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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."
Let's start driving nuclear weapons deep into the earth and blow them up.
It boggles the mind.
[Obligatory penis reference]
Great, lets move on
Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you threw a party
Invited everyone you ever knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.
Why tell potential targets how big a bomb you have and how deep it will penetrate? They can just go deeper and pour more concrete. What happened to surprise?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Like Deep Impact, perhaps?
I think a Middle Eastern friend of ours who has a few issues with Iran will be very interested in a few of these. Look for them to announce development of a stunningly similar weapon after a few smoking holes are left in Natanz.
All underground complexes have entrances on the surface.
Won't bombing those entrances achieve much of the objective by essentially burying the underground target?
How long it will take the enemy to reconstruct the entrance to the target?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
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,..."
A picture is worth exactly 1024 words.
"That's what she said."
Does this one still require a 25 point killstreak to deploy?
"Curiouser and Curiouser...." -Alice
This is George Carlin's "bigger dick" foreign policy ("What? They have bigger dicks? BOMB THEM") at work. Now we are taking it a step further and talking about how deep our "bombs" will penetrate. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, it might help to have more women in positions of power?
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I'm confused. Wasn't the U.N. that organization which was lying when it said Iraq had no wmds?
The one we called liars but when we sent not one, not two, but three teams of our own investigators after we had invaded Iraq to find the wmds which we knew were there, found that the multiple reports that had come out were correct?
It would be nice if people would make up their minds. Either the reports generated by the same organization are false or they're not. Pick one.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
in my pants.
--
There, I said it.
"Penetrating deeper than anything else ever has!"
The effort that a potential foe puts into negating the weapon can be more beneficial than use of the weapon in actual warfare. Nuclear bombs are the classic example.
That M.A.D. example has been deprecated. The new canonical example is "threat of 9/11-style terrorism".
Set your phasers on "funky"!
"The Massive Ordnance Penetrator is a weapon system designed to accomplish a difficult, complicated mission of reaching and destroying our adversaries' weapons of mass destruction located in well-protected facilities," Lt. Col. Melinda F. Morgan, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Despite the difficult and complicated mission, Boeing opted for a fairly simple solution: pack in more weight and explosives to blow the shit out of the target.
Could the next Slashdot Poll be to rename this new weapon system? Please, pretty please?
I'm sure this article will get all you panty wastes on the site all worked up.
That headline is funny as shit.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I have prior art. At least on the massive penetrator.
The government does not have the funds to keep social security and education budgets up,
Read radical news here
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But "Obama care" would cost too much?
Gosh, these guys must really have huge sexual problems: Penetrators? Tunnels? Explosions? Come on...
I'm so glad we have our priorities straight, and are still building up a massive arsenal against that imaginary enemy of ours.
How can they hide the construction of underground bunkers?
This is not an easy task and requires many trucks and people and there will be a tailings pile as big as the complex.
At night infrared would show hot trucks disappearing into a mountain.
Are they that smart to fool the watchers?
Rick B.
I'm not sure how the article missed this but they have been testing this thing locally for a while now. The other day I saw one of these massive ordinance penetrators being delivered right into your moms house. It's a good thing you weren't in the basement at the time.
When do we test them?
I have the cherry pits you asked for. you can feed them to your animal now.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The entire gross domestic output of USA consists of consuming Chinese produced goods (well, and other countries as well) and printing and exporting inflation and building more and more bombs.
If you don't think that the hour of reckoning for this reckless anti-economic behavior is not coming, you are going to be mighty surprised, and no number of bombs will keep your economy afloat. Sure, you can attack other countries and basically loot them, but you are the cannon fodder. Your quality of life will be shit in a hell hole and once the entire world stops financing you and sees you for what you have become, you will be stopped, it doesn't matter how many bunker busters you build. It's just not going to matter.
Vote for Ron Paul or face the unfortunate sacrifice of your own liberty, life, property.
You can't handle the truth.
It's not even 4 tons heavier, let alone 'nearly 5 tons heavier'
"30,000-pound bombs... nearly five tons heavier than the 22,600-pound GBU-43 MOAB surface bomb"
Come on, what? You couldn't say "nearly four tons heavier"? Had to go the extra mile?
There are lots of useless weapons being bought by the pentagon, this isn't one of them. This is one of the few useful ones USAF has procured.
But I hope they have a backup guidance system, because sophisticated determined opponents can jam GPS guidance, at least over a few important targets. Like an Iranian nuclear complex....
The MOP is dirt cheap so far, and unlike nuclear weapons, conventional bombs have very wide application.
MOP raise the cost of ALL conventional shelters intended to be survivable, such as dug-in North Korean artillery emplacements.
