15-ton bomb would move aside "The Mother" and become "The Father Of All Bombs"
Huge Massive Ordnance Penetrator meant to annihilate underground bunkers
By Layer 8 on Mon, 08/03/09 - 4:02pm.
Now this is one big bomb. Published reports today say the Pentagon is rattling swords in the direction of North Korea and Iran by speeding the development a 20-foot, 30,000lb bomb known as Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) meant to annihilate underground bunkers and other hardened (re: long range missile) sites.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency which has overseen the development of this monster since 2007, says it is designed to be carried aboard B-2 and B-52 bombers and deployed at high altitudes where it would strike the ground at speeds well beyond 2X the speed of sound to penetrate the below ground target.
The Boeing-built MOP won't be the heaviest conventional bomb ever made. The US military built the T-12, which weighed about 44,000lbs, in the 1940s. Meanwhile the 21,700-lb Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb, better known as the "Mother Of All Bombs" is still in the US arsenal. The MOAB was developed to replace the 15,000lb "Daisy Cutters" from the Vietnam Ware era. The Soviets claimed a "Father of all Bombs" in 2007 but some experts think the bomb was a hoax or stunt and questioned its true power.
The DTRA defines its mission as "safeguarding America and its allies from Weapons of Mass Destruction (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high yield explosives) by providing capabilities to reduce, eliminate, and counter the threat, and mitigate its effects." Indeed the MOP would pretty much mitigate any threat I would imagine.
According to Reuters, the threat reduction agency is working with the Air Force to transition the program from "technology demonstration" to acquisition. The Air Force and Department of Defense are looking at the possibility of accelerating the program and there have been discussions with the four congressional committees with oversight responsibilities. No final decision has been made, a spokesperson stated.
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The Father of all Bombs is allready there
Well then what about the "Father of all Bombs" that allready exsist?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_all_bombs
The Russians
The Russians already have the Father of all Bombs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_all_bombs
People should do their homework before they try to be cute with new names, and coining phrases. It tends to make people look stupid, instead of cute. Besides which, this penetrator isn't even in the same family with either the MOAB or the FOAB.
Whoops - looks like an anonymous reader beat me to this post!! I'm not the only one who can read, eh?
how much homework did it
how much homework did it really take to type it into wikipedia?
This is hardly a new
This is hardly a new concept. The British developed
the first of this type of weapon and used it with
great effectiveness during WW2, first in a 5 ton size
and later, after aircraft were developed to carry it,
a ten ton version. They were designed by Barnes
Wallis, the man behind Britain's "Dam Buster" raid,
who developed the special bomb used in that raid, as
well as the "Tallboy" and "Grand Slam" earthquake
bombs.
nothing new?
Nothing new? Your description is like saying, "The 2009 Audi R8 is nothing new. Ford built cars in the 1920s." This thing is designed to dig its way through soil at a depth that boggles the mind. You know how most ships don't sail past 30 knots because water resistance is such a drag? Earth/concrete at a 'certain' depth does amazing things before the limits of any known substance to maintain structure at mach 2.
As for the coining of new phrases, leave that to the engineers who made it. It is like naming somebody elses kid.
Good Comment!!
Good Comment!!
So call it the Mother-in-law
So call it the Mother-in-law of all bombs.
That would have most men cowering in fear. ;-)
We love you satan!!!
Cool! We should drop them on Afghan weddings ... just imagine how many militants we will kill. Death! Death! Death! Death! ahhhhhh I love you satan .... ahhhhh ... more blood, more death!
Soviets in 2007?
Russia is not the Soviet Union anymore, and you really should fact check about the russian weaponry before making those claims. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20730691/
However, the Russian bomb is not a bunker-buster, there's no indication it's designed to penetrate the ground, just act as a conventional battlefield weapon.
Heavy-Weight
Sounds like an ultra-heavy-weight cousin of the Durandal rocket-assisted anti-runway device, that burrows through runways then detonates to make huge craters that require much greater effort to repair than conventional free-fall dropped ordinance.
This would be a great conventional-explosive substitute for what might previously have been a task for a tactical nuke, with its obvious political (and radioactive) fall-out issues.
A few of these might have been helpful against the cave systems in Afganistan as well. Ouch!
The MOAB was great for clearing areas of mines and un-exploded ordinance like bomblets, being essentially a really large free-fall surface concussion device.
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