In just a few weeks, a prototype was created. This new bomb had the following features:. From the description in the previous section, you can see that the concept behind bunker-busting bombs like the GBU is nothing but basic physics. You have an extremely strong tube that is very narrow for its weight and extremely heavy.
The bomb is dropped from an airplane so that this tube develops a great deal of speed, and therefore kinetic energy, as it falls. When the bomb hits the earth, it is like a massive nail shot from a nail gun. In tests, the GBU has penetrated feet The GBU has in the past been fitted with a delay fuze FMU so that it explodes after penetration rather than on impact.
There has also been a good bit of research into smart fuzes that, using a microprocessor and an accelerometer, can actually detect what is happening during penetration and explode at precisely the right time. These fuses are known as hard target smart fuzes HTSF. See GlobalSecurity. It is less expensive to manufacture, and a bomber can carry more of them on each mission.
One way to make a bunker buster heavier while maintaining a narrow cross-sectional area is to use a metal that is heavier than steel. Lead is heavier, but it is so soft that it is useless in a penetrator -- lead would deform or disintegrate when the bomb hits the target. One material that is both extremely strong and extremely dense is depleted uranium. DU is the material of choice for penetrating weapons because of these properties. For example, the M is an armor-piercing "dart" fired from the cannon of an M1 tank.
These pound 4. The dart has so much kinetic energy and is so strong that it is able to pierce the strongest armor plating. Depleted uranium is a by-product of the nuclear power industry. Natural uranium from a mine contains two isotopes: U and U The U is what is needed to produce nuclear power see How Nuclear Power Plants Work for details , so the uranium is refined to extract the U and create "enriched uranium.
U is a radioactive metal that produces alpha and beta particles. In its solid form, it is not particularly dangerous because its half-life is 4.
Depleted uranium is used, for example, in boats and airplanes as ballast. The three properties that make depleted uranium useful in penetrating weapons are its:. These three properties make depleted uranium an obvious choice when creating advanced bunker-busting bombs. With depleted uranium, it is possible to create extremely heavy, strong and narrow bombs that have tremendous penetrating force.
The problem with depleted uranium is the fact that it is radioactive. The United States uses tons on depleted uranium on the battlefield. At the end of the conflict, this leaves tons of radioactive material in the environment. For example, Time magazine: Balkan Dust Storm reports:.
Perhaps tons of DU weapons were used in the first Gulf war. When it burns, DU forms a uranium-oxide smoke that is easily inhaled and that settles on the ground miles from the point of use. To say that over two and a half tons of it would do a tremendous amount of damage in a confined space is something of an understatement. MOP is a very blunt instrument. MOAB was only a prototype, but the — video of the test was a potent propaganda weapon. Perhaps this test is a really signal to someone that their deep bunkers are not deep enough.
Assuming the man standing next to it is around six feet tall and about the same distance from the camera, I make the volume of the thing about liters at most. Inside this steel, the casing is nearly pounds of Tritonal explosive. Tritonal is a mixture of TNT 80 percent and aluminum powder 20 percent.
The aluminum improves the brisance of the TNT the speed at which the explosive develops its maximum pressure. Attached to the front of the barrel is a laser-guidance assembly. Either a spotter on the ground or in the bomber illuminates the target with a laser and the bomb homes in on the illuminated spot.
The guidance assembly steers the bomb with fins that are part of the assembly.
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