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Home » Ammo and Munitions » Bunker Busters Bulk Up

Bunker Busters Bulk Up

None of them are any­where near as cool as Deep Digger, the bunker-busting bomb that drills its way under­ground. But var­i­ous arms of the Defense Department are work­ing on a num­ber of next-generation muni­tions, designed to take out deeply buried tar­gets, Aviation Week writes.
mop-image57.gif

Pentagon will be test­ing the the­ory next year of whether big­ger and heav­ier is… bet­ter for pen­e­tra­tors. The Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) is a behe­moth of a bomb, weigh­ing almost 30,000 lb. It is designed to “over­whelm tar­get char­ac­ter­i­za­tion uncer­tain­ties,” accord­ing to pro­gram offi­cials.
With 5,300 lb. of explo­sive mate­r­ial, MOP will pack more than 10 times the explo­sive punch of its BLU-109 [today’s bunker-busting work­horse] pre­de­ces­sor… Optimum pen­e­trat­ing dis­tance is clas­si­fied, but some ana­lysts say it is as much as 200 ft. through rein­forced con­crete and soil or sand…
MOP will have a blunter nose than its pre­de­ces­sors to keep the weapon intact dur­ing pen­e­tra­tion… The major­ity of MOP’s weight is actu­ally car­ried in the heavy steel cas­ing, accord­ing to AFRL [Air Force Research Lab] offi­cials. Once the tests are fin­ished next year, the Pentagon will decide whether to pro­duce the MOP and begin a small stock­pile…
About six years ago, AFRL offi­cials devel­oped the Advanced Unitary Penetrator (AUP), which can bur­row twice the depth of the BLU-109. The weapon uses denser mate­ri­als “to pack more mass into a smaller cross-section,” Sands says. It is essen­tially a mas­sive explo­sive bul­let encased in a shroud that is dimen­sion­ally the same as the BLU-109. During pen­e­tra­tion, the outer cas­ing peals off, leav­ing the core to dig and det­o­nate. The tech­nol­ogy has been proven but has not been pur­chased by the Air Force, quite pos­si­bly because they need to go deeper still.
Thus, engi­neers have been exper­i­ment­ing with var­i­ous steel for­mu­la­tions to improve the like­li­hood that a pen­e­tra­tor will sur­vive on its path to a tar­get with­out break­ing up mid­course.
Through years of work, AAC and Ellwood National Forge in Irvine, Pa., have devel­oped a very strong steel that is being used on the BLU-122, the Air Force’s newest pen­e­tra­tor, weigh­ing in at 5,000 lb. The team has applied for a patent for the chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing process that has pro­duced “Eglin Steel,” a strong blend esti­mated at one-eighth the cost of exper­i­men­tal met­als with sim­i­lar strength. Prior attempts to for­mu­late sim­i­lar steel have proved cost pro­hib­i­tive. The patent for Eglin Steel — a blend of car­bon, chromium and tung­sten for hard­ness, and of sil­i­con and nickel for dura­bil­ity — is under final review.

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September 15th, 2006 | Ammo and Munitions | 330371 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/09/15/bunker-busters-bulk-up/Bunker+Busters+Bulk+Up2006-09-15+14%3A51%3A25noahmax You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. Allen Thomson says:
    September 15, 2006 at 8:57 am

    These weapons are cool and it prob­a­bly doesn’t hurt to have them on the shelf, but there’s another big prob­lem with under­ground facil­i­ties in denied areas: where are their vul­ner­a­ble parts? Even if the entrances can be spot­ted, where do the tun­nels go from there? A clever, if evil, oppo­nent will pre­sum­ably include at least a few zigs and zags to increase tar­get­ing uncertainties.

    Reply
  2. George Crawford says:
    September 15, 2006 at 10:24 am

    I won­der where these MOPs are des­tined to be used. If my infor­ma­tion is cor­rect (and I doubt that it is), Iran and Syria have devel­oped large tun­nel net­works and bunkers at depths of greater than 70 foot under­ground and for the pur­poses of shield­ing their nuclear projects or WMD.
    I sup­pose a weapon that could pen­e­trate these type of bunkers is needed in the event the US attacks Iran.
    G.C.

