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Boeing Delivers Massive Ordnance Penetrator
Hugh Pickens writes "In an age of drones and lightweight weaponry, the U.S. Air Force's purchase of the first batch of 30,000-pound bombs designed to pulverize underground enemy hide-outs highlights the military's need to go after hard and deeply buried targets. The weapon's explosive power is 10 times greater than its bunker-buster predecessor, the BLU-109 and it is nearly five tons heavier than the 22,600-pound GBU-43 MOAB surface bomb, sometimes called the 'mother of all bombs.' 'Our past test experience has shown that 2,000-pound penetrators carrying 500 pounds of high explosive are relatively ineffective against tunnels, even when skipped directly into the tunnel entrance,' says a 2004 Pentagon report on the Future Strategic Strike Force. 'Instead, several thousand pounds of high explosives coupled to the tunnel are needed to blow down blast doors and propagate a lethal air blast throughout a typical tunnel complex' (PDF). Experts note that the military disclosed delivery of the new bunker-busting bomb less than a week after a United Nations agency warned that Iran was secretly working to develop a nuclear weapon and is known to have hidden nuclear complexes that are fortified with steel and concrete, and buried under mountains. 'Heck of a coincidence, isn't it?' says John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org."
Agreed. The primary function of weapons is to discourage the opponents, not to harm.
But in order to be scary enough to discourage the other guys, it actually has to be able to cause harm. And lots of it.
And in fact, it works even better if your message to the leaders of the bad guys is that you can get a bomb into their supposedly safe bunkers, and get personal on them. That's a pretty good deterrent, and will probably ensure that you never have to use that bomb.
And secondly, this bomb will make you Yankees look less of an a** when some Afghan guys are hiding in a mountain. Mountains turned out to be pretty awesome bunkers.
Did you just post that as flamebait or have you had your head in the sand for 20 years ?
Just to refresh your memory
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/2/newsid_2526000/2526937.stm
Iraq invades kuwait.
https://www.google.com/search?q=north+korea+missile+test&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
North Korea's missile tests.
and just in case
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2003/05/what_kind_of_terrorism_does_north_korea_sponsor.html
Just some examples of No Ko's terrorist activities.
Now in case you missed it there was also this large country called China, that is forcibly occupying Tibet ? Continuously making moves to threaten Taiwan and backs the nucking futs regime in North Korea.
Also in case you missed it, there is this other large county called Russia. That views the former Soviet Socialist Republics as pieces that belong back in the puzzle that is mother Russia. They aren't above poisoning leaders of these countries, reporters that point out that they are up to no good, and anyone else that happens to be nearby.
A nuclear payload doesn't take anywhere near the 5,300lbs of slow burning high explosive that these things are packed with. It's true that one of them should produce a bang bigger than the bomb at Hiroshima, and that the delivery mechanism could be used to deliver a nuclear payload, but these are non-nuclear weapons. The whole reason the MOAB and other bombs like it (including this one) were developed was because the US is bound by international treaty and law not to use nuclear weapons in war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Treaty
These are weapons designed to be used, not designed to sit in a warehouse somewhere as a deterrent in case somebody else uses a nuke.
Do you think that maybe, just maybe, it might help to have more women in positions of power?
Hmmm, I really don't think so.
There's absolutely no evidence that female leaders are less willing to go to war than male leaders. It is of course less common, but that has more to do with women being much less likely to be political and military leaders than men.
I am officially gone from
Underground nuclear bases don't turn into fission bombs just because you drop a bomb on them.
It should also be noted that if you set off a bomb next to a nuclear weapon, all that happens is that you either shove the nuclear weapon to one side, or you destroy it. In neither case does it undergo fission.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Dummy entrances, angled blast-by down-tunnel subdoors leading to hidden pressure vents, location misdirection, laminated corbeled superstructure, etc.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd