Posted on 04/13/2007 10:37:30 AM PDT by OldGuard1
“We heard the same thing about Saddams bunkers. They said that they could withstand a direct nuclear attack. The engineers just welded the doors shut and dynamited the air vents.”
HAHAHHAHA. That was exactly my suggestion for Tora Bora but combine the TNT with posion gas also. Too bad the Dems have already told the American people they won’t fund a real war with Iran. We could surround Tehran and simply wait for them to go into the bunkers and seal them up indefinately with 10 million tons of concrete and then run the country as we see fit.
Germans I believe. They seem to be the main bunker builders used by all ME regimes. As far as I know, construction grade concrete hasn't changed much, it's a matter of using good measurement of ingredients and exact amounts of water which determines the final strength of the concrete once it sets and cures. While it is possible to fine tune this in a lab making small amounts, thus resulting in higher strength concrete, this isn't as easy when pouring huge slabs and foundation walls in the field.
Yes but the vast majority of those refineries produce crude stages. They don’t refine it to gasoline.
oil refineries and petrolium refineries are two different things. It all depends on the product you are refining.
How many of those make auto fuel? diesel? which are used to remove impurities from raw oil straight from the well?
The bomb must be heavy enough to generate the theoretical amounts of kinetic energy required to penetrate deep underground.
The nose and casing must be able to withstand the tremendous amount of friction, pressure and resulting heat experienced while burrowing under ground. By the time it explodes, much of the casing will have been scoured/melted off.
As for the 5,300 lbs of explosives, modern explosives are capable of burn rates as high as 30K ft/sec. Explosive force with any explosive does not increase linearly with quantity of explosive. There comes a point of diminishing return where each additional pound of explosive yields less pressure.
I wouldn't be surprised if something other than TNT is used in the bomb.
I read somewhere that a common bunker buster used (forget the madel) only has something like 250kgs of explosives.
Some of the “bombs” the brits used in Iraq are pure concrete in a hardened shell.(and lazer guided as well) No explosives at all. They are called low collateral damage bombs. Because they are dropped from so high up, they still make a big “bang” when they hit.
Remember the "Mother of all Battles?". That is typical bluster and hyperbole.
The strength of the concrete just guarantees a stronger, more permanent tomb. The achiles heels of any facility is the access, the entrances. destroy those and everything else is irrelevant.
If the facility itself can't be penetrated by large bombs, the interface with the original terrain is not. Ever try to open a door with 100 tons of dirt stacked up against it?
There is no protection that the mind of sandmaggots can devise that the minds of normal free people can't circumvent.
The statement applies not to individuals, but to the culture in place, including the limitations placed by its leadership.
I doubt very much whether you ever worked with these "very smart" Iranians --- in Iran.
Look at the very few Nobel prizes won by muslims. Every one of them was earned while working in a non-muslim country.
Our first bunker busters were built at Eglin AFB and made from surplus cannon barrels.
Lots of steel to get the 5300 lb explosive deep enough to do some good.
The first bunker busters were artillary barrels with explosives packed inside.
One or several is irrelevant; the salient point is that it's safe to assume that they don't have a single facility created from the ground up locally: materials, manufacture, design, instrumentation, testing, installation and maintenance.
If they can afford to buy a Mercedes doesn't mean they can build one.
As a dissident put it a few years ago, "...we revel in the use of modern technology, but are utterly incapable of producing any. Even something as small as a cell phone, we can not and do not produce even the smallest screw that holds it together".
That says it all.
“The engineers just welded the doors shut and dynamited the air vents.”
I’d sure like to hear more about that.
"Fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of Mankind." General George S. Patton
I’ve thought the same thing....I’d like to hear from a military type that has experience in this area...and see what they say
The sad part of that if my memory serves me correctly is that the barrels were from 8" howizters bored to a 10" inside diameter. If memory serves me correct, the 8" gun was the "Long Tom" and they aren't making any more of them.
“Interesting article, but how can a 30,000 lb bomb only have 5,300 pounds of explosives?”
They must be using the mass and strength of the containment shell to drive the device deep enough by gravity. The “explosive” is likely a super hot gas meant to flame and then suck the air out of a bunker. So, not the same bomb dynamics you usually think of.
“Can we get some input from any engineers out there? This stuff must have drawbacks or we would be using it ourselves.”
It might be a derivative of grancrete, which was invented here by Los Alamos for encasing spent nuclear materials but has been commercialized. Grancrete has a 12,000 psi strength, which is really high for a concrete, so I don’t know how you get to 50,000 psi since steel is 30,000 psi.
Big problem with grancrete is it is too sticky to trowell. That’s why you always have to look at breakthrough claims with skepticism.
......The University of Tehran made several cubes between 50,000 to 60,000 psi, and possible stronger!....
I Doubt it.
The compressive strength of granite is 1.300 kg/cm2 which works out to 18,490 psi
The compressive yield of Titanium is 65,300 psi
Rods from God might be another solution.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/18/news/space.php
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