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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."
Light speed's too slow! We'll have to go straight to.... Ludicrous Speed!
The right to offend is central to the right to free speech.
Coincidentally, the construction plans for Iran's entirely peaceful nuclear facilities are being modified to require at least 120 feet of concrete covering to protect them from terrorist attacks and tsunamis.
A prize like the X-Prize or something? A) who hands out prizes for stuff like this and B) where to I apply to be a judge?
bah.
That's what she said.
Life is not for the lazy.
Let's call it the Mountainous Occluded Fortification Ordinance.
I can see the fnords!
And after that will come the Mother In Law Of All Bombs
which is totally what she said
Its pretty obvious that the miltiary-political-industrial complex is trying to talk us all into war with Iran and now you see one of the many things they plan to gain from it. Plus more power and control of the populace.
You already have a giant phallic bomb called a MASSIVE (ordnance) PENETRATOR and it's not good enough for you? Does everyone in the Pentagon have such a small penis or is it just the people in charge of purchasing?
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.
Well, their government is rather racist -- toward the Tibetans, at least. They've been working awfully hard to extinguish that culture. China hasn't been threatening freedom of navigation, but have you seen their absurd territorial claims in the South China Sea?
Iran didn't start shit in the Strait of Hormuz; the US and Israel have been threatening to attack them. They're just responding to that. Actually, that's sort of what's been going on with the Iranian nuke program: we just curbstomped their neighbor in an illegal war, and we're propping up a rather dangerous neighbor of theirs that has an openly racist agenda, that's bombed them before and that, oh -- has nukes. Can't really blame them for wanting some nukes of their own, considering.
Yes, the Iranian government is, to some degree, batshit -- in the "batshit religious" fashion. Their rationale for wanting nukes is perfectly reasonable (defense against Israel/the US). But they've actually been conducting themselves in a pretty reasonable manner; they've not done anything that a more sanely-led country in their position wouldn't have done, which is to try to use any resources at their disposal to ensure that they don't get their asses kicked.
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.
---
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
Yes, quiet all you sensible people! We want more feeble-minded, opinionless sheep around these here parts!
which is totally what she said
Exactly right. We don't worry about India having the bomb and last time I checked they were 'brown people' too. They are not likely to use one, especially in a first strike.
We worry about Iran because they are something new, a nuke possessing country who may not be subject to MAD. In the end the 'godless commies' had one thing going for them in the world peace issues of the Cold War. They wanted to rule the world but they didn't really want to 'win' by being the last survivor in a post apocolypse scenario, the party leaders liked the good life and wanted to keep living it, especially since they didn't much believe in an afterlife to be rewarded in for wiping out the enemy in this one for.
We just don't know if Iran would be so constrained. We pretty much have to take Ajad at his word that he doesn't give a crap if atomic hellfire rains down on him after his rightous jihad of nuking Israel and the US, as we would be fools not to. What we don't know is whether the military structure he commands is equally suicidal. Since guessing wrong, and especially considering the pitiful track record of western intelligence regarding things middle eastern/Islamic, could be a civilization extinction event we probably should err on the side of caution. A country burning off scads of natural gas because they don't consider it valuable enough to capture and use probably doesn't actually need nuke power plants for electricity generation.
Democrat delenda est
Everything you accuse Iran of doing Israel does, and the U.S. gives them billions of dollars in overt and covert aide.
Israel doesn't deny the Holocaust.
Iran didn't start shit in the Strait of Hormuz; the US and Israel have been threatening to attack them. They're just responding to that.
By cutting off global trade that countries whom aren't threatening them depend on. Yeah, that makes sense -- Mexico attacks the United States so we seize the Panama Canal and refuse to let Chinese flagged ships use it. That's essentially what they are threatening to do. Actually I'd love to see them try and close Hormuz -- that would bring the Chinese around to our side of this issue. China is far more dependent upon oil from the Arabian Gulf than the United States is. Contrary to popular belief the United States doesn't receive the majority of her oil from the Middle East; most of it comes from the Western Hemisphere.
As far as the rest of your post, I'm not going to be drawn into an argument on the merits or lack thereof of our policy with regards to Israel. It's interesting that you decline the mention the nervousness of the Arab states that border Iran though. If it was purely about Israel one would think that the Saudis and their neighbors would be cheering the Iranian nuclear program on. Of course they aren't; the prospect bothers them just as much as it bothers the Western World.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Everything you accuse Iran of doing Israel does, and the U.S. gives them billions of dollars in overt and covert aide.
Really? I do not recall Israel (or its head of state) ever saying that they intended to exterminate all of the Arabs, or even that they intended to completely destroy another country.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You sir, are a model Soviet Citizen.
Give me a citation of Iran threatening extermination of anyone. No, DEBKA will not do as a source.
Whereas, who are the US and Israel ACTUALLY ENGAGED in exterminating, on a daily basis?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Wrong, they have in fact threatened to destroy Iran (Persians, not arabs)
From the Department of Defense which should be renamed to the Department of Wasting Tax Dollars..
Israel inflates the holocaust, Iran minimises it. Both are half-truths.