MOPs would have been nice to have over Afghanistan (Tora Bora) and over Libya to gut Qaddafist bunkers.If the enemy is buried deep enough, he can be sealed in for good if he isn't killed outright. Recovery efforts on a military installation are military action and can be lawfully attacked.
If Jihadist nuclear installations are "dead and buried" they pose much less contamination threat to civilization.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
During the Cold War, our troops in Europe had instructions on how to blow up their tactical nuclear weapons with a shaped charge if they were in danger of being overrun by the advancing Soviet army.
Not only did this prevent a nuke from falling into enemy hands, the charge would obliterate the nuclear core, blowing the pieces out in the direction of the blast. The whole area would be rendered quite dangerous to advancing troops.
And unlike Clooney and Kidman, they were ordered to get the hell out of there as soon as the fuse was lit.
you're thinking backwards. If it's a matter of depth of hardening and the bunker builder assumes the hostile country already knows where it is, it's a simple matter to pour 20 feet of wrapped rebar and concrete on top. I'm confused about why they mentioned how to get by blast doors when baffles, pressure compensation, and additional blast doors can easily protect against it.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Jeez, just send in a bunch of creepers... they'll blow a nice wide hole in anything...
Just sayin'!
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
that countermeasures may, or may not, be cheaper. 1) Star wars was originally based, (and may still be) on detection of the short "boost phase" of an ICBM, when the ICBMs rocket is firing off and is, to use a colloquial term, bright as the effin sun.
turns out, you make the rocket a little faster, add some chaff, you can slow down the time the rocket motor is hot, and make detection harder; it is cheaper to do this then upgrade the starwars; advantage not to us
2) during the 1st Iraq war, the US tank, the M1 abrams battle tank, long derided as an example of super $$ pentagon engineering that was to complex to work in the field, toasted the soviet made Iraqi tanks for a very simple reason: the M1 could shoot a shell further then the Iraqi tanks; all the US had to do was sit their tanks at the right distance; advantage US.
3) Henry Kissinger, the mass murderer of the Vietnamese, Chileans and Kurds, remarked after leaving office that every technological advance made by the US was a waste of time, as the Soviets (this is cold war stuff) quickly matched it; MIRVing of ICBMs was a specific example
4) We know from Postol and others that the pentagon has greatly *cough* exagerated the effectiveness of anti missle missles , esp those used by the israelis against scuds in the 1st iraq war; how do we know that the pentagons claims about the bunker buster are not just total exageration
I wonder how much energy this is...
Does someone know how to convert this to Megawatt or gallons of gasoline of energy?
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Pass legislation that all non-commercial vehicles have to get at least 40 miles to the gallon (or energy equivalent), cutting off money to all terrorist-sponsoring countries. It'll never happen, though.
Obama's hideout could have been bombed with just one rocket from an average attack fighter. It takes either a very large installation, or a very stupid person to be the target of a bomb this big. Even if the first one isn't enough, the crater will make a good target for the second, third or fourth bomb. The target you're bombing isn't going to run and hide after the first hit, even if it wasn't sufficient to destroy it completely. Knowing that, it doesn't matter if you publish specs on this bomb or not.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Technology advances so fast that Iran's only choice is test a nuke real fast.
usual story from the USA ;-)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/16/mop_on_the_spirit_at_last/
From the summary:
If it's a coincidence, it's a meaningless one. Anyone who's been paying attention to defense development over the past two decades knew this bomb (or something like it) was under development.
But humans are good at seeing patterns, even when there are none, and John Pike is ever ready to deliver a suitably pithy quote for the appropriate remuneration.
You have to wonder if they've got it wrong this time too.
CTKO (chances to kill obama).
Could our bunker busters get our leaders? If not we need better bunker busters.
They gotta know, no one survives if they fuck up. No... one...
Disinformation.
*Trumpeting* : "We have a brand new bunker buster warhead that can penetrate 50 feet of solid steel!... " *under his breath* : "... and a rocket that carries 5 warheads."
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Eat hot death gopher!
I always wondered if it was possible to just deny access to the underground complexes, or make it very difficult.
These facilities are usually located in hard to get to locations, either because they want to bore into the side of a mountain, or they want them to be hard to find.
First wave would be to hit the roads and infrastructure delivery systems (power, water, etc) with whatever weapon does the most damage. Second wave, closer to the entrances, air deliver anti-tank barriers booby-trapped with mines to keep vehicles out -- clearing these should be difficult. Overlapping with these, saturation mining to make all access to the facility difficult.
The ordinance is relatively inexpensive and you make it difficult and time consuming to re-gain access to the facilities without the complexity of trying to actually hit the bunker.
