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."

Comments

Re:Why?

[jo_ham]

It's like protection of the President - you can see all the showy stuff with the Secret Service guys in black suits and sunglasses, holding their finger to their ear to listen to an earpiece... those are the guys they want you to see.

if women were in power

[circletimessquare]

you would see worse conflicts, lasting longer periods of time

the lie is that women are less violent. the male mode of conflict is physical sudden severe and swift, and then over, and everybody moves on. the female mode of conflict is longer term social violence: sabotage, character assassination, propaganda campaigns, name calling. of course it isn't physical violence, but it is still violence

if you compare physical violence amongst boys in elementary school, the boys are off the charts compared to the girls. but if you compare social violence amongst girls in elementary school, the girls are off the charts, to a greater degree than the physical violence the boys exhibit

the lie is that women are less violent than men. men are more physically violent, but their violence is short, strong, stupid, and over quickly, and then everyone is friends again. the female mode of violence is longstanding, complicated, highly vicious, and scorched earth: permanently psychologically scarring

women are off the charts when it comes to social violence. if women were in power you would see psychological warfare like you've never seen, and it would last a long, long time, and teh game would be played for serious detrimental effects. it would be soft power, economic and cultural, but played out to such a vicious extreme that the other country would be bereft of all confidence, culture, economy, or any other sort of ability to function as a normal society