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To: mandaladon

The B-2 has also recently been modified to carry the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator, GPS guided, 30,000 pound, bunker buster bomb. Each B-2 will be able to carry two of these bombs.

The USAF currently has 20 of these in their inventory.

Importantly, the USAF also has 15 GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bombs, 22,600 pound. Its airburst blast yield is the equivalent of an air burst, 11-kiloton nuclear bomb.

That pretty well rules out any Nork efforts to invade, because any sizable troop concentrations would be like hair hit with a flamethrower.


38 posted on 03/28/2013 10:15:35 AM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy (Best WoT news at rantburg.com)
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy

I think your numbers may be off. The MOAB has a blast equivalent of 11 tons of TNT, NOT 11 kilotons.. which is a huge difference. It’s powerful but it’s not exactly nuclear bomb powerful.

By comparison the Hiroshima bomb had roughly a 15 kiloton(or 15,000 tons of TNT) blast yield.

The comparison of the MOAB to nuclear weapons is mainly made to the older ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons such as the ‘Davy Crockett’ weapons system which fired a sub-kiloton 50 lbs warhead up to a distance of around 2 miles(and the whole system was designed to be carried disassembled in a backpack).

The blast yield of the warhead used in a ‘Davy Crockett’ weapon and the blast yield of the MOAB were similar. The MOAB at around 11 tons of TNT, the miniature nuclear warhead of the ‘Davy Crockett’ at around 10-20 tons of TNT.

However, the lethality of one of the smallest nuclear warheads anyone’s ever deployed(in this example that of the ‘Davy Crockett’) was still much higher than a MOAB because of the radiation factor.


70 posted on 03/30/2013 12:08:42 PM PDT by fiftymegaton (God Bless and Protect America)
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