    Reply
  3. David Hambling says:
    September 15, 2006 at 10:42 am

    “The tech­nol­ogy has been proven but has not been pur­chased by the Air Force, ”
    I think they’re con­fused, as the AUP/BLU-116 is most def­i­nitely in the inven­tory -
    “One of the newest weapons in the Air Force’s arse­nal of hard tar­get pen­e­trat­ing bombs is the AFRL Munitions Directorate-developed Advanced Unitary Penetrator (AUP) shrouded aer­ial bomb, equipped with the Hard Target Smart Fuze (HTSF). The bomb and its smart fuze were a big hit dur­ing Operation Allied Force.…”
    http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/blu-116.htm
    This is approach of just using big­ger bombs is very lim­ited and can’t go much fur­ther. new tech­nol­ogy is needed…

    Reply
  4. CR says:
    September 15, 2006 at 1:49 pm

    Why not a smaller pen­e­tra­tor accel­er­ated by a rocket motor prior to impact? Not as big a bang, cer­tainly, but you would be able to put it on more plat­forms. Why con­tinue to build bombs that can only be deployed from C-130s?

    Reply
  5. Siconik says:
    September 15, 2006 at 3:13 pm

    200 ft pen­e­tra­tion? I recall read­ing a paper that con­cluded a bomb will not pen­trate armor more then ~5 pro­jec­tile lenghts, regard­less of shape, weight and velocity.

    Reply
  6. Siconik says:
    September 15, 2006 at 4:07 pm

    Regarding the pen­tra­tion depth/length ratio — I got the num­ber from an exe­lent pen­e­tra­tion tech­nol­ogy overview right here…
    http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002177.html
    BTW, the magic num­ber is 4 lengths, not 5..

    Reply
  7. garmr says:
    September 15, 2006 at 6:11 pm

    Question: if engi­neers can make a bomb hit a very small, pre­cise loca­tion (say an exhaust vent), is there any rea­son you couldn’t make bombs that play “follow-the-leader”? Acting like the teeth of a saw, could a large group of smaller muni­tions, strik­ing a tar­get in paced suc­ces­sion, dig deeper than one larger bomb?
    Just curi­ous; I’m in no way qual­i­fied to have an opin­ion one way or another, and I’d be glad to know why this wouldn’t work.

    Reply
  8. bespoke says:
    September 15, 2006 at 7:52 pm

    Quote:
    These weapons are cool and it prob­a­bly doesn’t hurt to have them on the shelf, but there’s another big prob­lem with under­ground facil­i­ties in denied areas: where are their vul­ner­a­ble parts? Even if the entrances can be spot­ted, where do the tun­nels go from there? A clever, if evil, oppo­nent will pre­sum­ably include at least a few zigs and zags to increase tar­get­ing uncer­tain­ties.
    EndQuote
    Some of the tar­gets these bunker busters are intended for are tun­nels deep into moun­tains, they are bunkers that were built in a huge hole and have been cov­ered up by dirt/concrete/etc. So we know exactly where they are.
    Iran has been using this method for large facil­i­ties that are pre­sumed to be used for cen­trifuges. And when we talk about bunker busters, I would assume the sud­den increased inter­est in them is due to Iran’s activities.

    Reply
  9. Brian says:
    September 18, 2006 at 9:34 am

    True, but if you can seal off all the exits, who cares if they stay down there? If com­mu­ni­ca­tion is cut off, let them suf­fo­cate down there.

    Reply
  10. Just me... says:
    July 28, 2007 at 11:57 am

    During GW I we fired two GPS Tomahawks at a Commond bunker– the first one only blew a hole in the side of the bunker, with min­i­mal dam­age inside. The sec­ond Tommy, with the same GPS flight path, flew through the hole, into the creamy nougat cen­ter and destroyed most of Saddams top ech­e­lon. Now, imag­ine replac­ing the cute lil’ Tomahawk with GPS Bunker-Busters.… the sec­ond one would go so deep it would open a hole under Beijing (not a bad idea!).

    Reply
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    August 7, 2008 at 3:59 am

    I won­der where these MOPs are des­tined to be used. If my infor­ma­tion is cor­rect (and I doubt that it is), Iran and Syria have devel­oped large tun­nel net­works and bunkers at depths of greater than 70 foot under­ground and for the pur­poses of shield­ing their nuclear projects or WMD.
    I sup­pose a weapon that could pen­e­trate these type of bunkers is needed in the event the US attacks Iran.

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    About six years ago, AFRL offi­cials devel­oped the Advanced Unitary Penetrator (AUP), which can bur­row twice the depth of the BLU-109. The weapon uses denser mate­ri­als “to pack more mass into a smaller cross-section,” Sands says. It is essen­tially a mas­sive explo­sive bul­let encased in a shroud that is dimen­sion­ally the same as the BLU-109. During pen­e­tra­tion, the outer cas­ing peals off, leav­ing the core to dig and det­o­nate. The tech­nol­ogy has been proven but has not been pur­chased by the Air Force, quite pos­si­bly because they need to go deeper still.

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