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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."
A better question would be will they ever approach what's possible with nuclear warheads? Little Boy was 15 kilotons or 640,152,000,000,000 joules of energy released in less than the blink of an eye. Modern nuclear weapons are much more powerful and can be scaled up indefinitely using the Teller–Ulam design. The largest American weapon ever tested was 15 megatons -- 6.40152e+17 joules. The largest Russian weapon ever tested was three times as powerful. It will be a long time before you see a directed energy weapon that comes close to those energy levels.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Sequential Bombing System.... where a sequence of bombs is dropped concurrently in short succession. (ie: 4-8 bombs in a 60-120 second interval).
But SBS is a lame sounding name. How can that compete with Mother of All Bombs (MOAB)
How about Bombing On Sequence System (BOSS)
Now the BOSS BOMB has a nice Pentagon expenditure feeling way. Essentially the delivery system should transit from the bomber to target via a cruise delivery system. Which would contain 4-8 war heads each about a 1/4 to 1/2 of MOABs size. The delivery unit would circle target while releasing the individual warheads which would each be guided to their target at about 15-30 second intervals. Allowing the first bomb to detonate and blow a crater while the next bomb hits the new exposed area, so on and so on. Tests would need to be completed to determine the amount of time necessary between individual warhead impacts for optimum penetration.
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Proposed solution to MOAB. Build big ballon under first layer of protection with lots of vents. When MOAB hits it explodes, but instead of crushing your super secret facilitity (that was obviously not secret enough if it's being bombed), the balloon detonates the bomb early and above and allows the pressure to escape through hundreds of vent area.
Bomb two, kills you...GAME OVER