Pentagon: 30,000 Pound Bomb Too Small

smitty777 writes "According to the Pentagon, the 30,000-pound, precision-guided Massive Ordnance Penetrator GBU-57 bomb is just too small. Concerns around Iran's fortification of their nuclear program facilities has the DoD seeking from Congress something not quite as subdued as the GBU-57, the largest non-nuke bomb operated by the USAF. This 'smaller' bomb just recently won a prize for its ability to cut through 60 feet of concrete. The upgrades will cost $82 million on top of the $330 million spent so far to develop the system. There is some interesting high speed camera footage of the GBU-57 in the video below."

Comments

Re:you're a troll but even so....

[iggymanz]

Wrong, they have in fact threatened to destroy Iran (Persians, not arabs)

Re:What is really needed for this sort of thing...

[twotacocombo]

Each successive bomb would have to hit the exact same spot, and blow through a layer of debris in an ever-changing target zone. This isn't water torture, this is blowing the motherloving shit out of a huge chunk of reinforced concrete. You don't kill a tank by shooting it with an AK-47 a hundred times, you hit it once with something that will penetrate. The effects of lesser attacks are not necessarily cumulative.

Re:No, no, no!

[Guspaz]

Pray tell me, what kind of aircraft is in th existing arsenal, capable of delivering this turd-of-death?

The B-2 is the intended deployment platform. Each aircraft will be able to carry two of them. They also did their testing with the B-52, introduced in 1955.

Point being?

[Zinho]

There's a long and distinguished history in the USAF of delivering massive ordnance bombs via cargo planes (see the daisy cutter and MOAB as examples). If you can open the rear hatch, roll it out, and achieve a margin of error smaller than the blast radius, then you're golden. In today's age of GPS-guided munitions that is a much lower threshold to cross than it's ever been.