it with massive barrages of fuel-air munitions, delivered via TOS-1. The city was totally destroyed.
That was using Fuel-Air Explosives (FAE's), which use aerosolized hydrocarbon-based fuel. Judging from the mass-to-yeild ratio reported for this new bomb (~5.5x that of TNT), it's an aluminum-based thermobaric munition. Thermobarics use aluminum (or less commonly boron) based fuel, distributed and usually detonated by high explosive charge. Compared to fuel-air bombs this results in greater reliability, more energy released per unit mass, and much more energy released per unit volume (since 75% aluminum + 25% composition-B HE is about 2.5x denser than hydrocarbon-based fuels).
For what it's worth: (1) the old-generation american fuel-air explosives used ethylene oxide as their fuel, which increased reliability but at the expense of energy density. (2) the american armed forces have aluminum-based thermobaric munitions in their inventories, too.
And yeah, comparing FAE's and thermobarics to nukes is misleading. Thermobarics can offer up to ~8x the energy density of conventional high explosives, but even small nukes generate thousands times more boom per unit weight. Nukes are the cheap and easy way to destroy a city, but the Russians decided the political price would be too high, and used FAE's instead (which are much cheaper than equivalent-yield high explosives, but nowhere nearly as cheap per unit yield as nukes).
-- TTK
I agree, Tu 160 does not have anything to do with that. Now TU-22M Backfire is a completely different matter. It was designed as an antifleet weapon, built as an antifleet weapon and is still considered by the USA to be the most dangerous antifleet weapon in the Russian arms inventory.
As far as what is feasible to attack with what here is a nice diagram: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/bomber/range.gif
As you can see most of USA is within range even without considering the use of cruise missiles.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Bombers are not designed to attack navy ships.
Wrong. Take Tu-22M for instance. Or the Tu-16. Or even the B-52. Some of these aircraft served in hundreds in dedicated anti-shipping regiments.
Battle carrier groups are heavily fortified structures.
Wrong again. Heavily defended? Yes. Fortified? Hell No. Not since world war 2 when the armored battleships went the way of the Dodo. Modern warships dont have anything more than splinter armor.
Even back then, they would use small fast aircrafts to hit our ships, not monsters aircrafts that make inviting targets
Wrong two more times again. One, Small aircraft lack the range, endurance and payload to effectively hunt the carrier battle groups. Two, These "monster" aircraft are not quite the easy target you think they are because they have stand off weapons.
Finally, you are wrong when you contradict the GP that Tomcat/Phoenix was a direct responce to these bombers. The Tomcat was specifically designed for intercepting heavy cruise missile carrying bombers.
And you have the gall for berating the GP and mods about modding without a clue!!!