Posted on 03/15/2012 4:38:06 PM PDT by lbryce
The United States and Iran have engaged in a war of words over their military capabilities in the last few weeks. But if an actual war breaks out, it will not be a war of U.S. bombs versus Iranian bombs, but of U.S. bombs versus Iran's bunkers.
Iran's network of nuclear facilities, some of which are underground, would be the primary target of an Israeli or U.S. attack intended to destroy Iran's suspected clandestine weapons program. As the rhetoric has heated up, the United States has been talking up its military capabilities. Whether American or Israeli bombs indeed could penetrate or destroy Iranian bunkers, though, is still unclear.
The bomb getting the most press lately is the Pentagon's newest megaweapon: the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a 30,000-pound bomb designed to penetrate through dozens of feet of concrete. Speaking last week at a conference, Lt. Gen. Herbert Carlisle, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, called it a great weapon and noted that it was "part of our arsenal."
But the MOP, which B-2 bombers will carry, is still in testing, though it is supposed to be ready for use sometime this year. Until the MOP is ready to go, the biggest bunker-busters in the U.S. arsenal are much smaller. That includes the 5000-pound GBU-28, a laser-guided bunker-buster (which Israel wants to acquire) that the U.S. developed two decades ago to obliterate bunkers in Iraq during the first Gulf War.
Meanwhile, Iran's Press TV has cited public reports that Iranian industry is working on "ultra-high-performance concrete" that "may render Iranian nuclear sites impervious to U.S. bunker-buster bombs." Indeed, Iranian scientists are good at cooking up tough concrete, in part because so many earthquakes strike the country.\
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
Hopefully, we'll found out it's that it won't.
Blow these up and watch them surface like cockroaches in a mad scramble. If they can dig themselves out of all that special concrete, that is.
The assertion that buried weapons & systems cannot be destroyed is baffling to me. Any buried bunker would either be manned or be remotely controlled. If it is remotely controlled, then the radio signal can be cut off (by destroying the antenna) or manipulated (by sending a stronger signal & jamming or controlling it). If it is manned, then there has to be ventilation (air intake). Any heavier than air gas (methane, chloroform, etc) could be pumped into the intake, thereby incapacitating the personnel or creating a flammable situation.
In any case there would be egress (for vehicles or missile silo cover) and power connectivity, either of which would be subject to damage simply from a surface blast, including causing avalanche debris to cover these.
Maybe I watched too many cowboy movies... once the bad guys got into a mine or a box canyon, they were goners.
Before the majority of Jews were forced to leave Iran, they were very involved in the construction business. Would not be surprised if Mossad arranged to have many of the supporting beams in those structures generously augmented with plastique explosive to be detonated at an appropriate time.
Dirty Dozen had a solution for bunkers. {:-)
Israel’s very large UAV:
Range: easily hits Iran and returns. Payload 4,400 lbs.
How about hijacking an Air Iran plane, loading it with 50,000 lbs of c-4 and make it a big remote-control toy?
Had the last decade been spent more productively, we’d have broadcast facilities just over the Iranians’ borders, with the capability of covering most of the population. All of a sudden our broadcast would start, right after smart bombs blasted all Iranian broadcast facilities, telling the Iranians that the mullahcracy was illegal, immoral, and had to be overthrown, and that they had 48 hours to bring the heads of all the mullahs and other leadership to us in ziplock bags — or else the entire place would be obliterated. Just to help them out, the various brute and thug bases near urban areas would be liquidated through aerial bombardment (UAVs and more smart bombs), and every last mosque in the entire hell-hole leveled.
Along with every Shiite-head inside them at the time.
This was a special bomb, one issued to each of us for this mission with instructions to use them if we found ways to make them effective. The squawking I heard as I threw it was the bomb shouting in skinny talk (free translation): “I’m a thirty second bomb! I’m a thirty second bomb! Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight! Twenty-seven!...”
It would give the mullahs the enlightenment “of a thousand suns”....
NUKE THE WORTHLESS SARACEN BASTARDS!! Won’t have to worry about ‘’bunkers ‘n’ bombs, would you??
I have tremendous respect for the Israelis. The irony is that something like this is entirely possible.
Remember the problems decades ago with the American embassy in Moscow which we made the mistake of using local labor to build? My recollection is the building was so filled with bugs that it had central support columns serving as concealed antennae.
That was done right under American noses by local labor in a building that we knew was a potential risk.
Imagine what the Israelis could do with highly motivated engineers and architects who were convinced that the future of Judaism was at stake and had access to thousands of construction sites which weren't being specifically monitored the way Americans monitored the construction of the embassy.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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