This is just more rampant government spending in action! We spending thousands of dollars on hammers and toilet seats and now we are giving Boeing billion dollar contracts to deliver MOPS! This Obama government is going to far!
"... less than a week after a United Nations agency warned that Iran was secretly working to develop a nuclear weapon..."
That is not what the UN warned or reported. The headline is repeating western propaganda. Read this, this, this, or this.
never use bunkers.
prepare yourself and your family for a world where life essentials, shelter, food, water, energy, are extremely scarce either through lack of supply, lack of distribution channels, dramatic price increases, or loss of currency value.
these are inevitabilities, not conspiracy or delusion.
Just 2000 more pounds and we could have named it after Tennessee Ernie Ford.
The "bomb standard". It's like the gold standard, except it's bombs that are the standard unit of account
A "bomb standard" would of course put the US on the top. Silly gold standard fools don't understand the greatness of this plan!
When the rest of the world holds useless money and the US holds the bombs, guess who wins? The US!
Nobody cares about your commie pleas for what would happen to the *people* of the US (who'll get sent to their deaths as fodder). This is capitalism, and capitalism is about the owners of capital, not the fodder who own nothing.
Yes , please, lets build something that eventually will be either able to pierce and damage so much depth that it could be used to
1) crack the moon into 2 pieces...
(side note, could be great to be used to split big asteroids into smaller ones before they impact earth...)
2) crack the earth surface deep enough to permanently damage it and irreversibly have a flow of lava, that will eventually lead to shifting of plates
3) used in deep sea situations and again crack the earth's crust so deeply that the plates shift and cause the biggest tsunamis the world has ever seen...
Yes, let's keep going down this path....what was the initial reason for building these?...ah yes...to be able to blast the caves
and hills that Osama bin Laden was hiding in...and actually get him....but alas, you can do the job much better with a sniper and just one bullet....could you not???
rather i'm in awe of this female power
us guys, we're really silly and stupid compared to this complex level of prolonged social violence that women play on
what i am saying is a clear acknowledgement that women are superior to us in ways that us silly stupid men can't even understand. we're used to making our dumb little points as violently and as hard as needed, but then everything else is large and confusing and silent and beyond our grasp. but not beyond the grasp of the sustained and complex way that women are used to operating
of course, psychologically, women, and men, have a feminine and a masculine side. so men can tap the feminine side of their psychology, just as much as women will sometimes come to blows: it is not their preferred way of dealing with things, but they are capable of doing it. likewise, men do not prefer to deal with social violence in the feminine mode, but we are capable of it
it's not about misogyny, that's not in my words. it is about the fact that there is soft power (feminine) and hard power (masculine) and the notion that male violence is innately worse is a falsehood
example: you can come into a village swinging your sword: masculine warfare. but the feminine way is to just poison the well. do you really believe the masculine way is worse?
men are not more violent than women, we are just violent in different ways. and in some ways, female social violence, soft power, is far more potent, far more vicious, and far more damaging, over a much longer length of time
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but wasn't it the U.S. that said that Iraq was building nukes? and didn't they end up never finding a single one? odd that.
Why is Mythbusters the first thing that comes to mind? "Jamie want big boom."
yeah. the US government just adores telling people what to do. "You there, go vote for THAT leader" "You, over there, foster THESE religious freedom." "Hey you, stop oppressing THOSE people and THOSE neighbors of yours." "enough with that sponsoring OF THAT international terrorism." Damn big bullies, these united states people. Must be why everyone hates us.
Also, have fun reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations
the nuclear “bunker buster”
By Benjamin Phelan
http://harpers.org/archive/2004/12/0080324
What "need" is there? Attacking Iran is clearly a war of choice like Iraq.
Essentially, this bomb--the heaviest conventional bomb ever built--is a direct descent of the original "earthquake bomb" Barnes Wallis envisioned in 1940 than eventually became the famous Grand Slam bomb. Thanks to GPS guidance, it is much more than an "earthquake effect" bomb--it could probably destroy most underground bunkers with a direct hit.
But "Obama care" would cost too much?
How many M.O. Penetrators would it cost.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Good to hear the kloptocracy is rolling right along. Same as it ever was! (Well worse actually, but that's a gab for another day.)
Social Credit would solve everything...
Mother of All Penetrators
I'm sure there's a lot of propaganda in any such statement. It's probably a "made-up" number very close to intelligence estimates in order to be kind of a "we know what you're doing" sort of statement, meant to shake up targets and hopefully make them more willing to negotiate first. The actually specifications are almost assuredly not what was released.
In my experience with the Defense Sector, usually you DON'T advertise all the capabilities. The "actual specifications" probably do MORE than they advertise.