"MAIL GRAM"
Posted on 08/22/2011 7:13:17 AM PDT by Fennie
After nearly a decade of development, the U.S. Air Force has ordered eight MOP (massive ordnance penetrator) GBU-57A/B bunker buster bombs. These 14 ton weapons cost $3.5 million each. In the last few years, several B-2 bombers have been equipped to carry these weapons (two bombs per B-2). This was apparently meant to send a message to Iran and North Korea.
(Excerpt) Read more at strategypage.com ...
Won’t believe it and don’t care....until....we use one for real!!!!
Obama, all hat no cattle.
“MOAB I believe is not a penetrator, just a huge new version of the “daisie cutter”. If I recall correctly it is a FAE (fuel air explosive) type bomb.”
I was thinking MOAB was going to use some kind of “slurry” explosive, was never actually dropped on anybody, but not a fuel-air explosive. Last time I remember hearing anything about it was about 2002 or 2003.
"MAIL GRAM"
Thanks. Good info.
Figure 6 is a lousy graphic. What are the scales of the graph? Is the height or the angle or the pebble-background hourglass shaped areas meaningful? What do the rulings on the horizontal scale mean? What is that “Blast Door” thing meant to suggest?
A failed graph.
The MOAB is 30 feet, 1.75 inches (9.17 m) long, has a diameter of 40.5 inches (102.9 cm) and weighs 22,600 lb (10.3 tons) (of which 18,700 lb (8.5 tons) are high explosives.) Its blast radius is 450 feet (137.16 m, 150 yd), though the massive shockwave created by the air burst is said to be able to destroy an area as large as nine city blocks. Due to its large size and weight, it was designed to be dropped via parachute extraction out of the back of a C-130 cargo aircraft.
There's a reasonable write up here... Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (MOAB)
That figure has the 60’ scale on it.
It is not a graph but a dimensional comparison.
The gray area is the area the rock is broken down.
It’s bum-fiffery. What kind of rock? How well will the penetrator penetrate aggregate, sand, shale, granite? Where’s the dang engineers to make this a useful graphic?
It is a generalized comparison to past weapons.
It is not an engineering specification or sale brochure and never pretended to be one.
It’s engineering-like, number-like, science-like. IOW, it’s not real. It’s purporting to show engineering numbers and comparisons when it really isn’t. “60’”!
Many of military and ex-military engineer-types prefer to keep our mouths shut about actual numbers nad distances and dimensions.
WWII, the Grand Slam and Tallboy worked well (supersonic, very heavy conventionally-dropped bombs - see the example near Baltimore at the Armor Museum), but all too often, they did miss. Not by much, but by enough to reduce the effect, particularly against smaller targets like bridges.
B-36’s were last bombers I know of to drop the Grand Slam and its US-derivatives. Laser-aiming will improve accuracy, and conventional explosives reduce the political pressure against their use. Personally, I think the Grand Slam is prettier than these. (The C-130 super-daisy-cutter bomb is little more than box-on-a-pallet actually. It works, of course, against surface spread-out targets; it's just fugly.
Caption for first photo:
“Damn! This Viagra REALLY works!”
I am not an engineer but I have read a bit about bunker busters.
I think you could use them in succession to hit the same spot to get down lower. This is certainly possible with GPS guidance or lasers.
Just a thought. These things are really nasty and the shockwave in an underground cavern would be devastating. Can you imagine one, two, three, and then four in the same spot? Each bomb working it’s way lower until the desired depth of destruction was achieved.
Or you could pulverize hard rock with the first bomb and thus provide a huge sand pile that disburses the impact of follow-on bombs.
I know that MOAB stands for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, and is not a penetrator. And that MOAB was affectionately called the Mother Of All Bombs.
That’s why I suggested MOABB might stand for Mother Of All Bunker Busters.
In any event, I don’t want to be in the same county with either one of them.
True, they may be ugly but they’re sure nice to have in your quiver. Makes for a nice means of persuassion.
MOP (massive ordnance penetrator) GBU-57A/B bunker buster bombsMaybe on Iran, possibly on the Hizbollah missile bunkers.< br>
Failed comprehension.
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