Israel was founded as a modern state on pure, violent terrorism. King David Hotel. They also sponsored and funded the creation of Hamas - to splinter the Palestinian political efforts, and create a spectre of islamic opposition. But Hamas are not religious zealots, like the Lubbavitchers - who throw acid in the faces of young girls on the streets in Israel.
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.
Why is Qatar/Kuwait/Jordan not getting its ass kicked?
Easy: because they are client states of the US.
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
Have a look at his map. http://media.chrismartenson.com/images/US-military-presence-around-Iran.png
And then consider the US did this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
In this situation, it would be insane for Iran not to want nukes.
Actually I'd love to see them try and close Hormuz -- that would bring the Chinese around to our side of this issue. China is far more dependent upon oil from the Arabian Gulf than the United States is. Contrary to popular belief the United States doesn't receive the majority of her oil from the Middle East; most of it comes from the Western Hemisphere.
Two comments:
1. Let's not see them close the Straights. Yes Iran would get hammered, but it would take months to reopen that waterway and in the meantime, the global economy would slide into recession. It would be a pyrrhic victory to say the least.
2. It doesn't matter where [Country] gets its oil from as everyone pays market price, which is highly influenced by world events. See Point #1
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
When your business is to wage war, there is never enough.
It is disingenuous to claim US does not have the ordinance to destroy Iranian underground facilities. It clearly does.
The most important question is not "how" but "why".
Do I want to see a nuclear armed Iran? No, not particularly. But then again, it's none of my business, just as our armaments are none of Iran's business. We have no more right to step into Iran's internal affairs than they do ours. And if we DO step in there and attack them for developing a credible nuclear deterrent, then when someone does it to us... we won't have a leg to stand on.
So, what you're saying is that it's none of your business if every nation on the globe were to develop nuclear weapons? What you seem to forget is the United States originally developed nuclear weapons for a very specific purpose: to stop the Axis powers. The first and last time we used nukes were on a ruthless, active enemy that attacked us first. Say what you want about America, we have shown incredible restraint in the use of unconventional weapons after 1945, and even then it wasn't a decision that was taken lightly. After all, we have a lot to lose, and our population isn't seen as entirely expendable. Can you say the same about Iran? How about Somalia? The Congo? Do you really feel it's necessary to allow any country to develop weapons of mass destruction, completely unchecked, because it's "none of our business"? In a perfect world, we'd dismantle every warhead in existence and burn the schematics. Allowing yet another nation to obtain the power to obliterate entire cities is moving in the complete opposite direction of where we need to go.
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.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm an American; my legitimate control ends where the country's borders and maritime boundaries lie. If you're inside them, or use weapons against the population or the infrastructure inside them, you're my problem, and I support a workmanlike mechanism to wholly terminate your ass. I might, depending on the nature of your incursion, support going further and eliminating your ability to do it again. I would not, by the way, support paying for medical care or rebuilding your infrastructure. You aggress, in my opinion, the consequences are entirely your responsibility.
You stay out, or behave within, you're not my problem. Someone comes inside your borders, assuming you're from some other country, that's *your* problem, and *you* need to deal with it. If you can't, then you may go the way of history. You can, *they* may go the way of history. Either way, my legitimate role is to have breakfast and read about it in the paper. I might feel regret, I might feel enthusiasm, but I would *not* feel the urge to intervene.
I have not in any way forgotten it, in fact I'm somewhat of a student of WWII, which means I know a considerable bit more about it than most people. However... yes, so? What's your point?
Well, other than over a thousand US nuclear weapons detonations, most of which dropped various amounts of fallout on the entire planet, yes. So?
Yes, so? Has Iran used nuclear weapons? No. Has Israel used nuclear weapons? No. Has France? No. Has England? No. Has the USSR? No. They all have them; yet no one has used them (well, except us, and I'm not saying that was a mistake, either.) So what's your point?
I don't say anything about Iran. I'm not an Iranian citizen. I don't concern myself with things they say about us, and I don't expect them to concern themselves with things we say about them. Also, what you're trying to do here is an exercise in "what if", which is bullshit. Iran has done nothing to make me think they are a threat to my country; ergo, I don't worry about them. I worry more about the loonies here that want to go in, and based on events that only exist in their imagination, do some terrible damage to some other sovereign country, thus setting a legitimate stage for other countries to come and do the same to us. National borders are what they are for a reason; violating them is a VERY bad idea.
Yes, absolutely.
No, we wouldn't. We'd use them as excavation tools, space drives, anti-asteroid devices, and so on. And there is no such thing as a perfect world anyway.
Buddy, wherever you got the idea that *you* know what direction *we* need to g
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No, you can't be independent and left alone by the US if you have resources that the multinationals want. Can you think of a single country in the world that has some important resource that the US isn't fucking with? Well, there's Canada, but even then the US messes with their electoral process, their environmental regulations, and does its best to shove NAFTA as far down the throat of their economy as they will allow. Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, Indonesia, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Ukraine, anywhere there are resources to be stolen you'll see the US military making the world safe for the multinationals.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin