Posted on 08/07/2018 11:12:18 AM PDT by Eddie01
The B-61-12 gravity bomb, a GPS-guided behemoth that’s been in development since 2008, can penetrate three meters of earth before detonating and dial up a nuclear yield of between 0.3 kilotons and 50 kilotons of devastating power.
A message to Iran? Read on:
An Air Force B-2 stealth bomber just completed the first test drop of an advanced nuclear gravity bomb, Military.com reported on June 30.
The B-61-12 gravity bomb , a GPS-guided behemoth that’s been in development since 2008 , can penetrate three meters of earth before detonating and dial up a nuclear yield of between 0.3 kilotons and 50 kilotons of devastating power.
The gravity bomb touts new components and an enhanced tail for maneuvering to target, and the new upgrades were designed to make the weapon three times more accurate. And while it’s extremely unlikely that the Air Force will need to violently renovate an underground enemy command bunker anytime soon, but better to be safe than sorry when it comes to nuclear capabilities.
According to Military.com, the system has already been already tested on several other delivery platforms, including the F-15E Strike Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon. The F-35 has recently completed a flight test with the B-61, and will soon be one more option for nuclear delivery.
It’s worth noting that the Federation of American Scientists has criticized the upgrades to the system, arguing that non-nuclear penetrators have made great strides in the field of bunker busting. Their concerns stem from a broader question: What problem is the B-61-12 trying to solve? Any strike on a weapons development facility in Iran or North Korea would not normally predicate a nuclear strike, and a pinpoint B-61-12 bunker-busting nuclear weapons suddenly puts a nuclear option on the table, literally.
But progress marches on, and now a stealth bomber can hypothetically kill any rogue dictator in their buried bunker, and irradiate it for good measure. Luckily the chance of the B-61-12 making a combat debut hovers somewhere between Dr. Strangelove and Crimson Tide, requiring many, many things to go wrong before nuclear armageddon comes for us all.
Oh man!
DUDE, don’t do that to us !
And probably throw in (or up) lunch and dinner.
It’s either a typo or an omission of data. The BLU-116 and BLU-118 can both penetrate 11 ft of reinforced concrete. The BLU-113 (5000lb bunker buster) will penetrate 22 feet of reninfored concrete or over 100 feet of earth. The GBU-57A/B (30000lb bunker buster) can penetrate ~200ft of reinforced concrete.
“And a beer or two after that one.”
Looks like she can store a few cases in that one. Paging Sir Mix-a-Lot.
“behemoth” ???
Yield between 0.3 kilotons and 50 kilotons?
Capable of being carried by an assortment of fighters?
3 meters not much but before they would drop one on a target underground they might want to precede it with one of those conventional ground penetrating bombs if they can penetrate any better so that there would be a good crater to drop it into to make the first crater bigger.
I believe 3 meters penetration yields maximum ground shock.
I can’t even imagine how far down that shock would be deadly. A long way!
I’m thinking that if you dropped a full Kenmore refrigerator from 40,000 feet, it would penetrate more than 3 meters of dirt.
I doubt that they will disclose how far it can actually penetrate.
It’s best to keep pot belly in north korea, as well as the mullahs in iran guessing IF they’ll be safe.
Oh no! A gravity bomb!
What will they think up next?
That’s heavy man!
Hmmm
That will generate quite a bit of fallout.
Lol, Kenmore, you took me back to my Father, a german immigrant. He did not call it a refrigerator, He called it a Kelvinator
this FAS article explains why 3 meters is useful for the B61-12:
https://fas.org/blogs/security/2016/01/b61-12_earth-penetration/
I was thinking along those lines, so I’m glad I read yours before I posted. I was going to say that the adjective “deadly” seemed like overkill in that headline.
“It only penetrates the ground about 10 feet? 3 meters”
Maybe hardened metal / concrete construction?
She has a nice smile.
-—What problem is the B-61-12 trying to solve? -—
It will remove storm clouds.
The world will be Quomless
“It only penetrates the ground about 10 feet?”
The entire sentence is, “can penetrate three meters of earth before detonating.” After the .3 - 50 kT explosion goes off it will effect stuff far deeper than 3m/10 feet.
Nuclear bombs have very sensitive and precise electronics that can fail under hard impacts. Most are designed as air burst explosions that will cause surface damage over a very large area. What is new with this bomb is that it can penetrate the ground before exploding at all, thus causing much more damage underground when the weapon detonates than any conventional bomb and probably most traditional nuclear ones.
Whatever happened to the kinetic energy weapons, the so-called rods from God? These tungsten rods are either dropped from orbit or from an ICBM and hit the target at mach 5+. Doubtful many bunkers would survive that hit. Were proppsed some 25 years ago.
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