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Boeing Delivers Massive Ordnance Penetrator

Posted by Soulskill on from the mopping-up dept.

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."

6 of 381 comments (clear)

  1. Cool! by Tsingi · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Let's start driving nuclear weapons deep into the earth and blow them up.

    It boggles the mind.

    1. Re:Cool! by stevegee58 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      If it's not nuclear, maybe it's nucular.

    2. Re:Cool! by Tsingi · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      you obviously know very little about atomic devices if you think that they can be set off by someone blowing up the facility. In order to form the chain reaction necessary for an atomic explosion, the forces must be very precisely directed. And with the radioactive material so far underground already, there's no danger of releasing radiation into the surrounding countryside. Its far more dangerous to let the Iranians have a working nuclear device than to worry about putting extra large pot holes all over their country. Which is sad, because if their government cared at all for their people, they'd realize that pissing off the US is a good way to look more like large parking lot than an industrialized country.

      You're very clever, RTFA

      See section 6.4, Nuclear Payloads in the pdf linked in the article header.

  2. Lets get this out of the way... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    [Obligatory penis reference]

    Great, lets move on

  3. Pet Peeve: Imperial units by worip · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Five tons in this instance would be 10000 pounds? Otherwise it would be the same $%^$%^ that got you guys in trouble with the Mars Orbiter. Let's translate for the rest of the (metric) world: "...it is nearly 22,000kg heavier than the ~50,000kg GBU-43 MOAB surface bomb, sometimes called the 'mother of all bombs.' 'Our past test experience has shown that 4,400kg penetrators carrying 1100kg of high explosive are relatively ineffective against tunnels,..."

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    A picture is worth exactly 1024 words.
  4. I have massive ordinance penetrator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    in my pants.

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    There, I said it.